Last rides of 2025

 "Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia." It's an old punchline. I just spent three weeks there, while the cellist underwent a medical procedure at Penn Medicine's facilities.

In matters medical, some things can't be scheduled at your convenience. Thus I got the call to drop everything and get my ass down there at the end of November, to care for her in recovery from a surgery on December second. She would need to go to follow up appointments, lab visits, and any unscheduled turbulence that might hit us as a result of a major procedure.

My annual mileage total is nothing impressive, but it stood tantalizingly close to 3,000 miles when I headed down. With less than a hundred miles to go, I would have nailed it easily. I thought I might sneak in a ride or two while I was down there, because I keep a bike on site, but that didn't work out. I didn't want to stray far from the patient, even though she was making a relatively stellar recovery.

What I did do was drive a pretty vicious stretch of Interstate 95 between Wilmington, Delaware, and Philly, over and over.

I left Megalopolis in the late mid 1980s with no regrets at all. I've devoted my life to quietly advocating against the concept of Megalopolis since I first learned about it in school in the 1960s. I was always a kid who found a patch of woods to play in. I saw early on that they were an endangered habitat. I can do highway driving, but I would rather not.

It's like the line that comes up in various gun oriented movies, where the protagonist declares his antipathy to gunplay. Later on he's forced into it by the triumphant bad guy who assumes that it'll be an easy win. The reluctant good guy nails the baddie with one perfect shot and says, "I didn't say I couldn't, only that I didn't like to."

Drivers between Wilmington and Philly are some of the most aggressive assholes you will encounter anywhere. The worst of them specialize in a maneuver I call "The Delaware Shoot-a-Gap." General traffic may be romping along at 70-75mph, and one of these road heroes will come shooting up out of nowhere, weaving sinuously through the shifting crowd. No doubt they feel proud of their skill at getting ahead of the dubs.

I had to drive the stretch each way multiple times. All of the runs northward were between mid morning and mid afternoon, but the return trips were at night several times. For instance, on the night of her surgery, which was scheduled in early evening, I drove back down close to midnight. The day I visited her during her post-op hospital confinement, it was after 8 p.m. Later, she had a crisis that had us in the emergency room at Penn, and I was driving back around four in the morning, after sitting with her for twelve hours, waiting for her to be officially admitted. One of my jobs was taking care of her cats, so I did have to get back down to her work-season apartment.

I looked like this a lot:

This picture is from the morning after her actual surgery. She texted me at 7:00 a.m. She'd been awake since 5:00 a.m. And she'd had the advantage, despite having a surgical team remodeling her insides, of being under heavy anesthesia, whereas I had been languishing somewhat anxiously in the waiting "lounge" for hours. Then I had to drive on 95. I got to bed after 1:00 a.m.

I figured out within a couple of these trips that the secret to 95 was to merge onto it like you're throwing yourself into a bar brawl, work your way to the left lane to cozy up to the center barrier, and floor it. Do whatever it takes to hold your place. Sometimes you have to wedge into the middle lane to slingshot some terminal asshole who can't find a hole to weave through, but for the most part the southbound key is that left lane, and 75-80mph.

It's fucking insane, but it's their normal routine. Pieces of car and truck bear mute witness to the calamities that their haste brings them from time to time, but in the three weeks I navigated the area I only saw one, on my transit north as I began the trip home. Some idiot in a flashy Porsche with race numbers and shit had gotten tangled with a bland family minivan as we all navigated a heavy rain with gale force winds during the latter part of rush hour. No one appeared to be injured, but the sporty car was badly dented front, rear, and on  the one side I could see. Other than that it was just a daily series of miracles in which I nearly got clipped or nearly nailed someone hovering in my blind spot several times, but made no contact.

The northbound run was trickier, because we had to exit on the right, but needed to avoid getting sucked into a lane that then peeled off entirely. Hugging the left wall could get you trapped over there, but the middle lane makes you everybody's punching bag.

I hate that shit.

Eventually, the cellist was ready to send me back north and rely on her local support team of excellent work colleagues. I had missed a moderate snowfall and some temperature swings that meant my driveway will be a chunked-up mess of frozen ridges until spring, but what can you do?

The best part is that the roads were clear and dry on a day when I could actually get out on them.

Yesterday was sunny and I had a couple of items to take to the post office. Pump up the tires and suit up. Temperature 18 degrees F. Light westerly winds. What would I find after three weeks of basically no exercise? Fortunately, with the air that cold I had no urge to push for high speed.

