:Cyclostat

Last night I had an encounter with one of those rude drivers that we all love to hate. The gf and I were biking South on Mass ave, two abreast, in light traffic. We weren’t taking up more than half a lane. If you measured from the parked cars to my left elbow, we took up maybe 4 feet: about the size of a bike lane. So the cars are just passing us on the left without difficulty and at low density. Most people can imagine what happens next – the beep. Not the beep beep of a friendly hello, but an all caps e-mail of GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY. Perplexed, I watched as a Prius passed us at 40ish mph without difficulty. There was no traffic in the left lane. No bottle neck. The Prius was beeping just because…she had to switch lanes? I don’t know.

Then, like page out of my revenge fantasy diary, the light turns red and she’s trapped. I turn to my gf for permission to engage: permission granted. The hunt was on and I knocked on the Prius’ passenger side window.

“Pardon me. I was wondering why you honked at us.”

Her eyes widen and she defensively explains some bullshit that’s muffled through the windows. Whatever; she’s just complaining that we were riding two abreast. I can smell her fear.

“I can’t hear you. Can you roll the window down.” Not that I care what she has to say. Did I just want to take her barrier away?

She becomes more agitated, and makes lane semaphores, in further explanation that I was taking up a whole lane.

“We’re legally allowed to take up a lane. We didn’t do anything wrong.” My gf backs me up by saying “That’s the truth”

She tries to explain something that I can’t hear, so I hit her with the crazy eyes, accompanied with the manic smile. The light turns green and I stay right at her window. Smiling.

She erratically accelerates and take a swooping right down the wrong side of a street. Had there been traffic in the street that she turned down, she would have been in a head-on collision.

Did I just win?

I’m not sure why I did this, or what I hoped to accomplish. My original goal was not to freak this woman out, but rather to hold her accountable and rip off her mask of automotive anonymity. I wasn’t intending on giving her the manic smile, or the crazy eyes, but hey that’s what happened. I’m a weird guy. I didn’t want to be aggressive – I intentionally used overly polite language. In the end, I think that it was the loss of anonymity was truly terrifying to her; it was the equivalent unmasking some internet troll.

If anyone else is hit with a similar situation, I think that we can learn from this. We don’t need to give a middle finger, or call them assholes. I think that all we need to a polite tap on the window and an inquiry into their actions.

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I just saw an article in the globe about Somerville hiring volunteers to cyclist street usage.

From the article:

“The goal is to understand how bicycles and pedestrians are using our streets,” said senior planner Kathleen Ziegenfuss.

People will be stationed at 34 locations during both morning and evening rush hour.”

Has anyone on here signed up to do this? Do you know someone who has?

What’s the skinny, chaps?

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About 9 days ago, this article was in the New York Times.

It was the story of a lawful good cyclist who, for the sake of the law, god and country, stopped at every red light.

The NYtimes article was actually published on the same day that 100PSI wrote his article about stopping at every red light for a week. Weird, right? It’s like we’re all connected, man. And then everyone tears off their business suits, and they’re all wearing tie-dye.

So, this week some readers responded to the good cyclist. One was a biker who blamed not-stopping on the unruly New York pedestrians. This sort of makes sense at first – I mean the pedestrians in NYC (as well as Boston) are terrible, but wouldn’t they be worse if you were trying to run a red? Two true statements does not an argument make.

The other response was from a non-biker who said we need more regulation, and hadn’t thought about how expensive it is to regulate something.

I love watching the NY cycling debate unfold at the same time as the Boston debate. It’s weird because (from my perspective) New Yorkers seem to have a wider cycling base, and roughly 20 times the amount of bike lanes as Boston (400 vs. 20, right?). It just reminds me that we have a lot of ways to go; New York has done so much in the way of physical infrastructure and they are still in the same place that we are.

As much as I hate to say it, it’s shit like running red lights that is going to make the difference in the end.

Heart and minds, you assholes. That’s what we need.

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