In article ,
writes:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 03:05:36 -0700, (Tom Keats)
wrote:

And although I ride bike,
I don't wanna get in your way, and I like it when
you don't get in mine. We can get along quite nicely.
After all, we're all just human beans. Sometimes we
do real good, and sometimes we have brain-farts and
we unintentionally screw up. Forgiveness &
understanding works good. I dunno. I've seen a lot
of rotten behaviours from people on bikes, and people
in cars. But I've seen a lot of of nice behaviours
from people, too. There /is/ hope for humanity :-)

(Uh, do you realize you're cross-posting to about 5 other groups, Tom? Just
wondered ...

Yeah, I don't care. It's nice to have people to listen to
and talk with.

Anyway...I was riding some suburban back roads on Sunday and came up over a
rise leading to a nice downhill to a four-way stop. In front of me was
another hill that went up to a dead end.

At the four-way stop you can only get a bird's-eye view of the run-up to
the other roads from where I was - I could see for several hundred yards on
all three roads.

So I decide, since it's near the end of my ride to just accelerate down
this hill and up the other one, kind of give myself a whoop-de-doo. Mind
you it was a Sunday afternoon and nobody was in sight except this guy
behind me a few dozen yards.

What does he do? He leans on the horn as I zoom through my stopsign

Ya horrible scofflaw, ya ;-)

and I
look in the mirror, wondering what the problem was.

That's just his way of saying: "You're not a car!"

Well he gets down to
the four-way and he runs the stop himself, turning right.

Suppose you had come to a complete, foot-down stop, and
the driver was right behind you. I bet he'd have been
fuming, 'cuz you would have been "in his way", and you'd
still have gotten honked-at. Ya just can't win. Of course
if you left him room to eke by on your right so he could
hang his right turn, that might have had an apeasing effect.
OTOH if it's a narrow street, you don't want to be too
close to the middle, or you could get clobbered by drivers
coming off the cross-street. So I'm not finding fault with ya
at all; not by a long-shot. And if you did position yourself
on the road like that, chances are he'd decide he wants to
turn "left", just so he could /still/ complain about you being
in the way. And he wouldn't signal his turn until you're already
committed to your position on the street; in his mind he might
convince himself he had his turn signal on all along, and you
just inconsiderately decided to veer in front of him regardless.
Your anecdote is just another familiar occurrence in the life of
an urban cyclist. It's just razmatazz we have to live with.
Water off a duck's back.

Maybe he was celebrating with me, but I doubt it. What's the big problem -
especially since he ran the sign himself. Sheesh.

At least no skin was peeled off anyone's teeth.

Maybe in a fit of sudden anger he'll run-over some curb-hugging,
timidly-riding, letter-of-the-law-abiding rider, to get even
with you. That's why we cyclists must be ticketed for every
crummy li'l infraction we commit. It's for our own good. And
more importantly, it pleases the cagers, to whom we, as inferior
road users, must suck-up, or else they'll kill us like dogs in
the street.


cheers,
Tom

--
-- Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca