Circus City

I'm seeing all kinds of mayhem out there lately.

Yesterday I saw a helmet-less guy on a mountain bike almost get slaughtered by a Range Rover. I was waiting at the light at the Comm Ave/Mass Ave intersection and Mass Ave had the green and this guy on the mountain bike comes down Mass Ave in the right lane heading toward Cambridge. Just before the light he abruptly swerved right to turn on to Comm Ave, into the path of the Range Rover traveling in the same direction. The Rover jammed on the breaks with inches to spare. The guy on the bike didn't even acknowledge the near miss, he just continued around the front of the Rover and into the opposite lane of oncoming traffic. Yes, he continued careening across Mass Ave into the the two opposite lanes where the all the approaching cars jammed on their brakes. It was an astounding display of boneheaded-ness, and this guy didn't even seem to realize that he could have been killed several times over.

Moments later I was crossing Charlesgate East where there's a light. A truck in front of me was making the right onto Charlesgate and as I started to clear the rear end of the truck, a kid on bike comes at me diagonally from my right, trying to cross Comm Ave from one sidewalk to another, and clearly unable to see around the truck that was turning in front of him. I just yelled and my right pedal smacked his bike as I whipped past him. It was a near catastrophe. If he had been even inches more in my path, both of us would have come to serious grief.

As they're saying in all the papers, "With the gas prices these days, more people are riding bikes." Lord, I've seen some of these people. I'll describe my favorite. I call them SiRi - long 'i', like Sye Rye - short for Sidewalk Rider. Nine out of ten times when you see a SiRi, he/she will be riding on a crowed sidewalk on a mountain bike that is too small for them, and they will not be wearing a helmet. I can't stand SiRis. I'll bet the guy who almost got hit by the Rover was a SiRi who strayed off of the sidewalk and became confused, like when a raccoon gets rabies and stumbles around in the road in the middle of the day. Another thing about SiRis, they all seem to look like the kids who were in the special ed classes at my high school. They're riding along with their slack jaws, their knees bobbing up almost to their chins cause their bikes are way too small for them, their heads lolling around, all goggle-eyed, wondering why all the pedestrians are giving them dirt looks.

There has been quite a bit of attention paid to cycling and commuting and cars etc lately. The Boston Globe's Bella English wrote a pro-biking column that drew the ire of a lot of non-cyclists. There were a lot of comments about cyclists blowing red lights, spitting, flouting the law, and wearing too much bike racing clothing. And some of that's true. I always see people blow lights, and I do it too, although "blow" is too strong a term. I'd say I "leak" through lights. I've also seen people spit. In fact I spat on my way to work this morning. But that was because I had a big wad of Ol' Brown Crud Chewing Tobacco in my mouth (I like to keep ammunition handy for any errant pedestrians on the way). Not sure about the law flouting, though. At least nothing on a bicycle. Anyway, people were definitely getting bent out of shape in the comments.