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.