People can hear you on your bike

The other day I was riding home from work. As I approached an intersection, I saw a young woman in comfortable looking clothing standing on the corner. She had over her shoulder a large canvas bag, peeking out of which was a large rolled up mat.

Assessing her appearance as I approached, I said aloud but to myself, without really realizing it, in kind of a sing-song voice, "Oh, did you do yoga?"

She whipped her head around and watched me with a boggled, surprised, slightly incredulous look on her face as I sailed past.

Sorry, lady.

I'm a talk-to-myself-er and sometimes I forget people can hear me when I'm on my bike.

ice bike

Especially my front tire. I was pretty much riding on the rim, and I have no idea how I didn't notice. I must have been focusing too hard on the ice and the traffic.

When I parked my bike, both tires were covered in a thin layer of water/snow, through which the escaping air bubbled and hissed and mini-gurgled. It's a weird noise and when you hear it, it's obvious that it's not good.

When I went to pull out the front tube to patch it, I noticed that it wasn't 100% flat as I had thought. It was more like 75% flat, but seemed to be holding air at that point. I was curious about whether the sealant goop had somehow gooped up and sealed the leak, so I just pumped both the tires up instead of pulling it all apart.

The front one held. So, yippee!

The rear one apparently has a slow leak, but slow enough to let me ride home on it after another pre-departure pump.

I'll have to find and patch that leak tomorrow.

On the way home, about four blocks from work, I wobbled on some ice and fell down. A Schwann's truck that was approaching me slowed, and the driver hollered out the window, "Whoa dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah, thanks!" I answered.

"That ice is hard," he called.

"Yup."

At that point we both continued along our original trajectories.

Pedicab vs. Taxicab

Video streaming from a NYC Fox News site, and found on LJ Bikepirates.



Which one of these seems like a disproportionate response to you? Throwing a cup of coffee at somebody's car? Or hitting somebody with your car?

The biggest danger of engaging a motorist is that—

1. motorists have precious few avenues of communication, and
2. a motorist's car is such an extension of his body that it may feel like hitting you with the car is not that different from hitting you with his fist.

In Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic, he says that there are several thing about driving itself that predisposes drivers to frustration and anger, the biggest of them being that it severely limits our abilities to communicate.

Humans are incredibly communicative creatures who rely heavily on nonverbal signals like facial expressions, body posturing, tone of voice and volume of voice. In a car, you are deprived of all of that. Instead, you are expected to use a car horn (often used too frequently) and a turn signal (often not used enough) to express yourself and convey depth and meaning.

Which is ridiculous when you think about it.

So this taxi driver obviously felt he could not adequately express his anger through any combination of sounding car horn and blinking turn signal. It's the torture of an artist, really. Having so much to share and not being able to articulate it satisfactorily.

But when an artist dramatically hurls a canvas painting across a room in frustration, people don't die like they do when a car hurls into people.

I myself had a "failure to communicate" moment the other day during my commute home.

A pickup truck and I were approaching a four-way stop from opposite directions. The truck didn't have its blinkers on, it was in the middle of the traffic lane, and its front tires were pointing straight ahead. So I logically assumed it was going straight.

Right up until it executed a right-hand turn directly across my path.

The truck had plenty of time to complete its turn. This wasn't any kind of a near miss, but I became frustrated at the lack of communication.

I raised my right hand in the air and starting doing that thing you do when you want to tell people to turn their lights on. Repeatedly closing my fist and then spreading my fingers wide. You know, that thing.

The truck then—in a surprise move—quickly pulled over to the side of the intersecting street and the driver hollered out his window, "What?"

Surprised to suddenly find myself in a conversation, I quickly blurted, "TURN SIGNAL!"

In answer to which he called back out, "Okay! Blobby flarggin blip bloop dada!"

Or something like that. I could only make out the "Okay!" before I was too far away to make out what he was saying.

He probably said something like, "Okay! And how about next you don't run the stop sign!"

Cause I did. I idahoed it.

Two sides to every story, right?

Like in the video above.

The pedicab driver ultimately chose to engage the taxicab by throwing his cup of coffee. And then he chose later to throw a friggin trash can at the driver.

I, on the other hand, did not pause or stop to throw anything at this pick-em-up truck. Because I knew I was a little bit wrong in this encounter, and that I would soundly lose an actual confrontation.

I, instead, was pedaling quickly away and discovering my "Donotgetintoafightwithatruck" mantra.

Point is folks, ultimately, go ahead and think twice before engaging the deaf, dumb, blind, raging bull-moose cars you share the road with everyday.

Everyone loves a dog in a basket

On the other hand, if you're a large dude riding a large tricycle with a small dog in the basket, you get a lot of hoots, hollers, and catcalls.

For example, pedaling through one intersection near my house, a white sedan slows down, and the window rolls down and some Fred Durst looking dude starts calling to me, "Yo, dude! Yo, dude! That's really cute!"

I smiled, waved, and we all continued on our own understanding ways.

The opinions of little children apparently matter a lot to me

On the way home I was riding while sitting upright, i.e. no hands, because I was using my hands to feed myself some cheese crackers, when I rode past a group of eight year old latinos who were milling about on the sidewalk with their own eight-year-old sized bicycles.

They saw me and started cheering, showing me their Thumbs Up and calling out, "Good! Good!"

So I waved and showed them my Peace Sign, and I felt really friggin cool.