It's been *gritting teeth* helpfully pointed out that for a blog about an alleged cross-country bike trip, there's been precious little talk about biking, and even less talk about biking from San Diego to Boston, and a surprising amount of movie reviews and juvenile swearing.
Fair enough. There's only so much I can babble about bikes and keep it interesting, y'know. Unless you folks want deep, thoughtful discussions about 14mm headset spacers being awesome, or how the SRAM Powerlink is the single greatest advancement in bicycle chain maintenance since the threaded pin extruder. In which case I'm more than happy to oblige.
So back to this post's title. I'm coming back from work, just about home, and feeling pretty down. Bookman's failed to have a book I wanted at two different locations, my MP3 player was 7 minutes into Dvorak's Carnival overture because I haven't figured out how to arrange my MP3s to keep boring instrumental music off my biking playlist, and Debrah Messing had grown a day older and uglier without appearing in my room wearing a French maid outfit and a grim determination to give her stupid French husband a reason to divorce her.
I was cruising down the bike lane at an intersection. This is always tricky because someone in the right lane might want to make a right hand turn at said intersection, and considers it their civic duty to cut off/cripple any and all bikers to their right when making any lane changes. I imagine they do this while gripping the wheel in white-knuckled fury, screaming "NOT TODAY, PEDESTRIAN!!!!".
So I sneak a glance behind me, and sure enough, some guy is indicating he's going to make a right hand turn. I jam on my brakes, come to a stop just in time to avoid crashing into his passenger side quarter panel, and rip off my headphones. I usually just try to give people who cut me off the staredown of a lifetime, because I'm a coward, but this guy was getting out of his car and I guess I panicked a bit..
Being irritated beyond belief, tired, and apparently suicidal, I screamed "WATCH THE FUCKING BIKE LANE, COCKFACE" and hammered my fist down on top of his trunk. I felt it dent pretty good. I then immediately took off on my way straight down the road. I didn't stop for conversation, or to see if I'd left a permanent dent, I felt I'd made my general feelings clear on the situation. I'm absolutely sure I effed up his trunk pretty good. I have no idea what year, make, or model the dude's car was, but it was something that was made within the past few years.
Now, I'm not a bicycle activist. I genuinely believe bikes shouldn't be considered this idealized pedestrian/vehicle hybrid that can go wherever it wants, and cars should just have to deal with them. In a fair world, they should be, but as I learned in my sophomore year of college when I admitted to having a crush on KD Lang in the early 90's, life is often cruel and unfair. The fact is 80% of all people are retarded and in their own blissful cloud of daydreaming when they're moving around. This includes bikes and cars. If a car and bike get into an accident, the bicyclist loses 99.999999% of the time. Bikes don't belong on the road together for the same reason chicks don't play in the NFL.
However after being car-free since October '08, I'm starting to understand why a lot of bicyclists are complete douchebags to cars. We're woefully outmatched and the people in their goddamn cars know it. If I had a wooden nickel for every time I've been run over, had stuff thrown at me, screamed at in an attempt to startle me and make me fall off, etc... well, unless I was at Yoken's* in Portsmouth, NH, I'd just have a lot of useless wooden nickels I guess, but the point is I'd have a lot. And it gets really aggravating. At this point I'm not sure if some kind of summit meeting is needed or what, but it's outright war between cyclists and motorists at this point and seeing as how I made the stupid, stupid decision to be a cyclist, I'm starting to feel like I chose to be a power forward for the Washington Generals.
Geez I just realized I hope that guy doesn't end up behind me any time soon.
* Holy crap, they closed down Yokens?!! CURSE YOU, PROGRESS!!!
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Awesome post. I especially liked being reminded about how you used to desire KD Lang and also that you had the guts to call someone a "cockface". I get angry with bikers sometimes when I'm driving and I also get angry with drivers sometimes when I'm biking. But I think drivers are more guilty of being oblivious because they are somewhat protected by the car. Either way I bet you were pretty flustered after that incident - you were probably cross-chaining the whole way home!
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