Another horny driver

 After a relatively placid summer on the road, I had another horny driver pass me yesterday, sounding the trumpet of doom from close behind me all the way by. As often happens, the driver actually gave me a fair amount of room. The windows were rolled up, so I don't know if anyone was also cursing me in there.

Many riders can't take the stress of riding among the megafauna. I don't prefer it, but I have no good alternatives. I'm also used to it after more than half a century of it. I started as a road rider when I was seven years old. "Transportation cycling" was how a kid got anywhere in the 1960s. Working kids carried newspapers in the galvanized metal baskets clamped on their bikes. I never had a paper route, but my brother did.

As a child I had heard of "bike paths," but never experienced one. The first designated bike path I ever saw was in the Miami, Florida, area in 1971. And it was notoriously dangerous: just a strip of tar that crossed streets and driveways right where a motorist would want to hover before entering a busy roadway. Collisions were numerous, some of them fatal. When I graduated from my innocent childhood wandering on a three-speed to more focused cycling on a ten-speed, I learned from more experienced riders to avoid the dangerous, token infrastructure.

Over the decades, offerings for cyclists have evolved. I have ridden on many forms of trail and lane. I've noticed a few things. For one, it's a tough transition when I've been riding on a segregated path suddenly to have to blend with traffic. You have to have a combat-ready attitude, whether you consciously believe it or not. Another thing you don't get on a path is the continuous draft provided by passing motor vehicles. It is much more helpful than you realize until you don't have it for mile after mile.

One quirk of rail trails is that they tend to have long straight stretches and only mild curves. Nobody wanted their train snapping quick turns. Boredom is a serious problem for the cyclist.

Other trail users are also a problem. Bike paths seldom offer as much width as a road, and people tend to ride with less alertness and discipline when they aren't flanked by large vehicles that could obliterate them in an instant. I can't imagine a world in which there is a designated, efficient bike space appended to every roadway. If cyclists are restricted to dedicated infrastructure and eventually barred from routes that don't have accommodations, transportation and travel by bike will suffer as a result.

Thinking of touring, a cyclist can ride to virtually all of the enjoyable destinations currently served by general purpose roads. The risk factor varies widely with traffic volume, filtered through local motorist attitudes. Some places seem to have a lot of bike hate. Others not so much. Where I ride on a daily basis, outright hostility is fairly low. It ramps up when I push the commute into darkness, and shows a few seasonal waves, most notably when school goes back into session. That used to bring not only direct action by motorists but an increase in broken glass. Both have diminished. I don't get three feet of passing clearance from a lot of drivers, but I see little direct aggression.

You never hear the shot that kills you. I don't assume that conditions will remain placid. Because I ride as fast as my physical condition will allow, I may blend with traffic better than I will as my powers inevitably dwindle to the point where I can do no more than poke along. The law gives me the right to poke, but the law isn't riding with me, shouldering aside any potential attackers. I'll be a sitting duck. Will I get fed by onlookers who think I'm cute or chased off because I foul the beaches? It would be unsporting to shoot me.

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.