8.04.2006
Evaluation
What portion of your soul do yousell to make money?
Maybe there's an acceptable percentage range that qualifies as an "appropriate" portion of the soul which is sacrificed for the purpose of human sustainability. The obvious question becomes "what is an 'appropriate' level of sustainability?" Being able to "afford" to have children - including raising them, feeding them, clothing them, and educating them so they will be able to learn what portion of their souls they will sacrifice in order to sustain themselves... and their families? What the f*ck? Suddenly we're adults and our level of "sustainability" directly determines our level of "success." We grow up quickly and learn we cannot possibly plan for retirement early enough. F*ck.
Here's the tangent you'll never see coming: IF YOU RIDE A BICYCLE IN NEW YORK CITY, AND YOU HAVE ANGER ISSUES, PLEASE DON'T TAKE OUT YOUR FRUSTRATIONS ON PEDESTRIANS, MOTORIZED VEHICLES, OR THE RULES AND REGULATIONS ESTABLISHED FOR PUBLIC ROADWAYS (e.g. don't run through a red light on a one-way street going the WRONG WAY.)
IF YOU RIDE A BICYCLE IN NEW YORK CITY AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANGER ISSUES (YET) IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU'RE RIDING YOUR BICYCLE ON THE SIDEWALK. Maybe you never learned bike-riding rule #1: Don't ride your bike on the sidewalk.
I don't ride a bicycle. I'm too chicken to ride on the street, I will never ride on the sidewalk, and I love driving. Love it. The only thing I know about people who ride bikes it what I see on city streets and what I see on t.v. These people are angry. They're busy saving the world by emitting zero environmental pollutants and getting exercise. But this big responsibility doesn't come easy. They are constantly dealing with cars, trucks and people who get in their way or hit them while they're riding their bikes the wrong way down a one-way street.
Today I was riding the bus to work and I saw a gentleman in his late 50's standing outside of his parked car on the driver's side (he had just finished parking on the right side of the street, and his car door was closed.) Traffic was stopped at a red light, and an asshole on a bike who was traveling much too fast for the traffic situation stuck his hand out and deliberately clipped the gentleman on back of his neck.
I can't take it anymore. People on bikes get a bad wrap in my book. Go ride your bike on a bike path and quit bitching about cars being on streets. At the very least, stay off Riverside Drive during afternoon rush hour.
Here's the tangent you'll never see coming: IF YOU RIDE A BICYCLE IN NEW YORK CITY, AND YOU HAVE ANGER ISSUES, PLEASE DON'T TAKE OUT YOUR FRUSTRATIONS ON PEDESTRIANS, MOTORIZED VEHICLES, OR THE RULES AND REGULATIONS ESTABLISHED FOR PUBLIC ROADWAYS (e.g. don't run through a red light on a one-way street going the WRONG WAY.)
IF YOU RIDE A BICYCLE IN NEW YORK CITY AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANGER ISSUES (YET) IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU'RE RIDING YOUR BICYCLE ON THE SIDEWALK. Maybe you never learned bike-riding rule #1: Don't ride your bike on the sidewalk.
I don't ride a bicycle. I'm too chicken to ride on the street, I will never ride on the sidewalk, and I love driving. Love it. The only thing I know about people who ride bikes it what I see on city streets and what I see on t.v. These people are angry. They're busy saving the world by emitting zero environmental pollutants and getting exercise. But this big responsibility doesn't come easy. They are constantly dealing with cars, trucks and people who get in their way or hit them while they're riding their bikes the wrong way down a one-way street.
Today I was riding the bus to work and I saw a gentleman in his late 50's standing outside of his parked car on the driver's side (he had just finished parking on the right side of the street, and his car door was closed.) Traffic was stopped at a red light, and an asshole on a bike who was traveling much too fast for the traffic situation stuck his hand out and deliberately clipped the gentleman on back of his neck.
I can't take it anymore. People on bikes get a bad wrap in my book. Go ride your bike on a bike path and quit bitching about cars being on streets. At the very least, stay off Riverside Drive during afternoon rush hour.
photo by: LL
:: posted by chumpsrock, 12:28 AM
5 Comments:
I rode a bike when I lived in Chicago, and urban biking is a completely different beast than just plain old biking, which makes me happy not angry.
However, weaving through traffic in downtown Chicago on a bike built for a mountain certainly gave me some road rage. And I loved every second of it.
However, weaving through traffic in downtown Chicago on a bike built for a mountain certainly gave me some road rage. And I loved every second of it.
