Mass travel

This is the fourth week in which I've had to surrender my precious 3 1/2 day weekend to provide office coverage for those who are not retired, and who are on salary. The plus is that I've been commuting on the bike twice as much as usual, with concomitant brain fodder.

The local paper has hosted some especially vicious pro-and-anti bicycle rants in recent weeks. These closed with the observation of a columnist, who had been as vicious and anti as anyone, that "nobody hates all bicyclists." Hoohahahahaha.

Some do. Cyclists have to accept that, be on guard, and work to change it. Once again, ranting letter writers and columnists may not hate all bicyclists, but their words enable those who do.

Mostly, though, motorists haven't got a clue what to do in the presence of a cyclist. This leads them into actions that would bring on an accident or a citation if they involved another motor vehicle. Likewise, far too many cyclists have not the least idea what their responsibilities are on the road.

Or off. About half of my commute is over a reclaimed railroad bed. This was originally paved in rottenstone (as I grew up calling it). This is a fine gravel with a high clay content. It packs to a firm surface which muddies up only in a few low spots, and is hard enough to support skinny tyres. However, nobody thought to explain this to our Electric Department, which maintains the right-of-way. They've fallen into the habit of filling in the worst low spots with washed half-inch gravel, which is about the worst possible surface for a bicycle. It has no clay content, and unless rollered in, remains a loose and shifting surface for years.

The Salem end of the right of way is paved, with a centre stripe and elegant iron gates at each end. Having lavished all that money on this treatment, the Salem authorities then didn't have the money to reclaim the rest of the right of way, so their bike path is under a mile long. Rant out.

Whilst we're commenting that motorists bicyclists are equally incompetent at obeying traffic laws and sharing public ways, let us not overlook pedestrians. My town, with its maze of 17th century streets, has a great many pedestrians in the street. Locals are in the habit but at least move when they hear something on wheels. Tourists, I suppose, are astonished that a way not much wider than the average urban sidewalk actually has vehicular traffic, and are slower to move.

My peeve of the month, though, arises from a peculiar new behaviour on the right of way. Pedestrians, and even cyclists, are moving to the left rather than the right in the face of oncoming bicycles. The surface, remember, is fairly hard, and allows a good turn of speed. To someone trained for a lifetime to keep to the right on roads, in corridors, and in watercraft (the "port-to-port" rule is international), this conduct is disconcerting. Is this the pernicious influence of British drama?

Road Rage: his or mine?

-->

OK, I was a little unfair last time to Greater Boston and the Marblehead Reporter. Their bicycle coverage turned out to be reasonable. However, the Reporter also ran an Op-Ed signed by Joe McLaughlin that neatly captured all the venom and hypocrisy of those who don't just dislike bicyclists behaving badly, but hate all bicyclists all the time. It follows the time-honoured pattern of much expression of this hostility. It begins with an attempt at reasonable dialogue, drawing comparisons between Massachusetts road behaviour and West Coast behaviour. (He saw all this on one trip to Seattle.) 

Reason usually is too much for these people to sustain, and they collapse into naked hostility after one or two paragraphs. It would appear that Joe brought nothing back from the West Coast but a skinful of pent-up hostility toward all bicyclists everywhere.

In 30-plus years as a cyclist, what I've observed is that motorists carrying a chip that size on their shoulder remember every bicycle infraction they have ever seen. They don't seem to have quite as sharp a memory for the tens of thousands of thoughtless acts that bicyclists are subjected to daily when they exercise their right to use the road.

Joe informs us that there are two types of "bikers....Turned-down handlebars, skinny tires, Spandex and Day-Glow [sic]: Seldom do the rules apply. [The other group:] Turned-up handlebars, fat tires, polo shirt and Bermudas: Not so much of a threat."

