Showing posts with label Adventures in traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventures in traffic. Show all posts

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Every now and then, justice prevails

So there I was sitting at the intersection on my bike…a crap crossroads really. A pretty big highway ends and intersects a busy street that’s overrun with motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. A traffic engineering clusterfuck that’s exacerbated by the light’s long interval, which seems to bring out impatience in even the laid-back-peace-sticker-on-my-biodiesel-Volvo-Santa-Cruz-hippie-types. Even more affected by this traffic-induced time loss are people on the other end of the spectrum—the ones whom are dickheads as a matter of course. They wake up dick nasty, dick the day away and go to sleep in the same dickish manner.

Light green, I proceed forward...but about half way through the intersection, the hair on the back of my neck pulls a “Danger Will Robinson.” For to the right and rear—a space where sound should only be receding by virtue of a mandatory right turn—I feel the approaching Doppler effect of an undermuffled and over-tired bromobile. A peek toward the sound confirms my suspicions and a lifted dickhead wagon—complete with custom laser-cut skull grille—comes flying by in a non-lane then swerves left, cutting me and a steady line of cars off to take his rightful place at the front (see drawing).



To be clear, I actually never felt in danger nor threatened. He passed me on the right with plenty of space and cut in far enough ahead that I could’ve stopped if I needed to. Mostly I was just disappointed that said vehicle—which I believe at one time was a Jeep Grand Cherokee—didn’t have fake gonads hanging from its trailer hitch. The truth is, I keep an ear/eye out for this move as I’ve actually been passed at this same spot in similar manner on a number occasions. Usually, it’s a tourist looking to go up Highway 9 to the state park who got in the wrong lane, are apologetic, confused and use their signal as they give that ThanksI’mReallySorry wave as they peaceably merge. Today’s occasion was just a middle finger all the way around.

Predictably, this afternoon’s maneuver elicited a chorus of car horns…at least two, maybe three--it was the kind of thing where even people in the other direction honked. I joined in by switching gears emphatically—take THAT!—making what I hoped would be a perceptible clickety-clack of outrage towards the driver. This was drowned out by the rumble of a motorcycle from the left…a white and black motorcycle that made me smile.

“Fuck man,” I heard the driver say to the passenger as the penismobile pulled over. “Fuck man indeed,” I thought as the blue and red lights bounced off the brogo covered rear window like the flashing cherry on top of a caramel sundae of a lunch ride.