Originally Posted by
theconfession
So this evening I was riding around in the lovely Redmond, WA area, where I recently moved to from Seattle. Most roads are fairly rural, and for those not in the know it's kind of on the border of where Seattle techie culture meets the rural hillbilly one; for better or for worse. I'm not trying to play that card here. But tonight I had one of the most terrifying experiences on a bike due to a guy in a lifted older model pick up truck, with a loud speaker. As I was riding on a rural two lane road I could hear him saying something over the speaker. When it registered it was toward me, he was already passing me saying something to the effect "you look like an idiot," etc. Taunting me essentially.
The worst part comes next when he proceeds to pull in front of me, and drive into the gravel shoulder and floors the gas sending rocks and dust into my face. No provocation at all! Pretty ****ed up.
In the city you'd get honks or whatever, and I flick the driver off or say something to them. Some back and forth maybe. Normal. But this was definitely on another level. I've never dealt with anyone who was out to intentionally do harm toward me for no other reason than riding a bike on the street.
Does anyone experience this too? How do you usually deal with it? I kind of shrugged it off as a isolated incident, but I'm a little shaken up about it. I'm seriously thinking about carrying some type of bear spray from now on just in case something like this comes face to face in the future. If it came down to fisticuffs, my frail cycling arms won't be of any use!
The title of your thread says otherwise. Ride long enough and you'll also get the diesel drivers with coffee can exhaust tips who make a sport of smoking out roadies every chance they get.
The question here is: what are you
willing to do about it? Last winter a jackass cut me off very closely to get to a red light. He swerved in front of me in a 3/4 truck with an 8 foot bed in order to miss a median which leads into the intersection. This was on ice/fresh snowfall, so I did not have the option of hitting my brakes or swerving over. Really pissed me off. Turns out he lived down the street from me, and as slow as I was on the slick roads, I caught him getting out of his Viagra mobile. I said "hey aren't you that ******* that cut me off?" He replies with "Come over here, I'll beat your ass, blah blah blah."
After that, 3 times he followed me when he saw me on the road. The last time I saw him, he followed me, at night, all the way to my house. Instead of pulling in my driveway I made a quick 180 at the cul de sac and went by him going the other way. He had his window down and started yelling at me as I passed him. I sprinted around the corner, unclipped, shouldered my bike and dashed behind a house. 10 seconds later there he goes, speeding in the direction I was going. I really contemplated taking the valve cores out of his tires while his truck sat in his driveway but thought better of it. He ended up moving shortly after anyways. House was never put up for sale, maybe the bank foreclosed on him...
So, you can either eat it, or you can find the guy and punch him in the face. Take your pick.