Threat, Joe? Threat? In your stereotyped universe, you seem unable to remember that car and driver outweigh the bicycle and rider by 3500 pounds or more.  Bad behaviour is endemic on the roads of Massachusetts, and isn't confined to people on wheels. But good heavens! A bicyclist's carelessness poses an inconvenience to the Kings of the Road, not a threat. On the other hand, a driver's carelessness or animosity may seriously injure or kill a bicyclist. You seem to forget that, Joe. Your stereotype also illustrates the habit bicycle haters of arguing from the extremes. Cyclists between the extremes seem to be invisible to you.

Despite Joe's failed struggle to be open-minded, he would have us believe that West Coast law enforcement means cracking down on cyclists and giving motorists a pass. Sorry, that's what happens here, now. Experienced cyclists will testify that they feel no one is on their side: not police, not prosecutors, not judges, and certainly no motorist who failed to master the bicycle at age eight, and has it in for everyone who did. When I see cyclists disobeying traffic laws, I blame the individual, not everyone on two wheels. I do the same with careless motorists: I just have many thousands more chances to exercise my forbearance.

The West Coast seems to be ahead of us, to be sure. I can only speak for Berkeley, not Seattle. There, enforcement is level, making no distinction between users of the road. Sorry, no entitlement for anyone. And sorry, Joe, that doesn't mean everyone always obeys the laws. There are still jaywalkers, still sidewalk cruising cycling stoners with headphones, and many thoughtless fools on four wheels. Could Massachusetts laws have more uniform penalties? Absolutely, but whose fault is that? The cyclists and pedestrians, or is it an unmotivated police, judiciary and legislature? None of these can be bothered to take cyclists and road safety for all seriously until there is a fatality, such as the high-profile cyclist death in Wellesley last year? Even after a fatality, the motivation won't stand much strain. Officialdom's attention span is very short where bicycles are concerned.

Next time you go to the other coast, Mr McLaughlin, try opening your eyes. Next time you drive here, try to generate a little empathy for users of the road other than yourself.

Gather ye bicycles while ye may

I got the mountain bike back on the road. Shakedown cruise revealed the usual  inventory of required tweaks. Headset is a trifle too loose, rear brake cable needs to be tighter. However the main event--the new rear wheel and gear cluster--are working well. I bought the wheel with a bolt-on axle, intending to replace it with a quick-release. That comes later: the quick release I had available has seen better days.

Non-cyclists can wake up now. The question will be whether the media will have run all bicycles off the road by the end of this week's "objective" coverage of sharing the road . The week seems to be shaping up as "trash cyclists" week under the guise of balanced reporting. My opinion of  Greater Boston has been vile since April 15. They're turning the whole week onto this topic and I expect little or nothing in the way of objective coverage. The local media up heah are doing this too.

By the time they're all done, I fully expect to have SWAT teams breaking down my door and bomb squads taking my bikes off for "examination." I've seen some balanced reporting on this subject before. By the time they're done, you'll need to hail a cab to cross the street,  because the balanced reporters will make one thing clear: The road is for no less than four wheels. As I said, I admit my current bias against Greater Boston. I wonder if the host will admit hers?

If we could be objective, I have a contribution to make. I was driving through downtown Salem at lunchtime last week. As a woman stepped out of a restaurant, she was nearly (by nearly I mean inches) run down by a cyclist: on the busy sidewalk, cruising at maybe 12 mph, wearing noise-deadening headphones. He didn't appear to apologise; in fact, he hardly acknowledged the woman's existence.

It's hard to know where to begin critiquing an asshole like this. I just know where I wouldn't begin, and that is to damn all cyclists and keep all of them off the road, but that's exactly what I expect to hear during a week of supposedly objective bike reporting.

Wake me when it's over, and let me know if I should bury the bikes.

Mo clear on sidewalks

My conditional disapproval of bicycles on sidewalks could have been more clear, so let me try again.

It's OK when the sidewalk is explicitly marked for bicycle use (q.v. some of Boston's bridges over the Charles). That assumes the cyclist is going to yield right of way to pedestrians when necessary and otherwise behave responsibly. It may be OK in the example I mentioned in my reply. Salem's Riley Plaza is surrounded by sidewalks which are most often deserted, and has roadways distinctly unfriendly to bikes, but the alternatives on my route are even worse. When I take to the sidewalk here, it is at jogging speed and if it's empty. Otherwise I get off and walk.

