by The Verbal Ecdysiast
I was accelerating down York Road toward Lower Glencoe on my bike the other day, helmet on, heart filled with glee. To my left the sunlight was filtering through the trees, creating a richter-tape of tree shadows upon the road: glorious. Such delightful and immeasurable freedom of the senses can be found in physical velocity at forty plus miles per hour. Yet I purposely remained in the right margin, though Maryland State traffic law clearly maintains that a bicycle is just as much a vehicle as a car, and therefore, technically, I had and have the right to be riding on the road. Now, mind you, the right margin of York Road is analogous to a moonscape–pockmarked and cratered–not nearly as nice as the newly paved asphalt of the main road; however, for the sake of boundaries and safety I remained in the rough. Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard a rather corpulent four-by-four come upon my left rear, and subsequently, it’s invasive honk, or more precisely, the glaring ugliness of the driver manifested in the sound of his staccato horn. I jumped like a dog for a biscuit: no easy manifestation of the central nervous system, when one’s feet are clipped into her pedals which are still turning at over forty miles per hour. Further, I surprised myself: I ignored him. "I’m not in his way," I mused, remaining very cool and logical. "Why did he honk? Surely he will pass me, now," I thought.
I thought wrong.
Now, nearly alongside me (I could see the truck was a hefty white four-by-four Dodge Ram), he honked AGAIN, and leered down upon me. That did it. So much for cool logic. I did what any red-blooded cyclist does when she is infuriated: I gave him the finger.
He pealed out in front of me, his truck screeching as he briefly accelerated, then screeching again as he brought the truck to a halt about one-hundred yards in front of me and directly in my way.
I could try to go around him, but of course, he could still tangle with me. After all, the simple, unalterable, inexorable laws of physics dictate that when and if an accelerating bicyclist on a bicycle has some sort of, er, let’s say, "interaction" with a driver in a truck, the truck and therefore its driver will always win.
I could simply stop, but again, at forty miles per hour or more, the chances of flying over the handlebars were about fifty-fifty. And indeed, for she who is clipped in, Confucius say "she who stop bike short with hands take bike along on her feet…heheheh, vewwwwyyy twickyyyy…." …but not an option.
I was so angry (and all of the above had flown through my head in about five seconds) that I slowed deliberately and consistently over about seventy-five yards, brought my bike to a halt and unclipped in about ten seconds.
During that ten seconds, the driver exited his truck, slammed his door shut, and stood beside the door with his arms folded. I found myself rapidly approaching the O-K Corral at high noon. I saw that this man had on a wife-beater t-shirt with fully tatooed arms, and from his posture, he seemed bent on bullying and intimidating those who dared to cross either his path or him. Pity the fool.
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Continue reading “This Road Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us”
