I’d like to say my vacation has left me well-rested and brimming with positivity. Sadly this is not the case. If anything, I return to you even more world-weary and bewildered by the current state of bicycles and humanity at large.
In retrospect, my vacation ended before it even began, as I headed out for a pre-departure ride:
I was feeling good. I was feeling optimistic. A couple weeks’ respite lay spread-eagled before like a rich, velvety buffet of mixed metaphors. In fact I felt so good I almost decided to take the Faggin with me as my Vacation Bike, though ultimately I decided against it.
Anyway, at one point I found myself on the shared bike/pedestrian/dog walker/drunken hobo trailway. Because I am a considerate and mostly unhurried rider, I generally manage to avoid conflicts here, the occasional encounter with that last group notwithstanding. Moving to the center of the path in order to pass a couple strolling, I soon noted the approach of a recumbent rider, which wasn’t really a problem, since this section of the trailway was as wide and flat as an Olive Garden diner’s ass, and there was plenty of room for us to pass each other whilst still accommodating the pedestrians. But while I was moving in my characteristically considerate and mostly unhurried fashion, I cannot say the same for the recumbent rider, who was taking full advantage of the crêpe-flat terrain to bring his contraption up to maximum speed, his feet flailing ahead of him like a sleeper kicking off his blankets while in the throes of a nightmare. And as he passed–with plenty of room between us, mind you, even factoring in the walkers–he yelled at me, “Thanks for moving, asshole,” or words to that effect.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been called an asshole by a Contraption Captain using a shared trailway as his own Bonneville Salt Flats, but I’m here to tell you it smarts, and it’s a good thing he didn’t slow down because as the kettle in that situation I’d have been rather tempted to tell this pot on wheels exactly where he could stick his helmet mirror.
Incredibly, even after this traumatic encounter, my faith in humanity was not yet fully exhausted, and I later found myself loading up THE CAR THAT I OWN for departure. As a city-dweller who doesn’t have the luxury of a driveway or a garage, this is a rather involved logistical operation requiring repeated elevator trips and the retrieval and installation of various racks and cargo bags from various storage cages, though it is facilitated to a large degree by the fact that we live on a quiet dead-end street with no through-traffic which allows me to leave the car right out front while I Griswoldify it:
Alas, on this particular day it must have also been move-in day at the nearby college, and as I stood on the car door sill dripping sweat and strapping down the roof bag a guy in like a Jeep Gladiator or something similarly dorky pulled up and asked if my building was Such-And-Such Hall:
I advised him that it wasn’t and thought nothing of it until he attempted to turn his big stupid truck around and he began running over the stuff I had placed by the rear bumper and hadn’t yet loaded into the rear of the vehicle–like actually running it over. He wasn’t stopping, either, and was clearly going to keep crushing my stuff and continue until he hit the car itself.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?,” I couldn’t help shouting as I leapt from the car door.
This finally compelled him to stop and back up, and fortunately all he managed to run over were my wife’s assortment of hand weights, which look more or less like this:
I like to think if I had been in his position I might have apologized, or exited the vehicle to see if I had damaged anything, or even offered to pay for any damage I may have caused, or some combination thereof. I also like to think that if he had done any of the following this would have placated me, as fortunately all he’d managed to do was rip up the neoprene coating of the hand weights, and hey, shit happens, right? But instead he was indignant and replied, “Well what am I supposed to do?”
What am I supposed to do!?!
Oh, I dunno, maybe learn how to drive your stupid truck, which probably has back-up cameras and blind-spot monitoring and all manner of driver-coddling technology? Maybe turn it around or simply back it up and reverse down the street without running over anything? In our post-Amazon society drivers in far larger trucks manage to deliver all manner of crap to our building on a daily basis multiple times a day without incident, so it’s really not a lot to ask. Of course, in retrospect I realize he was being defensive, and the sorts of people who buy Jeep Gladiators don’t default to apology mode when they make stupid mistakes. I also realize my own use of an expletive wouldn’t necessarily prompt a polite reply, though I defy you to clear your throat and say, “Ahem, excuse me, sir…” when someone’s literally monster-trucking your belongings and about to rear-end your car. And most of all, I certainly understand that there’s nothing more un-American than expecting people to be able to competently use their expensive purchases, whether it’s a bike or a car or anything else. I’m even tempted to say a recumbent bicycle and a goofy stylized pickup truck are very similar vehicles in that they’re both the sort of thing you choose when your dick doesn’t work properly, but that’s a cheap shot and I won’t lower myself.
But in the end I did refrain from hurling a hand weight at his car and winding up in jail, which all things considered is the best possible outcome.