The Wide Stance

I love to race where "race" means that I never stray off my commute and I don't run red lights (you can if you want but I'm way too chickenshit for that stuff at my age) and mostly I just try and pass and "win" on the long straight-aways.

I've never found the words to really describe how much I love this, this pedaling as fast as I can, this being a middle-aged lady on an off-rack bicycle flying down the road swooping past the other commuters until I encounter a like-minded racer and we fight for the front place, sometimes one of us drafting behind the other.  On a good day we worker bees, we ordinary people form a pace line of sorts, skimming along the road like lithe little swallows on their way to Capistrano.

I love that stuff.  I won't say it makes life worth living (my family would be that bit) but it makes life so incredibly rewarding on a daily basis, this racing, this beating heart, these well-powered lungs.

What is one teensy tiny annoying fly in the ointment?

The wide stance.

Please guys.  Please.  Stamp out The Wide Stance.

I guarantee you women are nodding their heads right about now, at least any woman who has been on a bus or subway.  The Wide Stance is a guy who sits like this:

 

See?  See how the guy is taking up two seats and has his legs all spread out?  I mean we get it, we get that your testicles are the size of bowling balls and that they need adequate room for breathing and ventilation but we (the rest of the non bowling ball world) would really like to sit down sometimes and when you allocate a seat to each testicle it makes it that much harder for the rest of us to find a place to sit down and rest our weary dogs.  

What does this have to do with bicycling and racing home on my commute?  A lot, it turns out.

Ever seen those teeny tiny hard roadie seats?  Mmm-hmmm.  Here's how it goes.  You and me are at a red light.  It turns green.  You take off in front of me and that's cool, I like a good fast pace.  But then you do it.  You slow down.  And you move way out to the left until you are within about two feet of the double yellow.  You can do this because we are riding on Bicycle Boulevard, and because of that we should be having a great time tearing up the road as we hurtle our respective work laptops home to rest for the evening but not you.  You slow way the hell down and then sprawl your bicycle across the entire lane.  

You totally know I'm there.  I mean you were behind me at a red light ten seconds ago, remember?  I try and pass and you move further to the left.  I think about the right side (although I am a big believer in the right side) and you move over there and so I head back to the left and you are there.  

Cmon, man!  Cmon.  You're inching along now at a bare 12 mph and I'm dying to make a run for it but you are all over this road who ever guessed a skinny bicycle could take up that much room!  And so I finally risk life and limb to pass way the hell over in the oncoming traffic lane and I do get away from you and your giant testicles, one for each side of the road and I continue on and totally drop you know why?  The real commuter racer types don't win because they block off anyone from passing, they win because they ride faster then the next person.  See how that works?  

I got my whinges with girl bicyclists but I'm trying hard and I can't think of them ever trying to actively block someone from getting around them the way you do with your extra wide stance.  

Rapunzel, to me, "Can I see that picture?"

Me: "Sure.  It's not that exciting."  [I scroll up] "Just a guy taking up two seats."

Rapunzel shakes her head "Wow.  And he could easily fit in one.  Some people."  [shakes head]

good news bad news

I went to New Mexico to visit family a few weeks back.  When I visit family I generally end up getting on an airplane and this makes me feel guilty because I do believe in climate change (clap your hands if you believe) and flying around to make visits is part of the general level of pollution.

I know know know I could bicycle to New Mexico.  Or Massachusetts.  In fact I would really like to do either of these rides.  Unfortunately I'd have to first quit my job and second strap my nine year old to the hood of my bicycle after mile ten followed by strapping my 14 year old to the rear fender of my bicycle after mile twenty or so and that really slows me down and the paternal unit in Massachusetts and the two in-law units in New Mexico are not getting any younger.

So at the moment I am in Massachusetts doing a lot of swimming and before this I was in New Mexico and this short story made inexplicably longer, by me, is about New Mexico.