Chumpsrock:
I didn't want to belabor the point in a place where Gerry and his antagonist[s?] are both reading:
Whatever has poor Gerry's feelings hurt, or even whether they should be hurt is not for me to judge...and I think most of us are of similar opinion. Gerry appears to see his blogging as the source of his hurt and claims deletion of the blog as his only means to either stop the hurt or answer those who he says he hurt. May be. We could have all pretended that by wiping the links from his template, he had taken DD off the air. Our silence about the backroad ways to get at his blog archives provided a cover and made it seem he had lived down to his words. By spelling out to all who read the comments...some of whom may not be as sophisticated as you, that in fact DD was still up after a fashion, you raise the ante for poor Gerry. Whatever you point to, he may feel some need to remove to make good on his threat/intention/plan.
Some have complained that Gerry is touchy...well, big deal since he says as much at the top of every page. Those who have taken him no more seriously than he suggests have had the most fun with him. The way I think of it is its a party. We just have to play by the hosts rules if we like to party there or go party elsewhere. Lots of other parties out there.
BTW, nice wedding pics, congratulations.
I bike to work and I know exactly what the laws of my state provide in the way of rights and obligations of bicycling on the roads. You may be too young to remember the old anti-war poster in which an eagle is swooping down on a mouse but the mouse just glares back up and gives him the old one-fingered suggestion. That attitude is my seatbelt and airbag because the people in the cars demonstrate over and over that I am nothing to them but a damn nuisance. Other cyclists who drive by me in cars are easy to spot, even without the bike racks: they go wide of my path or slow down. Little old ladies seem to pass me with due caution as well. The scariest drivers are the ones on cell phones whooshing by me in their dreadnaught SUV with maybe a foot to spare. Only rarely, do the really near misses seem intentional, usually young male drivers. But always the tromp on the gas pedal as they swing back in front of me in a blast of exhaust shows me what most drivers think of my presence in their way, on their road. They'd end my life to save themselves two seconds if they thought they could get away with it. Not much gratitude considering that by biking, I left them one more tankful of gas to burn and put off the day when I will draw down the resources in the health insurance pool. If not anger, what feeling would you suggest is appropriate when your attempt to use the roads in a perfectly legal fashion is the object of constant hostility or disregard? Walk a mile in my shoes.
There are certainly cyclists who ride selfishly, agressively and foolishly but I have only encountered them in crowded city streets. It seems to be human nature to react to competition for scarce resources [and right of ways is particularly scarce in NYC] by being more agressive. But please, please don't talk about all cyclists like they were some despised race or ethnic group! If you are going think about cyclists and write about them as "these people..." you are going to get a few of "those people" in your face.
I didn't want to belabor the point in a place where Gerry and his antagonist[s?] are both reading:
Whatever has poor Gerry's feelings hurt, or even whether they should be hurt is not for me to judge...and I think most of us are of similar opinion. Gerry appears to see his blogging as the source of his hurt and claims deletion of the blog as his only means to either stop the hurt or answer those who he says he hurt. May be. We could have all pretended that by wiping the links from his template, he had taken DD off the air. Our silence about the backroad ways to get at his blog archives provided a cover and made it seem he had lived down to his words. By spelling out to all who read the comments...some of whom may not be as sophisticated as you, that in fact DD was still up after a fashion, you raise the ante for poor Gerry. Whatever you point to, he may feel some need to remove to make good on his threat/intention/plan.
Some have complained that Gerry is touchy...well, big deal since he says as much at the top of every page. Those who have taken him no more seriously than he suggests have had the most fun with him. The way I think of it is its a party. We just have to play by the hosts rules if we like to party there or go party elsewhere. Lots of other parties out there.
BTW, nice wedding pics, congratulations.
I bike to work and I know exactly what the laws of my state provide in the way of rights and obligations of bicycling on the roads. You may be too young to remember the old anti-war poster in which an eagle is swooping down on a mouse but the mouse just glares back up and gives him the old one-fingered suggestion. That attitude is my seatbelt and airbag because the people in the cars demonstrate over and over that I am nothing to them but a damn nuisance. Other cyclists who drive by me in cars are easy to spot, even without the bike racks: they go wide of my path or slow down. Little old ladies seem to pass me with due caution as well. The scariest drivers are the ones on cell phones whooshing by me in their dreadnaught SUV with maybe a foot to spare. Only rarely, do the really near misses seem intentional, usually young male drivers. But always the tromp on the gas pedal as they swing back in front of me in a blast of exhaust shows me what most drivers think of my presence in their way, on their road. They'd end my life to save themselves two seconds if they thought they could get away with it. Not much gratitude considering that by biking, I left them one more tankful of gas to burn and put off the day when I will draw down the resources in the health insurance pool. If not anger, what feeling would you suggest is appropriate when your attempt to use the roads in a perfectly legal fashion is the object of constant hostility or disregard? Walk a mile in my shoes.
There are certainly cyclists who ride selfishly, agressively and foolishly but I have only encountered them in crowded city streets. It seems to be human nature to react to competition for scarce resources [and right of ways is particularly scarce in NYC] by being more agressive. But please, please don't talk about all cyclists like they were some despised race or ethnic group! If you are going think about cyclists and write about them as "these people..." you are going to get a few of "those people" in your face.
