Glass on the path!

There is a small store in the village near my home. A group of the local youth often congregate outside in the amber glow of the street light. I have become used to a torrent of abusive comments as I cycle past on my way home. Occasionally a few of them will give chase, buzzing around me on their BMX, bums in the air, boxer shorts showing, skinny legs flailing wildly. It can be intimidating but I have learnt that they soon lose interest once out of sight of their audience back at the shop.

The other night, I dropped down the cycle bridge over the A27 into the village. Too late I noticed large shards from a broken beer bottle or two, distributed deliberately across the cycle path. Unable to swerve I rode directly over the base of a bottle, the sharp jagged edges pointing viciously towards the sky.

I stopped and after clearing the glass examined my tyres in amazement. Both were still inflated! Incredulous I rode home and apart from a quick mention to my wife thought no more about it - until the following morning! I opened the door to the utility room, and it looked as if my bike had been attacked by some serpentine sea creature. Its black tentacles reaching out from my rear wheel.

Overnight the rear tyre had split in two, the inner tube forcing itself out of the hole and then bursting into long rubbery tendrils. The tyre was almost new so it must have been caused by the glass from the previous day.

Furious and grumpy I fitted an old tyre and set off for work. Only then did I think I might actually have been quite lucky. True £40 of tube and tyre destroyed just before Christmas is annoying. However, what if the tyre had burst while I had still been making my way home the evening before? I would almost certainly have been thrown into the road, in front of whatever traffic was around me at the time.

I don't expect the idiots who put glass on cycle paths think much at all. What might have seemed a harmless prank to them has left me £40 out of pocket, but the consequences could have had far more serious.