First I saw exactly one bicycle in the four days I was there.  Second I spent more time than before with my very intelligent brother-in-law who happens to be a neurosurgeon and I finally got to ask him all of my questions about brain surgery which was great although I still think that if someone has a tumor it would be worthwhile to look into a cerebro-spino fluid replacement because the cancerous cells are there and if we could swap that fluid out with healthy fluid that would be good right?  Apparently this is totally out of left field and no, it is definitely not correct but whatever.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law do not bicycle, a subject I skirt very carefully.  They scuba dive, and they ride horses, but ixnay on the icycle-bay.  We were talking about vacations and in the manner of making pleasant lightweight talk I mentioned that I would love to see Costa Rica and maybe ride one of the famous Costa Rican zip lines through the jungle.

My brother-in-law said "oh, absolutely not."  I was surprised.  I asked why.  He said patiently that he was a neurosurgeon, and he worked trauma, and he saw a lot of people badly messed up by vacation adventures along the lines of zip-lining through jungles.

I took a breath and I said "so, do you see, uhh, a lot of bicyclists?  In the ER?"

He didn't hesitate.  "Oh yes.  I see a lot of bicyclists."

I asked carefully, "The bicyclists, did they get hurt because they were umm, running red lights?  Behaving dangerously?"

He looked totally surprised as if he had thought I was smarter than this.  He said "What?  No, never.  They're just going along and some car hits them.  Often the driver of the car is drunk."  He looked pensive as if he was searching backwards in time to give a totally complete answer.  "Once there was an occasion where they said the bicyclist had fallen inexplicably, turned into the path of the passing car so maybe on that one occasion it was the bicyclist but hard to know for sure."

Me:  "Did the bicyclist make it?"

Him:  "What?  Oh no.  He didn't."

So there it is.  As every bicyclist I have ever met suspects, it is not the way we ride that gets us killed.  It is the way the drivers drive, that gets the bicyclist killed.

I still hope to ride a zip-line in Costa Rica one day.  But I'd like to bike down there, not fly.

Five Easy Pieces. Flight.

A week or so back I was about a mile in to my trip home and I saw a green light ahead and stepped up the pace to a sprint.  Since there is no bicycle lane (but five car lanes, go figure) I was in the middle of a lane but travelling with the cars.

I got through the light and was feeling very very decent and immediately after there is another light and it is also green and I start trying to get this one also and this amazing thing happened.  I all of a sudden was pedaling crazy faster.  In a short miracle-esque moment, for reasons I don't get at all, my middle-aged body found something much younger in itself and my sprint doubled and although I am now heading up hill I am passing all the cars to my left and by the time I was pedaling through the (still green) light I felt like I was flying, or maybe even gliding because I felt as if it was all easy, I felt as if I could have gone as fast as I wanted.

Then it ended, as suddenly as it had arrived, like a thief disappearing in the night and I was back to me and breathing really hard  and the cars were again passing me as if I were just an ordinary bicyclist.  But for a minute or two, I was not an ordinary bicyclist.  And that minute or two was incredibly delicious.

Bob Dylan has this song I love, it's called "Let Me Die In My Footsteps."  My favorite version is on disc one of the three disc bootleg series.  He wrote it after seeing people digging massive underground bomb shelters for shelter in the event of a nuclear war.  Lately I have been thinking of this song when people tell me that bicycling is too dangerous, or when I see another article of a person being killed or badly injured by a car while the driver walks away without consequences.  

I want to take my chances out here, on my bicycle, because everything that matters to me is out here.  The air that flows around me and smells of hot sun and white oleander and tall drying grasses.  The little ground squirrels that I ride by camped out by the side of the road nibbling tender green shoots.  The shadows that flicker through the trees.  The big white egret that flies overhead and the circling hawks that scan for long legged rabbits.  I love to see the same people pass me each day and they wave and smile and then go on to their own jobs or take the dog out for a walk.

Moments of flight are daily reminders that I cannot bear to lock myself away in a metal box from everything that matters to me, even if it is marginally safer in there.

Five Easy Pieces. Roadwork.

You know how in Orwell's 1984 we have always been at war with Oceania?  Well on my commute we've always had the road construction.  It's has no start and it has no end, just like that war with Eurasia we got going somewhere awhile back.  The road is being ripped up or pipe is being put down or an office building is being torn out and replaced by a bigger glassier office building.  Me I'm just on my increasingly grubby bicycle trying to get to work or trying to get home from work or (for variety) trying to get to the food store.  

