2011 Streak 75/365: Linemen

2011 Streak 75/365: Cycle 12 miles, Time 55min, Weather - as if smothered in grey mist

This is another in the 'men at work' series of photos. 

When I see people working on overhead cables I actually feel a slight pang of ancestral association. Both my father and grandfather were, at some point in their lives, telephone engineers and so would have spent time up telegraph poles. 

In those days they would have scaled them using the triangular footholds nailed each side of the pole. You rarely see those poles now, why would you when we have cherry pickers? Watching the men work I thought how much more difficult it was in the old days, how limited your movements would be when you were at the top; also how much safer it is working from a platform. Nevertheless if you were young and fit there must have been an exhilaration to climbing up poles as opposed to being lifted up.

After I took this picture I cycled on into the mist. I think the dial marked 'spring' has been turned back a few notches because it was cold as well as murky.

On the country roads I was passed by a few cars and one of the things I noticed was their courtesy. They slowed, waited for the appropriate place to mark and we exchanged nods and smiles. It was all quite civilised -not at all like the culture wars that seems to be breaking out between cars and cyclists. Perhaps that is more of a city thing. This war seems to have become especially vitriolic in some parts of America at the moment and resistance to plans to create more cycle lanes in New York has become newsworthy. 

Let me recommend this article by Tom Vanderbilt, which explains much about the American attitude to cycle through the device of following one person's long distance commute.