Death Wish Commuting

A fun day commuting on Wednesday.

Incident One: Heading into work, riding along through the center of town by the court houses. A driver stops at a cross street. He looks right at me and waves me by. I start to accelerate to get through the intersection. He pulls out 2 bike lengths in front of me. Disc brakes are wonderful things. I stop so hard the rear wheel lifts, with both fully loaded panniers over it. The driver waves to me and drives away. As I'm resetting the pedals to get going again I look at the cop in the intersection. He just glares at me. I fight the urge to say something snide as I ride past him.

Incident Two: Riding home, I pass a van sitting in a line of traffic. The passenger points as me as I'm passing the van in the empty parking spots alongside the road. A pass a few cars in line and the light ahead turns green. The van passes me, the passenger points at me again and laughs. The van pulls by me and then pulls right next to a parked truck. I'm now looking at the passenger mirror from the van and the drivers mirror from the parked truck right in front of me. I slow way down and duck under the mirrors. I probably should have stopped.

Incident Three: I stop at the bike shop on the way home to exchange my headlight (a whole other story). As I'm in the cross walk, just starting to cross the street, an Audi A8 comes flying around the corner. He sees me and accelerates. I stop dead and start walking backwards as he buzzes me honking his horn. Meanwhile, the people on the other side of the street have stopped waiting for me to cross.

Some days, I really wish I carried a baseball bat when riding. This is the first time I've had any incidents to speak of on the bike.