Road construction is not my friend.  It starts with a gigantic sign that says ROAD WORK which is always perfectly centered in the middle of the skinny little sorry-ass excuse for bicycle infrastructure lane that I ride in and that I fantasize gives me some little delusional protection from the cars.  So that's right out, the bicycle lane.

Next you see a sign saying "Lane Closed" and all the cars bunch up like cows lining up for a slaughter house and the more desperate ones go to the front of the line and moo in low anxious voices while the more patient cars stay in a fixed lane with a centimeter of space between bumpers so that the cows (I mean cars) that are queue jumping have to stand to the side.

Where does this leave the bicycles?

Not in very good shape thanks.  We sometimes get a helpful nudge in the shape of  BICYCLE LANE CLOSED.  Sometimes the cars are actually shunted into our lane because their own is being made smooth and lovely and so they use our broken sorry ass lane during the repairs.  Mostly we just fend for ourselves, sticking our arms out as we signal that we want to move away from the backhoe beeping along in our direction.

Yesterday I was pointed towards the sidewalk by a guy in a yellow vest.  Oh yay.  O Frabjous Day.  I ride onto the sidewalk and pedal uneasily up the broken bit that's actually for pedestrians and I am dodging angry strollers and throwing apologetic looks at the other bicyclists limping along in the other direction.  We get moved onto the sidewalk but somehow the cars never get moved onto a teeter-totter to get to work.  So unfair.

Once I saw a sign that said "Walk Your Bike" and I thought to myself "I'll walk my bicycle when you get out and push your goddamned car you dumb sow."

Some days there is a long line of cones with cars to the left and no road construction to the right.  I mean eventually they plan to do a little bit of a something but why bother taking down all the cones just for lunch break?  When this happens I ride on the construction side of the cones and I watch out for yawning holes and snicker at the cars the way the cat thumbs her nose at the dog when he's on a leash.

It's a special hoot when they shut down Bicycle Boulevard because unlike the cars who can detour around using another road, we only have this one street.  The result is that the construction workers put up barriers and we pause and then flow around them, like ants at a picnic.  Each day they make the bicycle deterrents a little more stout but each day we find our way around anyways, weaving around piles of gravel and crap and on and off sidewalks until the road returns to something like normal.

And then there was yesterday.  I'm hurrying along Charleston when I see that the entire road is blocked off and there are police everywhere.  The cars are detouring around.  I stop and ask "could I go along here?  On the sidewalk maybe?"  The cop explains that there is a gas leak and I will have to go around.  So I set out completing an extra circle that involves me heading up San Antonio in a tangle of angry detoured cars ad then having to take the left lane and getting beeped at and harassed.  Two other bicyclists arrived and huddled in my shadow.  We talked before the light turned green and agreed that we wished we could have just taken our chances with the gas leak.

Five Easy Pieces. The Crazy

I'm bicycling home from work and I'm thinking about a problem I failed to solve and my legs are going along in their mindless way and I am keeping an eye on my rear view mirror but I am riding on "Bicycle Boulevard" and feeling relatively safe about my situation.  The road is sadly narrow and it is is made far more narrow by cars parked on either side because even the so-called Mini --- the late model Mini that they sell in the US is as fat as any other car.  Compact.  Mini.  Hahahahaha.  If these parked cars were people they'd be dozy old senior citizens whose soft bellies flowed over thei elastic waistband of their pants.

Slim little bicycles pass easily in both directions, cars not so much.  I tell you that bicycling mothers and fathers can be spotted herding small shoals of children on little bicycles or in trailers as they make their respective ways home from summer camp or the playground so that you can understand that the road we are talking about here is not the Indianapolis 500 speedway although some of the cars going by make it feel that way.

I watch in my rear view mirror as a car comes up behind me very quickly.  I look ahead and see a second car heading towards me in the mindless way that cars travel when the next traffic light is not on the horizon.  The car coming up behind me is going very fast and I pull closer than is safe to the doors of the parked cars on my right.  The speeding car passes me way too close and way too fast and still accelerating and I am startled and unhappy but not nearly as unhappy as the oncoming car who sees the windshield of an approaching automobile and pees a little and has no where to swerve and so just bleats a whiny little tiny Volkswagen bug bleat.  Weah!  Weah!

