October – my last on a bike for now

Commuting to work using a bike

It is not Lance Armstrongs fault that I will go from using my bicycle to work to using my car. It is not the weather either. It is the fault of our parliament.

They have introduced strict rule for the lights we have to put on our bikes. And in fact I have no problem with increased demands for my visability if they hadn’t made an error.

They have managed to outlaw all the pedals I have on my bikes. Both the Look system and both the Shimano systems are outlawed in Denmark when it is dark. Why, because the danish law demand that the pedal has a small area with reflective tape. On the Shimano systems there no room at all for such an area. Maybe i could construct something on my own on the Look pedals but I guess that if I meet a strict cop it would not hold up in court.

I have been talking with a lot of fellow cyclists. They all agree that the time of cycling in the early and late hours of the day are over. So commuting using a bike is no longer possible in Denmark.

I am sad. I really loved my time on my bike. As every other cyclist in Denmark I could work out all my anger and in fact it is one of the few areas of Danish traffic where the speed limits are not enforced. Second it is allowed to push and point fingers at the other people while you ride. Short to say: You are allowed to be really brutal and mean as long as you remember that you can get hurt too if you meet some who are stronger.

We are moving forward the winter and I guess that this winter will be very hard. The parliament has suspended the welfare system. A ruling in court allowed the authorities to cut back on aid to the elderly based on the economy only. The verdict has been appealled but while we wait for the appeal court, we have to take extra care of our parents. We have to do the cleaning the employees did before. We have to shop for them etc.

They have also cut on the length of unemployment benefits you can pay for when you are working. Before the new law you could get aid for 4 years before you had to sell your house and give up your children to the foster care system. Now where the crisis has hit us hard due to the laziness of the people in countries like Greece and Spain, they have cut it to 2 years.

For roughly 13.000 Danes their lives are over. I don’t know how many tragedies we will see in 2013 but the concept of killing your children off and commit suicide to avoid the shame of living on the streets and in tents like the illegal immigrants from the eastern part of Europe are not unknown. There have been a number of cases the last decade while the politicians have been busy putting money aside for themselves while they have been cutting in every area we can be thinking of.

I fear for November. It is difficult to wonder where the parliament will commit their evilness the next time.