What is never OK is what I infer is happening along Route 107, an undivided 4-lane road with both good paved shoulders and sidewalks. That is, cyclists ought not to use a sidewalk as a bike path just because it's there, and then operate at urban cruising speed (12 mph and up). It seems to me that the cyclist has rights on the roadway, but is a guest on the sidewalk, and ought to behave as such.

Still, heaven help us, too many Massachusetts cyclists ride like Massachusetts drivers drive, and Massachusetts pedestrians walk: chances are, they are both. Cluelessness and a reckless sense of entitlement, on the part of any users of Massachusetts' public ways, leave those of us trying to make this right tearing our hair out in despair. Inhabitants of many other states seem not to have this brain freeze when they hit the public pavement. Their example suggests that getting the mix right is possible for human beings.

I have an acquaintance who is known for aggressive vigilantism when he rides. I don't know if that's what it takes, in the absence of law enforcement that can't be bothered to keep the playing field level. It sounds worthwhile for me to take a look at 107 to see what's up.

Observations from the saddle

I'm an equal-opportunity old fart cyclist, so I'm happy to to snark away in every direction. But I'm not only interested in what can happen on the road, but why.

For instance, why do cyclists ride the wrong way on one-way streets or, more generally, against traffic? One reason--which is sometimes valid--is that at times it may the only reasonable way for a cyclist to get from A to B. As I told a friend recently, I would make an exception for doing that on (for instance) Boston's Charles Street at almost any busy hour: that's just crazee. Another is that some cyclists identify more with pedestrians than with the vehicular world. And why is that?

Until the mid-1950s, when I first got on two wheels, safety instruction told cyclists to ride against traffic. Ideas like that, once implanted, don't die without aggressive promotion. if one were to poll wrong-way cyclists on this point, I think they'd react with innocent surprise when told they should be riding with traffic and that they are subject to the same laws as other vehicles. Recently, when I was riding home, there were three adult cyclists on one street. I was riding to the right, with traffic. A second was on my side of the street, riding against traffic, and a third was on the other side of the street, riding against traffic. This is frustrating but not grounds for homicide.

Another pet peeve of mine is Authority insisting that cyclists use a right-hand turn signal that dates back to horse and buggy days: literally. Although drivers are supposed to learn it, no one is road-tested on it, and I bet 98% of new drivers forget their hand signals five minutes after they pass the exam. As a cyclist, if I want someone to know I'm turning right, I point right: crystal clear.

The next complaint might be subtitled "lord save us from our loving friends." This too arises from ignorance. When I reach any sort of intersection, and stop, I expect to act like any other vehicle and wait my turn. At intersections, especially those between bike paths and roads or streets, this opportunity is the exception, not the rule. Sooner, not later, some helpful person will stop to allow the idiot cyclist to cross. Helpful Henry/Hetty is oblivious: the cyclist may have mechanical preoccupations and not be ready to cross, but may wind up feeling pressured to cross. HH/H does not notice and does not care that cars in the opposite lane show no inclination to stop for anybody. Above all, HH/H is totally unaware of what is going on behind him/her. In today's last confrontation, an HH/H stopped--and impatiently motioned me across, since a cyclist is clearly not bright enough to draw such conclusions. There was just one car behind this HH/H; at this moment both lanes were otherwise clear.

My earlier encounter with another HH/H shows the uglier side of this habit. I was patiently--sort of--waiting for my chance at a bike path/street intersection, when HH/H arrived. I primed to cross; but experienced cyclists develop the sense of motion of a cat. I detected motion to my left, and pulled up just in time to avoid one of the banes of Massachusetts roads, the imbecile who passes any stopped car on the right at full speed. But who's responsible here? The imbecile, or Helpful Hetty/Henry who has stopped contrary to the traffic laws and thus set up the situation?

The really scary thing is how often I've seen similar situations play out when all the vehicles involved were motor vehicles. If people want to be helpful drivers, they should observe traffic laws and behave predictably. But then, it's Massachusetts: what am I thinking?