I watch Fast Car ignore the bleating and progress up the street at speed and then pummel a 4-way stop with nary a pause and then repeat at the next 4-way stop.

I arch an eyebrow.  I pick up speed.  I consider giving this driver some verbal abuse because he is driving like a bag of dicks***.  It's easy to come up behind Fast Car at the next red light because even a Fast Car can only make so much progress on a tiny residential street dotted with stop signs and traffic lights and parked cars and strollers and bicycles.

Fast Car is now Stopped car.  He wants to take a right at this intersection but the road is narrow and his way (it is a he) is blocked by a car in front that is going straight and waiting for a green.  He honks angrily at the car that is blocking his way.  That car ignores him because he cannot believe that a someone would honk at a someone else for waiting at a red light seeing that it is after all the law.

I am quite close now.  As I watch, Stopped Car (nee Fast Car) gets out of his car (!!!) and strides angrily over (holy fucking shit!!!) to Waiting Car and starts shouting at Waiting Car.  Waiting Car becomes Terrified Car and hunches back in his seat and stares up at the driver of Stopped Car (who I now christen 'Nutsy Fucker') and does not roll down the window.  Smart boy.  The light blessedly turns green and Waiting Car hurries off and Nutsy Fucker runs back to get into their car and tear away doing 40 in a 20 zone.

Holy shit!  So so glad I didn't say anything to Nutsy Fucker when I had the chance.  What did Nutsy Fucker look like?  Old white guy with a straight across mouth in a tight thin line.  Normal other than the froth dotting his chin.  My my.  Someone needs to have their meds adjusted.

Moral of the story?  Don't stick your bicycle in the crazy.  Not worth it my friends.  Stay safe out there.


xoxoxo,

Chafed




***special thanks to the Australian engineer who taught me this wonderful term, you rock my insult-world TW

Five Easy Pieces. The Motorcycle

Don't be that guy.

Thanks,

Chafed

Five Easy Pieces. The cell phone.

I am bicycling home with the Contraption Captain.  We are on Sand Hill Road and there is a lot of traffic, not stalled, but not moving fast either.  We pass them on the right from our place of relative safety, the bicycle lane.  They pass us on the left when the traffic lights go their way.

Ahead of us a woman is live parked in the bicycle lane.  She's pulled over in a sloppy way or we might have had room to squeeze by her on the left, squeeze by her while we hope she doesn't decide to abruptly open her car door to pour out some old coffee.  There is no room to squeeze by however because she is entirely blocking our path and so we, the Contraption Captain and I, stick out our hands to say that we want to merge with the car traffic.

The cars are underwhelmed by our desire to continue on our way despite the roadblock one of their own has erected.  Contraption Captain is in front of me and he goes first into the breach, the abyss, and he gets a spot but an angry car slams their hand down on their horn.  Maybe they are honking at him because he pulled out.  Maybe they are honking at me warning me not to try and do the same, that their patience is thin from their 20 mph trek.

I stop my bicycle and then roll up to the driver side window of the car blocking my entire lane, the car who has stopped and shut down my only avenue of travel on this road.  It is a pretty young woman talking on a cell phone.  She senses me and looks up.

I'm glad she is not driving and talking on her cell phone.  I'm glad she is not texting and driving her car at the same time.  Doing that is dangerous to all of us.  I have to ask though, is the answer to not driving and talking on the phone parking in the one bicycle lane?  Would it be impossible to ask the person to stop somewhere that is not my only road?

I knock on her window.  She mouthes "Oh, I'm sorry."  I knock again.  Resigned she rolls down her window.  I say "if you had pulled over just a little more, I could have gotten by you."  She says "I'm sorry."  I try to think what it is I want to say and then gesture towards the bumper to bumper car and truck traffic streaming by within touching distance.  I say "does that look like a nice place to ride?"  She hesitates and then shakes her head.  She apologizes.  I nod and thank her for that and then I squeeze by her parked car and continue on my way home.