In the West, we are a people who will not be fenced in; we are lawless, and yet we also feel it is our civic duty as honorary deputies to intrude upon other people’s lawlessness frequently and emphatically so. Nowhere is this binary more apparent than on the roads of Denver, where cars and bicycles elicit each other’s ire on a daily basis, even on generously proportioned roads built to offer “room to move” to those driving haphazardly along in their F150. It occurs to me though, that in the brief encounters of bike and car, or car and bike, little more is exchanged by way of rhetoric than a pissed-off honk or mute middle finger as one initiates a canted left-hand turn on the bicycle. Things being so, I thought I would take it upon myself to outline frequent grievances of road users fairly and in an unbiased manner.
First, allow me to outline the infractions I commonly observe cars committing:
Running through stop signs. The reigning stop-sign running champion is a chap driving a large SUV, who rolled through a stop sign with the driver door open, seemingly bent over adjusting his shoelaces. He managed to both have his head below the dashboard on approach and to actually accelerate at about where the stop sign stood through the intersection, prior to retrieving his egg sandwich or whatever, making this a flagrant and blind violation of traffic law.
Operating cellular telephone while driving. Much like a bad actor in a driving scene who forgets they are commandeering a vehicle, and instead focuses “the method” upon their passenger while the backdrop reels by, offenders are commonly young women mounting ramps to mall parking lots or multi-taskers attempting to drop their mail in the drive-through USPS box without stopping.
Crossing lines, mounting curbs, unsafe right-lane overtakes.To clarify, in “right-lane overtakes” I am referring to the impatient motorist who feels the need to overtake other cars on a one-way, single-lane street by making use of empty parking spaces, or swerving into cyclists obsequiously utilizing their bike lane. Mounting curbs is well-known to be a specialty maneuver of Denver buses.
Various parts of car falling off, or precariously hanging on through duct tape.Generally, the fender is the most likely candidate for a mid-freeway detachment, and joins mattresses, bookshelves and exploded tyres on the list of surprise obstacles you may encounter in rush hour.
Issuance of projectile.There is nothing like throwing a cigarette butt out the window to assert your complete disregard for anything outside your realm of correctness. Typically these are the same people opposed to the soda tax, but whom wholeheartedly favor bicycle helmet laws proven to discourage cycling and potentially raise the cyclist mortality rate.
Fail to use indicator.Admittedly, you, fellow in the truck this morning, could see I was about to run a red light after you had passed by on the perpendicular, but your unpredictable driving tells me that you were making a point of halting before performing the world’s slowest illegal left-hand turn to teach me a lesson, even as you failed to turn on your indicator. You did, in fact, instruct me to “watch the light!” even as you deemed it needless to use your own.
Parking unrightfully in handicap space.I should know, because my grandmother does it when she visits the bowling club. She’ll pull up in the Volvo and march around to pull a Zimmerframe out of the boot (trunk), which she then ambles into reception with. She made a point of buying a compact, lightweight, collapsible walking frame expressly for this purpose.
Running over pedestrians.I have witnessed a car demonstrate its 4000 pound superiority and correctness on a pedestrian. It was a serious accident, and I do not recall the driver berating the victim for not wearing a helmet while walking, or for dressing in an aggressive manner, as he might have a compromised cyclist.
Displaying bumper stickers.
There is no better proof that most motorists are not interested in having a vigorous and engaged debate than their bumper sticker, proclaiming their imperviousness to logic, counter-argument and any possible incidences of ambiguity. Indeed the sealed Japanese-model sedan was designed with the cone in mind. Contrarily, the humble cyclist’s mud-splattered hind light speaks for itself: “I am going about my own business, and wish not to engage nor be run over by you or your maverick-demagoguery.” (Side note: out-of-date bumper stickers require a heightened degree of inflexibility of mind; the kind of mentality that remains unafflicted by time itself.)
To the bicycles!
Running stop signs, red lights.It’s true. We do it. I, like
NYC Bike Snob, do it as often as I can. We do it because we weigh 150 pounds all up, and stopping is a quick affair, while acceleration is a slow and tedious yamber through our bangle of gears. We do it because traffic lights don’t change when it is only us at the intersection. We do it because we want to be clear of the traffic that hates us for being on the road at all, and slowing them down. We do it sometimes because a car, frozen in panic at the sight of a bicycle coming to a four-way stop sign, will thump the transmission into park, waiting until the bicycle is gone, and they can safely continue commuting in their atrocious GMC Jimmy unmolested by unpredictable bike behavior. Sometimes we have stopped, but because we don’t put our feet on the ground, you incorrectly perceive us to be flying by at high speed in spite of a) a lack of bifocal clues supporting that thesis and b) the stationary nature of our hair, clothing and immediate surrounds. When you make a point of calling out from your Camaro at me, “stop sign!” you are only wasting your precious goateed time.
