Sunday, February 22, 2009

A funny thing happened on the way

In one of the newspapers this weekend there was a really great article about someone who was fed up with the number of potholes in our roads and the incompetence of the municipalities in maintaining them so he planted about 100 trees, one per pothole, in and around bloemfontein I think it was. This sounds like a great idea to highlight a problem but I didn't realise that I would fall victim to a pothole the very next day.
This morning I did a 2:45 ride with Jason and Sam and at one stage Jasons orienteering skills let him down and we ended up riding across some mowed grass to get back onto the path. I wasn't concentrating too hard and rode right into a hole dug for a tree but the digger had forgotten to plant the damn tree. The grass had grown and pretty much covered it so the first thing that I knew about it was when my front wheel went in and I went head over the handlebars - much to an oncoming mountain bikers amusement. I didn't actually fall very far; it was more like the bike just disappeared from under me and I skidded to a halt having landed chest first on the grass beyond the hole. Very undignified but nothing hurt or broken so no real problems although my head is a bit sore at the moment.
Having experience the first hand effects of tree holes without trees in them I am in complete agreement that potholes really need to be greened!

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