I had just dropped Shirley off at the waiting bay outside Strathfield train station. With indicators blinking, I had a quick look at my rear vision mirror… and there was just one car on the traffic lane just driving past – so I let it go and slowly pulled out after it.

Two angry blasts of the horn jolted my eyes back to my wing mirror. A huge Mercedes had just popped up on my rear right. I had no idea how it got there so quickly… but I got the message that he was a bit pissed off by my bad driving.

Cyclists braving the roads get similar treatment by many car drivers. A person on a bike (innocently minding their own business) is seen as a hindrance rather than a legitimate road user.

We went down to Canberra over the weekend for a bit of family time. My two grandsons had a great time catching up with their uncles and we spent Sunday at the Questacon.

Josh (almost turning three), produced a serious look in the middle of playing and said “…I don’t like your At-ti-tude!”. It can be a bit alarming when you hear this from an adult – let alone from a toddler in nappies…You can really piss someone off by these words.

Le Tour is quite central to my daily routine and during the weekend, the most newsworthy was Frenchmen throwing piss on Chris Froome. Then there was the physical and verbal abuse at the Sky riders all thrown into the mix. .What should be admiration seems easily twisted into anger.

Imagine straining yourself mentally and physically to the limit. It is the best that you can produce. Yet, it pisses some people off. When nothing that you do is good enough, it can be mentally destroying. Let’s hope the Sky team can still continue to produce their best – despite the knockers.

Perhaps, it is because the Sky team has made cycle racing so much of a science that it has left their competitors scratching their heads. Science has a habit of showing us how fallible our sense of righteousness can be.

Questacon is quite a showcase of exhibits using science and technology to show us that much of what we think is right… is in fact somehow misguided. There is an exhibit that shows how you can take perfectly straight lines and make them seem curved – by just adding in some distractions.

Back to the honking car…

I had done a perfect exit from the waiting bay – yet it was nowhere good enough for the rampaging Mercedes.

Little Josh has little inkling about what an attitude is. You may think that he has an advanced vocabulary or that he was deliberately being cheeky.

It turns out that the phrase is contained in a nursery rhyme called “Little Bunny Foo Foo” that he sings at child care. A very simple reason – yet, can be misunderstood in many ways.

If science can prove that humans can see a straight line as curved, what hope is there that your best is indeed any good when viewed by another human being?

I swear that those lines in Canberra were crooked.

…It all just goes to show that when perfection can be seen quite innocently as imperfect – that nothing can ever be perfect in this world.

Which brings us to the moral of this tale.
“Your best is good enough…. Don’t ever try to be perfect (or you will live a life full of disappointment)”