Snow was forecast for today, but the forecast had it starting later in the morning. Today's conditions were more demanding, with colder air and fully gray skies. The sun isn't strong this time of year, but when it's bright it imparts emotional warmth, and some actual warmth on darker clothing. Still, I managed to push my sore legs around one more time. The storm forecast has gotten bigger and bigger, and I will be pulling more hours at work than I have since the 1990s, so probably no rides until spring arrives. I'll just run the stairs in my house every day. Weight-bearing exercise!

The weapon can't be identified

 On the evening ride home from work on Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, I heard a vehicle horn start blaring well behind me. A slate-blue Chevy Silverado piloted by a skinny kid in his teens or early 20s swung around me with surprising clearance for his annoying continuous horn blast. His passenger was almost identical to him in every physical aspect: skinny, young, rednecky. I responded with the universal Big Shrug of WTF to indicate that I was confused but not intimidated. If they wanted to chat about it, I'd be right here.

The truck pulled into a convenience store on the left. I continued on my way, up the hill beyond that intersection, and down the other side. A couple of minutes later I heard the unmistakable sound of a vehicle being driven with hostile intent. An engine has a distinctive note when the driver is pacing an attack.

The blue truck swung around again, only slightly faster than I was riding, so that the passenger could throw a full beverage container at me. Or maybe it wasn't at me, but intended to hit in front of me and cause a crash or a flat tire. I can't be sure. All I know is that the can hit the pavement and burst, but did not explode, indicating that it was brand new, fresh, and probably nicely chilled from the convenience store cooler. Foam spurted out from multiple ruptures as the battered can skidded quickly off the road.

I responded with the Universal Gesture of Sarcastic Masturbation, in case they were inclined to stop and discuss exactly what their problem was. I mean, I can theorize about the diminutive size of their genitalia and general feelings of inadequacy that lead them to bully people who can't hit back, but I don't know. And how stupidly aggressive do you have to be to waste your money and a perfectly good beverage you just purchased?

I am very fortunate that such incidents are rare on my commute. But it only takes one to awaken the PTSD of more frequent and worse ones over the decades of putting up with motorists' shit. I always wonder about escalation, and what I might do to deter future aggression.

New Hampshire's permissive gun laws mean that I wouldn't have to think twice about tucking a handgun in the side straps of my pack, although they don't extend to plenary absolution if I use it. I've had this debate with myself many times before and always come to the same conclusion: the mere presence of a weapon might deter some people, but will give more calculating people plausible reason to say that they felt threatened. If they kill me, they get to make up the story to save themselves. Most of the time there are no witnesses except the participants. Even if there are other drivers around, they probably won't see anything in sufficient detail to refute the testimony of the survivors. Also, if I'm still up and in any condition to fire, the incident was not serious enough to justify the shot, no matter how much I might want in the heat of the moment to evaporate the back window of the vehicle as the cowards speed away.

The next day, I looked along the road to try to identify what the beverage had been. With all the foam on the rapidly moving can, I couldn't tell at the time. Unfortunately, nearly all of the litter along the highways consists of beverage containers. I will never know which one was used in the assault. Likewise, blue Silverados about 2014 vintage are extremely common, as are scrawny redneck boys who feel their manhood by bullying cyclists. When asked to identify the particular truck I could say, "It's the one with three or four small-caliber holes in the tailgate," but then I'll have to explain how I know those are there when I have already had to admit that they went by too fast for me to get the license number.

I have a mental list of things I'm glad no one has ever done to me. Some of them are so bad that I've never heard of them being done to anyone. I never publish the list, write it down at home, or even let myself think it, because I don't want those ideas reinforced in the universe. We're vulnerable out there. The people who are willing to relegate cycling to the status of a mere sport and hobby have a point there, as they give up vast swaths of territory that could be used for purposes both practical and fun.

Weapons I do know have been used include rocks, bricks, full beers, and a hammer. And of course there's the car or truck itself. Attacks with that might involve the whole vehicle or attempts to pop a door open at just the right time.

The next day, and on the days that have followed, traffic settled into routine indifference blended with reasonable caution. Most of us are completely willing to try to get along. Problems appear when numbers increase with summer residents and visitors who bring their attitudes from home. The percentage of hostile drivers might be barely higher, but a small percentage is still a larger number than we usually have.

