One of the weirder aspects of bicycling (for me) is that it makes me very happy (peace! love! pedaling! beautiful sunset!) and very scared (omg please don't back over me!) all at the same time. Add to this that my sense of humor has never been entirely correct and you get a bicyclist (me) pedaling deliriously up a bike lane (oh bike lane, how I love thee, despite half of you being taken up by broken pavement and smashed up bits of car!) and alternating between crying unhappily (you killed that little cat you miserable fuckers!) and laughing (the sky is peach and blue and streaked with unicorns!) ...cheerfully.
Fortunately cars don't see bicyclists so I can behave erratically without fear of social repercussions.
I am sitting at a red light, wondering what I will eat for breakfast. I'm a mammal. Decisions like this are very dear to me. The light turns green and I roll forward and clip in and begin pedaling. I've made it about six feet when the road, and the bicycle lane I am in, veer slightly to the right. No problem! I've been turning my bicycle in different directions for about forty years now. Yes. Problem. The giant shiny white Range Rover (does anyone else hate those things?) says "fuck turns in the road, I got shit to do" so instead of following their big wide freshly paved lane they roll into my crappy skinny broken up lane forcing me against a curb where I almost but don't quite un-clip before tipping onto my side. I right myself and pedal on.
At the next red light the Range Rover is conveniently waiting for me. "Hi to you too" I mutter dangerously as I scan it's snowy white rear end. The rest of the world sees a white SUV. I see a small mountain of rancid lard that's beached itself and is quietly grumbling and farting.
A magnet (I love these things!) on the back says "BABY ON BOARD." I check to see if a baby is driving the SUV, as overall that would explain a lot and maybe even convince me to give this SUV a pass. No baby. Driver looks to be your usual blah blah female who is right now poking at her smart phone as she desperately whiles away the two minutes of otherwise unstructured traffic light time. I lean over and casually pick the "Baby" magnet off the SUV and toss it under another car. There. Fixed that for you.
I told this story to a friend shortly after it happened and he was amazed. "Don't they notice?" And the fun thing is: They do not! Cars notice like...nothing. I honestly think I could drop trou and take a dump (sorry, vulgar, but cars, especially American cars, are super vulgar and you should speak their language don't you think?) on an offending bumper and no one would notice.
Don't push me or I might test this theory out. Would be a fun headline if I got arrested that's for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment