You may remember the great golf ball grabbing game. Well, now I'm into another new and innovative sport. A twist on regular road cycling, fender slapping is best played when there's lots of traffic around, which makes it great fun while commuting. The object is for the cyclist to make firm contact on the metal panels of a car with the open palm of the hand, thereby alerting the driver of the vehicle to their presence. Obviously the game has evloved from the need for some drivers to be constantly reminded that they don't, in fact, own the road and in this country at least, they are obliged to share it with cyclists (equally).
Scoring:
Points are calculated by the area of the car slapped (some areas are worth more points than others), and multiplied by a driver reaction factor (like the difficulty factor in olympic diving).
Boot or rear fenders = 1 point
Front fender or bonnet = 2 points
Roof on passenger side = 3 points
Roof on drivers side = 5 points
The Rules:
- Slaps do not count if cyclist is stationary. Cyclist must keep moving during and after manuvour; this is critical.
- No slappings cars with learners 'L' plates displayed as these drivers have a legitimate excuse for poor driving.
- Only slap cars which are being inconsiderate to other road users. Most often this will involve 'hogging' the road in some way but other offences, eg bad parking, could also warrent a slap.
- Cars can be moving or stationary as long as the driver is present (in body, if not in mind).
- Use an open gloved plam only. The object should not be to damge the car, but only to make a noise loud enough to wake the driver up.
I scored a rear fender slap this afternoon, on a car in the act of parking across the access to pedestrian path instead of one of several nearby empty car parks. As he reversed in I zipped through the gap, applied a clean slap to the left rear fender and informed him that it was "not a carpark". The abuse that was hurled back gave me a very high reaction factor.
There are only two little problems with my new sport. First, it doesnt really work on 18 wheelers. Second, it is very difficult, not to mention hazardous, to fender slap cars moving faster than 30pkh... which makes me wonder, if anyone has invented a bicycle with a paintball gun built in...
Disclaimer: Fender slapping is not an official olympic sport and could be considered dangerous. It will definately piss off some drivers, and scare the crap out of others. Kids, DO NOT try this at home (there's no traffic there).
8:01:19 PM 
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