I should clarify. What I witnessed that day was an outrage. I'm an extremely safe driver - especially when it comes to people on bikes. If there were more drivers like me, there were probably be a lot less anger about riding a bike in the city. You bikers are some of the bravest in my book. Please excuse my heated reaction to an instance I witnessed from the driver's point of view. I don't think the gentleman who was hit in the back of the neck saw the biker, and that's exactly when an accident is more likely to happen. People don't open their car doors because they see that a biker is about to ride by. They don't see the bike. So I'm taking back my previous statement, the only biker that gets a bad wrap in my book is the asshole that hit someone from the back going 25 mph.
PS: Those are not my wedding pictures.
Excused. But you are quite accurate in assessing city cyclists as candidates for Anger Anonymous. What you witnessed seems to have been intentional and unprovoked, a mugging that employed a bike and far from typical. "didn't see the biker" is baloney...that happens when the driver doesn't look. But if the driver was already out of the car, its the rider who decided to play vigilante. If the moving cars have me penned up against the parked cars, I am on the brakes looking to see if the cars are occupied. Rear doors don't have a mirror by which to spot overtaking cylists.
I am often angred by the callous and dangersous manner in which motorists ignore my rights and saftey as I bike...but its also a great meditation on anger management, a truly surefire way to exercise awareness and control. The most I ever do is memorize the license number...I am without any meaningful defense and the drivers are not hanging around for a lecture on the traffic laws of the commonwealth. Losing my temper is very apt to reduce my safety even further.
Saying "Cars scare me too much so I am going to drive instead of riding my bike" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. One less car on the road...its a value statement.
Generalizing means talking about what is typical or as if something is typical. I share your disdain for cyclists who ride recklessly and I know there are quite a few...let them become statistics. My framing of the issues is that a road is a shared resource and the protocols for sharing it become critical as density of traffic approaches the capacity. I live in a very rural town with winding country lanes and no sidewalks or breakdown lanes. People who like to drive fast can come around a bend at 50mph and find they have 30 yards in which to dodge a mother pushing twins along the road in a two-up stroller. Its not really a different problem than city streets present. Just ask: what was the capcity of the road in terms of safe speeds and what are the rules that permit cars and pedestrians to coexist safely SINCE NO LAW forbids either to use the scarce pavement?
What IS typical for cycling on busy streets? Law [ride with traffic, turn left from left turn lane, signal turns, lights mandatory for night riding, etc] and standard advice are similar: "behave as cars behave and the drivers will know what to expect". The advice has dissenters and the law has exceptions. Should a cyclist ride at a door's width distance from parked cars though that annoys the heck out of motorists who want the lane all to themselves? The driver who does not look in the sideview mirror before opening a door is equally likely to be hit motor traffic...its an accident either way and the fault of the person opening the door without checking: only difference is cyclists get killed this way whereas a passing car rips the door off and mangles the dumb driver.
I am often angred by the callous and dangersous manner in which motorists ignore my rights and saftey as I bike...but its also a great meditation on anger management, a truly surefire way to exercise awareness and control. The most I ever do is memorize the license number...I am without any meaningful defense and the drivers are not hanging around for a lecture on the traffic laws of the commonwealth. Losing my temper is very apt to reduce my safety even further.
Saying "Cars scare me too much so I am going to drive instead of riding my bike" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. One less car on the road...its a value statement.
Generalizing means talking about what is typical or as if something is typical. I share your disdain for cyclists who ride recklessly and I know there are quite a few...let them become statistics. My framing of the issues is that a road is a shared resource and the protocols for sharing it become critical as density of traffic approaches the capacity. I live in a very rural town with winding country lanes and no sidewalks or breakdown lanes. People who like to drive fast can come around a bend at 50mph and find they have 30 yards in which to dodge a mother pushing twins along the road in a two-up stroller. Its not really a different problem than city streets present. Just ask: what was the capcity of the road in terms of safe speeds and what are the rules that permit cars and pedestrians to coexist safely SINCE NO LAW forbids either to use the scarce pavement?
What IS typical for cycling on busy streets? Law [ride with traffic, turn left from left turn lane, signal turns, lights mandatory for night riding, etc] and standard advice are similar: "behave as cars behave and the drivers will know what to expect". The advice has dissenters and the law has exceptions. Should a cyclist ride at a door's width distance from parked cars though that annoys the heck out of motorists who want the lane all to themselves? The driver who does not look in the sideview mirror before opening a door is equally likely to be hit motor traffic...its an accident either way and the fault of the person opening the door without checking: only difference is cyclists get killed this way whereas a passing car rips the door off and mangles the dumb driver.