Riders have been mowed down here in "the off season." There are certainly hostile local assholes. One of them allegedly said years ago that if he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and only had days to live, that he would put his plow on his pickup truck and go out hunting cyclists. But before the mountain bikers get too smug, bad actors will sometimes place wire snares on trails. It hasn't happened around here, but it's not out of the question.

Deadly traps would bring charges of premeditated murder if the victim died and the trapper could be identified. More likely someone just gets a nasty wound, and no one is punished for it. No matter where a collision or an attack occurs, the cyclist usually loses. Know that going in. It's still worth riding.

The advantage to road riding is that no one is likely to set a trap on an actual road. You can't dwell on the worst possibilities. Just ride sensibly. "Freedom isn't free" means more than just signing up for your country's wars.

The only thing we have to fear is each other

 As the season of darkness settles on us in the northern hemisphere, bike commuters have to decide whether to continue or suspend their activities until the sun returns again. The biggest danger in night riding is the same as the biggest danger in daylight: motor vehicles.

Cycling is scary enough in full daylight. We hear all the time about riders injured or killed, often by drivers who evade prosecution by leaving the scene. Even if the offender is tracked down, the penalties for ending a cyclist or pedestrian's life are usually laughably mild. If you want to be reminded over and over again how cheap life is, just try to get around without an armored vehicle.

Just recently, a rider here in New Hampshire was killed by a hit-and-run driver. She was a retired police officer training for a benefit ride. As luck would have it, there was enough information from the scene for police to track down the driver and start putting together a case against him. The assault occurred around 10:30 in the morning. That should be prime time for drivers to be awake, aware, and observant. Last I saw, the maximum time he could serve in prison for killing someone in this way was seven years for negligent homicide. And who ever gets the maximum sentence? Maybe a cop killer will, but it still seems like way too little. And if she'd lived, paralyzed and incapacitated, the penalty would be less, because "thank God no one was killed."

Crashes occur. For the most part, operator error is to blame. Even if the cause is defective equipment, it's probably because someone wasn't maintaining the vehicle properly. Look at you own life and think about how many risks you have gotten away with over the years. I most definitely include myself. You get going, driven by a real or imagined sense of urgency, and your visual field narrows as your speed increases. We are remarkably good at making quick ballistic calculations on the fly, but when it fails it can fail spectacularly, as the accumulated risks all converge at once. The unintended consequence could be as mild as a bent fender or as grotesque as a pile of crushed and shattered vehicles, with brains and entrails splashed across the highway. Oopsie.

A bicyclist has no shell of metal, plastic, and glass to take the impact. Any contact tends to be a serious one for the cyclist, simply because of the size and mass of the vehicles involved. Even when cyclists hit each other, the ground is the next stop. There have been fatal crashes where only cyclists and their surrounding environment were involved. Cyclists have struck and killed pedestrians. On popular paths, conflicts are common, because the bicyclists and pedestrians directed there are not a placid herd of grateful plodders. They exhibit the full range of personalities, including the aggressive and the oblivious.

When I lived in a more urban environment, 1979 to 1987, I commuted by bike exclusively, because I did not have a car. The season of darkness is not as long and deep in Annapolis, Maryland, as it is in central New Hampshire, but I did have to ride in the dark a lot. I equipped the bike with the best lights I could get at the time, and I had no problems. But the built environment has a lot more ambient light at night. My commuting route changed as my residence and workplace shifted to different cross-sections of the general area, so sometimes I had short stretches of unlighted road, but they were also not busy at the time. Now all the roads are busy down there, and what were dark and empty stretches are obliterated by lighted sprawl.

Up here, my route is much longer and follows roads that are almost entirely unlighted. The longest part is on a two-lane rural highway with a narrow shoulder. Where it enters Wolfeboro it is narrower, with more bends, and no shoulder. I'm fortunate to live north of town. The route in and out of Wolfe City from the south is much nastier.

Coming out of town, when I will be in the dark in the fall and winter, I could use the Cotton Valley Trail for part of it, and I did, for several years. Before that was an option, and recently, since the pandemic made the trail crowded, I have ridden an indirect but safer route out of town, that bypasses the bendy bit of Center Street. Inbound on Center Street, drivers are compressing and slowing, which makes them more attentive to obstructions like a bike rider. Headed out of town, they're decompressing, speeding up, and have far less patience with some sweaty idiot interrupting their flow. Yes, they need some character education, but since it's unlikely to work, I choose not to do it with my flesh. I evade. However, I have to rejoin the route out where Route 28 assumes its highway configuration, with longer sight lines and a bit of shoulder. The only way I can completely evade the motoring public is to quit riding.

