Bikers Spring Eternal
(or Beep-Beep Yer Ass!)
by Sharon Perpignani
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Yesterday I saw more idiots than I thought could exist in the same square mile without
collapsing the earth into a black hole.
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Ah, spring has sprung. The crocuses are in the yard, the kids are in the playground and the bicyclists are in my lane! What is it with these guys? I've never seen so many nuts on the road.
All year long you've got the college kids walking right in front of your car with their heads in the clouds. You've got the hormonal teenagers laying rubber in the neighborhood. Then there are the impatient guys behind you who can't believe you've stopped at a red light before making a right turn. And let's not forget the moms with three or four screaming kids (and I speak here, sadly, as a common offender) trying to drive with one hand and separate warring factions with the other.
Ah, but in the spring we get the bicyclists, bless their spandexed little hearts.
I have to admit that many years ago (geez, we're talking thirty years here), I was a bicyclist too, with an attitude a mile high (and not just because I lived in Denver). After all, I was not polluting the earth. I was the righteous rider of the future. People like me were gonna save the earth from people like you, you car-driver, you. It's a good thing road rage hadn't begun yet, because I probably would have gotten myself killed while in someone's face proclaiming my two-wheeled superiority.
Even so, I did follow the rules of the road pretty closely. I used hand-signals to indicate my turns; I only crossed on the green with the other traffic; I even yielded to pedestrians. I did do a couple of things that undoubtedly drove some drivers nuts, but those were for sheer survival. For instance, normally I would ride on the side of the road. Approaching a red light though, I would get behind the car in front of me, so the next car couldn't run me over with a right turn. I knew darn well that in a collision my David wasn't about to slay their Goliath.
I credit my almost twenty years of safe bike-commuting to my dad. I'll never forget the way he taught me to drive. He got me behind the wheel and said, in an authoritative voice even a hormonal teenager would have to respect: "Now, Sharon, whenever you're driving, just imagine that every other driver, in every other car, has just escaped a mental institution and is out to get you." It was years before I could drive over 45 miles an hour, honest.
So, as you might suspect, I've always been somewhat defensive on the road. And, as you must admit, my dad was more or less right. So, what's with these space cadets in the spring?
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I wanted to scream out "Hey, you bozo! It's YOUR stupid life I'm trying to protect here!"
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However tempting it is to rag on kids, generation after generation, these are not kids, are they? The vast majority of them are over 18, old enough to vote; many look like older students or even professors. I have to tell my kids that these people may be educated, but they are being STUPID. Stupid, stupid, stupid, to risk their lives and ours, too, just because they can.
Yesterday I saw more idiots than I thought could exist in the same square mile without collapsing the earth into a black hole. Granted, there were some four-wheeled dopes and high-on-life pedestrians, but the bicyclists took the cake.
I was on Cedar Street, just crossing Elm. It's one-way, toward Cambridge, and there are no lane markings. People who don't frequent the area tend to drive in the middle. Locals know it's much more efficient to squeeze two lanes out of it, keeping traffic from backing up at Elm St. As I neared Somerville Ave., one of these helmeted heroes came straight at me, going the wrong way down Cedar. With narry a moment to consider the sound of one hand being severed from a crushed and mangled body, he sped past me on the left, in the perhaps two-foot distance between me and the parked cars.
I was still trying to get my heart of my mouth when another two-wheeled warrior did the same thing. By now there was probably a foot or less to my left, so he just veered in front of me, passing on my right side, undoubtedly on his way to terrorizing the drivers behind me.
I wanted to scream out "Hey, you bozo! It's YOUR stupid life I'm trying to protect here!" But being just this side of the People's Republic of Cambridge I decided it would be too risky. I might get jailed for my un-cool outburst, and sentenced to nonstop viewing of Deepak Chopra and other mellow masters. Quick, give me Joan Rivers just to get the thought out of my mind!
So, I kept it to myself and—nah, I didn't really. I ragged to my poor kids about how adults can be every bit as dumb as kids, and then some. And how they had better make sure to pay attention to the right ones, because, as I surmised, stupid kids grow up to be even stupider adults. They gave each other that knowing "Whatever you do, just don't argue with her!" look and waited for the tirade to pass. With the light and in its proper lane, please, for crying out loud.
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