Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Some readers may find content of this column disturbing.
I know I did.
You've dragged me away from an important task, to write this column.

I was busy musing about where to hang the picture of the newly-wed royal couple.
I figure that Willie and Kate's wedding picture should really take pride of place alongside Her Majesty in my office. I have a great interest in the Monarchy and feel a compulsion to hang them all.
As for Kate, she's quite a hottie and I'm looking forward to nailing her up against my office wall.

But I digress. I promised a second circuit of the cycling subject, so here we go. As usual with this column, I try to see both points of view in any issue. And as mentioned last week, this writer is a try-hard cyclist, having grown up with the hard knock lessons of biking to school and surviving the gravel rash of numerous Waihi Road ‘unscheduled dismounts'.
It's not the hills around the city that are the problem. It's the gravity.
If we could figure out a way to remove the gravity, the hills would be easier to ride up and slower to cruise down. It's also gravity that causes cyclists to hit the tarmac when they fall off.
The gravity is the council's fault. They've known about it for years and have done nothing.
You'd think that with advances in technology and growth of the city that the life of the cyclist in this city would have improved in the decades some of us have been pedalling around.
I fear not. Increased traffic, warped planning ideas for safe cycling and the growing antagonism of motorists means that cyclists are still a very endangered species.
Even some city councillors I've known over the years, who outwardly try to promote cycling to reduce traffic congestion, will tell you privately that ‘you're nuts'.
Cr Faulkner tells me he's got a bike in the shed. And that's where it stays. He rode it around town half a dozen times and decided it was far too dangerous. He told the council there were cars coming at him all directions. Cr Guy is reported to have responded: 'Bill, that could be because you had a target on your back.”
So if the city councillors aren't confident about surviving on a bicycle on our city streets, there's not much hope for the rest of us.
Take one of my favourite routes, for example.
There's nothing quite as stimulating as a jaunt down Cameron Road. Usually it's to Mitre 10, which really is a pointless place to visit on a bicycle. There's not much you can bring home on a bicycle, except maybe a packet of picture hooks for hanging the Royal Family.
It is however a nice ride on a good day, with no hills and a good distance to get the legs cranked and the blood pumping. It would be perfect if it wasn't for the friggin' cars.
There used to be a Bike Lane on Cameron Road, now there's a Suicide Lane.
For some reason the city councillors, who are mostly too scared to ride it themselves, have voted that the rest of us cannon fodder cyclists can ride the Suicide Lane in the middle of the road.
The Suicide Lane has no benefits that I can see.
Every time I use it, motor vehicles play this jousting game. ‘Let's see if we can bump off the turkey on the bike with a wing mirror'. Other times it's a case of ‘suck him into the slipstream'.
Then trucks and buses feel free to park over the Suicide Lane. Virtually every time I've ridden along Cameron Road, there's been a bus bum sticking out across the bike lane or a car door opened like a jack-in-the-box.
The only benefit of The Suicide Lane for cyclists is that it runs past the hospital. This means it's nice and handy to the A&E department so cyclists can be scraped up and carted in for repairs.
Whoever designed this killer of an idea may as well have continued it all the way out Cameron Road, up Pyes Pa, direct to the crematorium.
All we need now is a bike stand outside.