Park and ride options are contrived, because the only places to hang a car are off my direct route. Competition for parking increased when the pandemic sparked the boom in outdoor activities like biking and walking. And as winter deepens the parking places are not plowed out.  That may change as winter activities on the trail system developing around the Cotton Valley Trail expand, but then competition for parking increases even more. And an unattended vehicle may invite theft.

If the only challenges were weather and darkness, I would not hesitate to ride the whole route through much of the winter. Snow and ice make wheels impractical, but most winters are not completely snow covered from end to end, especially in recent years. I have studded tires for one of the bikes rigged for commuting. Without motorists, would there be any incentive to keep the roads clear? Maybe if bike transportation was the norm, or at least much more common, some sort of taxation method would fund road maintenance. Extra points if it didn't involve tons of corrosive substances to melt the ice. Cyclists already pay taxes, but if we were more major beneficiaries of the road network it would be reasonable to make sure that we paid an amount that addressed our actual strain on resources. And just rolling the snow to a firm, frozen surface would give non-fat studded tires a good enough grip. If it's softer than that I'd ski to work.

I've noted before that drivers seem to become more aggressive when cloaked by darkness. It didn't seem that way in Maryland, but it certainly seems that way here. The highway stretch is actually not as scary as Elm Street, which has some tight turns and undulating hills. Traversing the glacial plains, the topography isn't rugged, but it's not flat, either. The road makes a convenient connection to Route 16, so it funnels traffic from as far away as Maine. It's not bumper to bumper busy except on holiday weekends, when it seems to have become a popular bypass for drivers trying to get around backups on Route 16 southbound. Then they all jam up trying to get back out of Elm Street into the crawling southbound flow. At the hours that I use it, I only have the normal local traffic to deal with. But the sparse traffic contributes to the problem of motorist impatience.

In the darkness, motorists are blinding each other with their headlights as they charge toward each other in the narrow space. If it's only a couple of vehicles in each direction, they will endure a moment of tension as they try to negotiate the gap in the radiance of their dueling floodlights. Add a bike rider, and it's just too much to ask of poor drivers who have to put up with so much frustration in their lives.

Day or night, my riding style is heavily influenced by the competition for space on the road. I have never ridden in a place where motorists would peacefully accept a cyclist claiming lane space at a comfortable, relaxed pace. Years of riding will make you smoother, more efficient, and generally faster, but age takes its toll. In nature, you'd be the gazelle that gets dropped by the herd and provides dinner for the lions. Until that time, you develop your own style to keep friction at a manageable level. Riders who are scrappy and enjoy friction will ride in a way that they know will antagonize the motoring public. Or they might ride without regard to laws and conventions because they consider it a right of sorts, and accept the friction as part of the cost. I prefer to try to facilitate everyone's flow as much as I can without subordinating myself -- or cyclists in general -- to the motoring majority. There's a certain bending of the law that helps everyone to keep moving. It's not a zero-sum game. It's a negotiation.

Not everyone deals reasonably. The motorists hold the upper hand in a contest of force. A cyclist has no defense against someone unreasonable. Every driver around you has a personal set of rules that they're applying to you. It seems to me that one limit that some of them set is sunset. When I was much younger and faster, I would routinely ride the commute into October, with only marginal lights. I detected few hassles beyond the normal ones that come with riding on the roads. I carried less back then, and rode a lighter bike. But even then I shut the game down before mid October. I would push it until I could no longer pretend that I'd made it home before dark. Now, with really functional lights, but an older engine and a heavier bike, I would ride happily in the darkness, but it puts me into forbidden territory with these few but regular fellow road users on my route who have decided that I don't belong there after sundown. No alternate route avoids the worst part without a long detour. Is the living free worth the increased risk of dying? Any road cyclist who tells you that they don't think about the possibility of getting maimed or killed every time they go out is either lying or has no imagination at all.

Stereotypes

One morning a while back, I was just entering the bendy bit on Route 28, between the boat museum and Birch Hill Estates Road on my way to work when I heard a large truck behind me. I don't mean tractor trailer size, but certainly a heavy-duty pickup. I was cookin' along pretty well, but the road rises as it enters a right bend. I tried to keep cooking, but I'm old and tired. At the crest, I coasted to let the truck go by. It had done an exemplary job of waiting. I wasn't even closing the lane. Then it did an exemplary job of passing: nice and wide, quickly but not ripping.

