Filtering..

As the traffic ground to a halt for the umpteenth time, I looked around me to see that I moved a grant total of 20 metres in the last 5 minutes. My left hand had cramped from holding the clutch in and I was overheating under my jacket.

My SV lacks a temperature gauge and I started to wonder how my bike was handling 40 minutes in almost stationary traffic. I could feel the heat of the bike being displaced through my leg that was holding on my back brake and therefore touching the frame.

I’d seen what heat and slow, slow traffic does to a bike after a guy on an expensive hypermotard practically dropped his radiator in front of me on the toy run as we spent copious amounts of time searching for a parking space.

As the heat continued to seep through my jeans I decided I had to do it. I had to move, find some clean air. I knew my detour was about 2kms away and with luck that should move me towards some faster moving traffic.

I looked over my shoulder to check for rogue suicidal scooters and headed for the gap between the two unmoving lanes of cars. Amazingly, without a single car moving the gap seemed to increase in size as I rode through each set of cars.

I filtered through to the red light and pulled into the gap in front of one of the cars as another bike pulled up beside me. I’d done it. My first filter. How exciting!

It was an amazing feeling of freedom and perhaps it was just the fact that I was going 20kph instead of 10kph but the air was cool and clean. I filtered to my detour and headed off down a side street. A few corners later saw me back in traffic. This traffic was moving faster but it was still a very slow adventure. I saw the lights turn red ahead and traffic stopped again. A check over my shoulder showed that there was nothing over concern coming so off I went again. I made it to the light as they went green and I was gone again.

15 minutes later I pulled into the driveway at work and parked my bike. An hour and a half after I left home, I was at work. 1.5 hrs to go 12kms. Gah!