Not wearing a helmet. This outrages even the most passive driver, in spite of its legality. But being angry at someone for forgetting a helmet, or choosing not to wear one, is as profitable as ruing competitors on The Price is Right who incorrectly value refrigerators. For one, wearing a helmet is a far less effective safety measure than learning safe bicycle behavior, i.e. how to spot a tool commandeering a Lexus. You, with the venti coffee contraption in your hand adjusting the radio and glazing over text messages on your iPhone while driving: you are far less attentive than I with my brazen and exposed head of hair, who can hear everything that happens on the road, and has a full, unobstructed view of each vehicle that may be considering running me down. Further, I wonder, given the 38,000 of you that die each year (versus the 700 of my fellow gutter monkeys you steamroll), why you are not wearing a helmet, or why you are statistically likely to cut closer to cyclists wearing helmets than not, when overtaking.
Catching up to cars that have overtaken us.Bikes are infuriating, no doubt, but overtaking them with a tidy act of plantarflexion usually alleviates this anxiety. Until, of course, you run into a wall of cars at a red light 100 meters down the road and the bicycle cruises by you all in his “special” lane. This particular angst springs from the “fairness for all” mindset that believes, “If I’m sitting here in this dirty clod of traffic, so should everyone on the road.” This typically leads to complaints of cyclists:
Not paying road taxes.Unless of course you mean paying income taxes, which go toward transit and roads, and which we certainly pay, or insurance, registration and fuel excise for the vehicles that we do all have, but which we aren’t on at the same time as we ride our bicycles. And for the record, while those ineffective green-paint canals of bike lanes are probably costly, a) we didn’t ask for them, and b) that they stay in such good shape does say something about the likely impact of cyclists on roadways, from a cost-use perspective.
Wearing lycra.This ranks high on the “how dare they” index of motorist aggression. A generic jersey and black pants are all you need wear to declare war on all motorists; multi-colored jerseys with team names or brands on them are a veritable minaret to the supposedly peaceful Denver driver.
Fourth of July Bowl, on Peak 10 in the Ten Mile Range, Breckenridge, provides an annual pilgrimage for many. In mid-summer, grommets, veterans and "flat-landers" alike will push their All-WDs to the limit getting a head-start on the mountain, and frequently crushing a muffler or two. Hipsters will feel their skinny legs willing them out somewhere grassy. They will drag rusty ski gear from the boot, and plod the few miles final upward to the summit of Peak 10 aided by complex amalgamations of organic oats, agave nectar, electrolytes and caffeine.This past weekend, the glorified granola bar, a blue heeler and four Denverites left civilization and soy dandelion lattes behind to conquer this landmark again. Pictured below, I have sketched in the spirit animals of the young adventurers, perpetually searching for the safe climes of childhood. Above Pendergrass soars the spirit of an eagle, its eye zeroing in on potential photographic opportunities. In the middle, Norkin's protector, the fox, narrows its gaze on a double cheeseburger from high above Breckenridge's Empire Burger. On the right, McAllister's alter-ego, the bear, clubs a propensity for thin-bloodedness from view, and takes in the sights of a punter ascending the mount via an arduous bootpack up the snowfield.
Free to let natural instinct rule in such a setting, the team embraced the empowerment of peeing outside, and improvising a mix of technical and rudimentary fabrics as the wind came and went. Pictured high on the Rockies, Coogee's spirit animal looks keenly out across the world in search of nibblets.
The almost too-perfect placement of an American flag on the summit, suspended in an outstretched fashion much like a bird soaring the stream above, led us to believe we may have unwittingly walked into a covert Facebook page photoshoot. We also encountered a granola-y couple at the top. The woman, like me, was wearing a dress, but a dress even longer than mine, convincing me that we had either cramponed our way to the ultimate underground hipster hangout - an underground dive bar on a mountain (they were drinking beer) is as subversive as counter-culture gets - or we had just met a nice Mennonite couple.
Seen above, the "Iwo Jima" flag photo-op distracts from the very tedious act of hiking part way back down the mountain to the snow patch. There, like Texans in a rental shop, we awkwardly slid about trying to get our ski boots on.
Pendergrass's descent was as epic as incremental glacial attrition conducted across thousands of years, but much faster. I skied unpredictably, as per my animus, the trout, and managed to skin bits of my knuckles on the brute ice crystals as I banked my turns. Not pictured: descent on skis while singing Devendra Banhart's "Little yellow spider" and brewing homemade kombucha from the mother culture.
.jpg)