The vehicle looked like one that would not exhibit such tolerance and coexistence. It was a supersize pickup with dual rear wheels and an exhaust pipe you could fit your head in. It was LOUD. But the driver did not accentuate the loudness or blow smoke.

The back window was full of stickers I knew I didn't want to read. This keeps happening: they're destroying the country, but being nice to a bike rider. The majority of such vehicles behave inexplicably decently around me. But not all.

More recently, as I rode in a part of Center Street where the storm drains had all been dug out prior to some repaving that never seemed to happen, I was covering the lane so that I wouldn't get herded into one of those pit traps. A pickup truck forced its way past me, playing chicken with oncoming vehicles as large as his own. The centerpiece of his window sticker collection was a nearly life size white silhouette of a militarily-styled semi-automatic rifle. It was surrounded by the usual gallery of rattlesnakes on a yellow background and other proclamations of warlike proclivity. My tires passed an inch from the dropoff into a particularly nasty and intrusive drain pit, while the side of his truck nearly brushed my shoulder. He behaved exactly as appearances would suggest.

That which does not kill me can be drafted, at least briefly. On that day I couldn't take full advantage because the pavement ahead had been grooved and the features formerly known as manholes were now sticking up in a random pattern over the next eighth of a mile or so. Sometimes I can work my way through the side streets to come out on Main Street ahead of hotheads like that, but not this time. Either he went south or we missed connections some other way. It's just as well.

Vehicles overtaking are a surprise package. Even with a mirror you can't tell much. You don't really know what you're going to get until you're getting it. Most of the time it's pretty routine, especially once you get used to formation flying with them. We really depend on our faith that today is not the day. Better times and places may be coming, but in the meantime we still have to get where we're going now.

Beautiful day for a hit-and-run

Monday, February 24th was a dazzling foretaste of spring. The sun was bright, the sky clear, and the temperature surged up to the low 50s (F). In April and May, 50 degrees feels like a punishment, but in February it calls to the prisoners of indoor training and the cross-trainers starting to remember their road bikes.

I had almost gone out on my own bike that day, but decided that it was too early to commit. I went trudging up the mountain out back instead on my 30-year-old chore skis. Still, the road and the commute begin to beckon. Daylight relocating time begins this Sunday, putting the return leg of the commute into usable light. Motorists will be able to see me.

Yesterday, I soloed at the shop. El Queso Grande had been away since Friday, getting his heart worked on. I spent much of the day alone. The ski trails are all ice and dirt after more than an inch of rain on Thursday. Then the temperature dove back down to seasonable winter cold. That turned what could have been busy ski rental days into long vigils broken by brief visits by one or two people at a time, checking out the bargains among the remnants of our winter stock. No one was available from our rotating cast of fill-in employees to work on Sunday, but it didn't really matter.

The door alarm beeped. A single customer came up the back stairs. It was a  local road rider. He's a tall guy, a physician, very active, so in good shape. He does a lot of his own work on his Campy-equipped carbon road bike. I don't remember what brand it was, but it turns out that no longer matters. We exchanged greetings, and he said he was looking for a small item of apparel for his son. Then he said, "Hey, I was hit by a car the other day." It was that beautiful Monday.

He described the incident. For anyone who knows the area, or wants to look it up on their favorite map app, he came out of Dame Road and turned south on Ledge Hill Road, toward Tuftonboro Elementary School. There was no one else on the road. With no warning, blam! He was hit from behind.

"The next thing I knew, I came to in the ditch with some guy saying, 'don't try to get up.'"

The person who found him had been driving northbound on Ledge Hill and had seen a dirty white or tan SUV with the bumper torn loose on the right side. Then, just a bit further on, there was the unconscious rider and his crushed bike.

The rider was miraculously intact for having been mowed down by more than a ton of metal and glass, piloted by a few pounds of idiot. He showed me the massive bruising on his legs, and said that he had some broken ribs. Seeing as he was unconscious for a bit, he has had a mild concussion as well. But until he told me that he was only six days out from such a serious crash I would not have spotted him as injured. He moved okay. Only after he told me the story did I see a bit of caution in his gait, particularly when he headed back down the stairs to the back parking lot on his way out. He will also find that he has the inescapable touch of PTSD. He can't get right back on the bike, because the bike was destroyed, and his next scheduled activities are more winter appropriate. It will be interesting to see how his mental and emotional state evolve when riding season does get here and he gets a new bike.

