First I want to say, I'm not proud of what happened last night. It was stupid of me to respond and that stupidity just kept flowing for me.

I was out on my normal thursday night ride and it was around 2:30 in the morning. We lost most of the group by now and we were making our way back to LA from Venice, as we road down Venice some what separated by the pace we were keeping some drunk in a car started at the back of the line. He was harassing another girl before he got to me and my friend who were at the front of the line.

He pulled up next to us and started saying "pedal faster or you wont be hipsters! your almost hipsters just gotta pedal a little faster!" and this isn't even insulting. I just happened to be in a bad mood because my Ex was on the ride and there is beef between us. After about 30 seconds of this I tell him to drive on, and he keeps talking so I start sprinting up next to him and tell him to drive on. He speeds up and swerves in front of me. I don't get hit hard but he made it impossible for me to avoid contact with the car. I lose it as soon as this happens, grab onto the passenger side window where his girlfriend is sitting and start cussing and telling him what exactly will go down if he is man enough to stop the car. I lose my grip on the car pretty fast because my balance is shot from him tapping my handle bars. I chase him down the rest of the street and he turns and speeds off as I talk about his man hood. My friends ask me if I'm cool, I lose it at the stop light.

I was sober, it was a small group that i've been riding with for awhile. I raged hard, acted a fool. I didn't respond correctly in this situation, and I will be riding with my U-lock in easy access. This is a situation in which a driver responded in a way that could have cost me much more then my sense of security and I did not say anything prior to being hit that should have lead to aggression, the only words that were coming out of my mouth were "drive on."

This is an isolated incident in my mind. I've got a few numbers this week of people saying "I want to ride." What it comes down to is I was unlucky, I found the ******bag that thought he could be cool in his car and I'm sure the three other passengers with him will not be driving with him again because he's clearly a ****ing ******. Unlike the thread on raging that I've read before I was not threatened in anyway, just had a chip on my shoulder. I should have kept my mouth shut until this drunk moved on but now I know a bit more.

Los Angeles in my experience has been a very bike friendly place. I haven't had many incidents, I pulled my u-lock on a bad drive a few weeks ago but that was just a reaction from nearly being hit. Generally people are more interested in Bike culture then they are in keeping bikers down, they're even more interested once 5 people of a 20 person group walks up and just talks to them.

Also Hairnet - I was in your hood last night. I rode Sunset from Echo Park all the way west. As we hit UCLA there was a group of 20 and the onramp to the freeway had traffic backed up for 2-3 miles. There were some absolutely gorgeous moments as a trail of 7 riders ahead of me kept a perfect line as we split the traffic. A girl rolled down her window as I struggled up a really steep part of the climb and asked "are you guys part of a marathon or something?" "Nope, just doing this for fun!"

the TL;DR
I had an incident with a Dbag, rather then believe the world is full of them I'm choosing to believe it was a series of bad choices that lead to this place. People are naturally good.