General Cycling Discussion - @rseholes and weather

wow beautiful commuting weather that we have in the fine city of chicago today. driving winds, cloudy overcast, slush/snow/pelting rain ahhhh. and idiot drivers. i had a verbal altercation with a driver and like always, i think of the perfect thing to say after he's gone. now i feel down please tell me things to make me feel better.

Try to take satisfaction in that he was wrong and you were right (most likely the case). People drive like idiots in this weather, like their IQ's somehow are cut in half when there's precipitation. I'm glad I didn't have to ride far today.

go find some wet leaves and skid, that always makes me feel better

wow beautiful commuting weather that we have in the fine city of chicago today. driving winds, cloudy overcast, slush/snow/pelting rain ahhhh. and idiot drivers. i had a verbal altercation with a driver and like always, i think of the perfect thing to say after he's gone. now i feel down please tell me things to make me feel better.


Yea, stay off the f-ing road. It sucks out there, even in a car.

Seriously! I was thinking the exact same thing today. When its raining people forget how to drive properly.

In the morning I got cut off by a cab who immediately stopped in front of me and almost made me endo, so I slapped the top of his trunk in frustration. He immediately gets out of the car despite the rain and starts coming at me so I decide to cut my losses and jet off. I'll attribute this to just being a bad taxi driver and not watching at the road like he is paid to.

Later on in the day I had to make a left turn in traffic onto a side street, but there was no stop sign to help me so I just had to take the lane and wait for a gap (you know, like how cars do it). The cab behind me starts honking like crazy but I decide to essentially ignore him and just gave him the finger (I don't have a horn to honk back after all). Then all of a sudden he ******** rear ends me! It was really just a tap, but seriously, what the hell? I was about to throw down my bike and smash his side window with my lock so I could then smash his head with my lock, but I figured since he just purposely hit me with his car that things might escalate out of control. I just made the left turn when there was finally a gap while he continued to honk at me. Boy would I have liked to have stood face to face with him, and see what a big man he is when he is not in his taxi.

Rain and taxis make a terrible angry mix.

Wow. Sucks ass, dude. I tend to lose it in those sort of situations and probably would have gone back to pound the hell out of his car if not to actually smash a window. I've chased cabbies down before to ***** them out about their stupid-ass antics. Good for you.

Well, I just took the fixie out for a ride before dinner, slush be darned, and had one of the most fun rides I've ever had. Barely any cars around the neighborhood, although some punk kids on foot hit me with a good-size snowball. I stopped worrying about getting soaked. I became the master of the rear wheel. When I wanted it to slide, it would slide. Nearly effortless half-block long skids? Yes please, I'll have seconds.
I needed to get a good ride in before they put the salt on the roads and the Fuji goes in the garage.

I, like most fixed riders, have nothing but anger and hate in my heart (don't deny it). In tonight's rainy weather, I made myself visible with a big bright light and a ****ing geeky yellow jacket. I succeeded - as I approached a four way stop-signed intersection, intending to go straight, the taxi to my left whose driver desired to turn left onto my street, into my path, against my right of way, saw me. I know he saw me - he stutter started off the line, and I caught his eye. Like most taxi drivers, he has nothing but anger and hate in his heart. He therefore tried to kill me. He continued turning left such that the side of his vehicle would have hit me. I held my line like a stubborn fool, and so he swerved slightly, avoided me, passed me, and then immediately slowed. I accelerated and got my revenge - the taxi was now stuck behind a line of traffic led by a little old lady too scared to travel faster than 20 km/h. He caught up to me five blocks later, as I was turning right. I waved and smiled.

Boy would I have liked to have stood face to face with him, and see what a big man he is when he is not in his taxi.


Then why didn't you throw it down?

I walked today. Even that is dangerous at intersections. Drivers doing lefts whose eyes are blinded from oncoming cars in the dark and rain just cannot see a ped or bike until they turn through the gap, and there you are.

Then why didn't you throw it down?

I'm a lover, not a fighter, baby.

Well, it's raining tonight, but it wasn't two nights ago ...

I'm cruising home on my delicious fixie. I round a corner, and there's four peds walking in the middle of the street. They're maybe 50-60 feet ahead of me. I'm not going fast, so this is tons of space. All of a sudden, one of them throws this huge long something at me, javelin style ... head on. It's like 15 feet up in the arc, and it's twisting and moving all over the place (it was obviously kind of light, which made it's trajectory very hard to predict). I eventual swerve, and the thing lands next to me on the road, maybe 3 feet from my bike.

I stop. Stand up nice and tall (I'm 6'5", 240lbs, and not exactly baby-faced) and bellow "what the f*ck are you doing?"

Of course, it's only now beginning to dawn on me that i'm yelling profanities at four very drunk young men, two of them about my size, who are all within about 10 feet now.

The guy who actually threw the thing (which upon a morning inspection turned out to be the plastic sheath from the bracing cables on power poles), started apologising profusely, saying he didn't see me. Given my all black attire, black bike, and lack of reflectors, this seemed reasonable. We're okay with each other, no harm done. However, one of the big guys starts ragging on me for not wearing a helmet (sporting a black toque (beanie to you yanks?)) Then he picks up the projectile. At this point I think he;s about to swiing it at me. He throws it down the road instead. But goes after it. Then he starts yelling about how 'he said he didn't ******** see you!,' as he picks the javelin up and starts walking back.

At that point, I took my leave and pedaled into the distance, not wanting things to escalate.

the next night I had a very pleasant run in with a ridiculously cute, morbidly obese raccoon. That definitely made up for it.

So anyways ... i guess my point is that it's raining today, so i walked.

I carry mace. I selected it as my weapon spec in karate class years ago, and have never had to use it.

It allows you to be in control of a situation, so you don't have that "tail between the legs" feeling that you have when you do the right thing and walk away, when that's in-fact the best thing for everyone -- knowing you can resolve a situation before it spirals out of control, and without anyone getting hurt is better for your mental health, especially when there's no good (educational) resolution.

By educational I mean I sometimes stop at the driver's window and explain, in an unemotional and controlled way, that I have an equal right to the road, and am (almost always) operating my bike in a legal and safe manner. This has resulted in almost all good interchanges, and I'm sure they have more respect for me and other cyclists since they'll see us no longer as "some idiot on a bike", but as other users of the road. In my opinion, smarta** answers really are a missed opportunity to have someone else understand where we're coming from. (They REALLY don't understand us, at least in the U.S.; I'm talking about John Forrester's "cyclist inferiority" thing here, as well as the "bikes are toys" concept.)

The (one time) this didn't work out was because the driver appeared to be a new driver, probably unsure of the rules of the road for cars and certainly ignorant of the rules of the road in relation to bikes, and wasn't going to let the facts get in his way of "being right," so we parted ways with him (I hope) having a bit more respect for cyclists because he could then see that we may actually call bad drivers on their stupidity.

Anyway, there's a big difference between using mace vs. using a bike lock as a weapon. Intent to harm isn't what I'm after, and using a bike lock or some other "found blunt instrument" is just that, and escalates something from a fistfight into a potential dangerous/ deadly altercation.


Joe

You need to feel better?

Stretch out on your sofa, fire up a good movie, dim the lights and start rubbing your
























































































































knees. That always feels good after a ride.

Were all those carrage returns nessasary?

Sure-they added tension. Where's your sense of drama?

At least as necessary as your typo. ;)