Mountain bikers and path riders are all nodding sagely at this point, and congratulating themselves on their wisdom in abandoning the road to the potentially lethal motoring majority. Gravel riders are wrapping themselves in their false sense of security because they ride on roads that they perceive as having little traffic. But the doctor was on a quiet rural road, and the vehicle that hit him was the only other user. There are certain gravel roads around here that I avoid because the motorists who do use them typically drive like they've got a trunk full of moonshine and a revenuer on their tail. Other gravel roads are as placid as you might expect. You have to know your area.

The driver of the hit-and-run vehicle, now thought to be a white SUV with Florida plates, did exactly the right thing to make this a perfect crime. The one witness, the approaching driver who got a glimpse before coming around the bend and finding the victim, was unable to provide enough information to proceed with much of an investigation. Get that bumper fixed, or just tear it the rest of the way off, let a few weeks pass, and plausible deniability will take care of the rest. Or just leave the area and you'll blend in with all the other down-and-outers driving dinged-up vehicles, with no one to wonder how it got that way. Add to this the fact that law enforcement seldom has the time or interest to investigate these things fully enough to conclude them. The doctor didn't die. Even if he had, it would have been just another unfortunate loss because he didn't have the sense to quit riding his darn fool bike around like some kid.

Kids don't ride anymore. In rural areas, they probably never did, although I remember in my two years in mid-coast Maine that we fourth and fifth graders would ride well outside the village limits to get to friends who lived on farms in the surrounding countryside. Then we would play in haylofts and abandoned quarries until it was time to ride home again for supper. But you certainly see almost none of it now.

Because the driver ran away, we don't know if they were malicious or negligent. Are they celebrating their coup, cherishing the memory, or are they horrified that the phone in their hand had distracted them, and deeply relieved that the rider lived, so no harm done?

As the years have passed, and drivers have become far more numerous, with more distractions and no reduction in hostility, I look forward less and less to the start of bike commuting season. But I depend on it for its economic and physical benefits when it's not interrupted by mayhem and assault. Most of the time, the worst that happens is an unprovoked honk, a close pass, a few Dopplered obscenities, perhaps a wildly inaccurate thrown object. The fear, of course comes from the ambush hunter who will strike from behind. While drivers crossing, entering, or turning too close present the greater hazards, the rear end collision is the hardest to defend against. I can't afford a fancy camera. A mirror only works when you're looking in it, not looking at the road in front of you. The swerve could happen between mirror checks. As for video, it seems remarkably ineffective as evidence in a prosecution. The authorities have to care enough to pursue it. And that's only after an incident has taken place. Close calls get you nothing but a range of advice that boils down mostly to, "quit riding your bike, you idiot." Or cover yourself with garish colors and flashing lights, which will do absolutely nothing to deter a malicious attack.

The videos that cyclists post to elicit outrage and sympathy for their cause elicit just as much reluctance on the part of non-riders to begin riding, and lots of pushback from drivers who hate cyclists, whose blood lust is heightened when they see how easy it is to engage in some wish fulfillment. Sadly, the best response is to keep riding as if nothing had happened, happy if you are undamaged. We can't win, because the opposition is too pervasive. Only the idea can win, if in some fantasy future enough people simply don't want to drive anymore, and don't want to act like assholes on the road in or on whatever vehicles they choose.

A troll on a comment thread a few days ago told me that I am a guest on the roads entirely paid for and owned by motorists. He told me to behave myself with appropriate gratitude and stay out of the way. He responded predictably badly to rational counterpoints. His rants attracted sympathizers, even though the overall majority in the comment thread were supportive of cyclists and seconded the rational counterpoints. The anti-cyclists soon resorted to all caps. I was long gone by then, knowing better than to continue down the gas-lit path to the Troll Kingdom. But that's who is out there, throwing their weight around, emboldened by their armored vehicles. You can't think about them. Your only sure defense is abstinence. They are simply one of the many modern hazards, like mass shootings, that might or might not impact your life directly, but constantly weigh on you. Freedom isn't free. But "defense" of it is never as straightforwardly confrontational as the usual users of that slogan would have you believe. Most of the time it's done by setting an example and proceeding with courage in things that should never have been burdened with such significance.