Count me as one of those cyclists who regards bike paths with caution. I don't want a system that forces cyclists off the roads. I want a system that augments roads and helps everyone learn the art of sharing. But if we're going to have them, PLEASE don't let highway engineers design them. Most of the failures of the pitifully small "Salem Bike Path*" result from an infestation of highway engineers in its formative stages. (I write not only as a user, but as someone who was present at the creation and watched these clowns at work.) Characteristically, Salem's bike path connects with Salem, and sort of with Marblehead, if you're OK with being expected to be a pedestrian to reach the Marblehead path, and with the four zero-tolerance traffic barriers in the first 100 meters of the junction. Obviously they expected space aliens to drop Harleys between each set of barriers.

It can be done right. There is a new bike trail in Danvers, MA. It's surfaced in stone dust, not asphalt: cheaper and greener. It's planned: planned to connect with an adjoining trail in Topsfield, which will connect with Georgetown, and other trails which will connect with New Hampshire.

In Danvers, in contrast to Salem, they have signals, real flashing yellow signals, at least at the intersection I observed. That is how to do it: treat cyclists as equals, not as idiot children. If they had highway engineers involved in that project, they must have undergone a Maoist-style re-education course. I hope to try this route as soon as possible.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Note that the article is a year old, and nothing further has happened to the Salem Trail. Meanwhile the route still has less than a mile off-road, and the remaining right-of-way is disappearing under encroachment.

Enablers

One of the troubling things about the country these past 20 years has been the predominance of enablers in the media. No matter how dangerous, bigoted or vile your position is, you'll be able to find some so-called journalism to approve of what you say and do. These enablers are cowards at heart: witness how Rush Limbaugh retreats to his "I'm an entertainer" citadel whenever someone acts on what sounds a lot like his advice, or when his act crosses a line.

Kevin Paul Dupont could profit from this example. If you don't read the Globe sports pages, you miss his column. He is an admitted--proud, even--hater of bicyclists. (Much of the year, he covers hockey, by the way: make of that what you will.) Being in the sports pages perhaps assures him of an audience--one whose collective knuckles drag when they walk, but an audience all the same.

Let us take his July 1, 2012 column as our text for today. (Note: you may need a subscription to read this.) To the extent that any print rant can be said to contain arguments, this column seems to argue that:

• Kids today don't ride bicycles
• Therefore adults shouldn't; adult cyclists shouldn't inconvenience people who drive machines that weigh 100 times more than childish bicycles
• Since all Dupont ever sees are groups of cyclists in bright costumes, that must be all of them, and they must have some comical objective, like riding in the Tour de France

Let's parse these points.

First, in many places, we see fewer children on bicycles because we see fewer children doing anything independent. His nostalgic recollection of about 55 years ago goes back to the time when riding bikes was basic training for driving. I see no evidence that lack of such childhood training has improved anything on the roads.

If kids don't ride bikes but, instead, adults take it up de novo, doesn't that rather ruin the argument that cycling is a childish pastime? So are baseball and hockey, a thought which is close to heresy in the Sports pages.

Dupont's third point takes us back to the Ballantine hypothesis. One cyclist, especially in street clothes, is invisible. Same goes for one motorcyclist. Ten cyclists in bright colours, riding in close formation, are not only visible but present a challenge to narrow minds in cars. Dupont sees no other cyclists but road bikers en peleton because all the others are invisible--to him, and to everyone who doesn't want to share with anything having fewer than four wheels. What's scary is that those invisible cyclists probably include children. (Remember, his entire argument that kids don't ride bikes rests on a single slender sampling.)

Coming to this insight, I have to revise my previous comment that bicyclists don't have the recourse to intimidation that motorcyclists have. Evidently they do, at least to the heart of a bike hater. For any two-wheeled vehicle there is safety in numbers. The bicycle can't generate loud enough noise to call attention to itself, but its rider can resort to loud colours and bright lights to achieve the same end. Another Ballantine observation is that an urban cyclist should be decked out like a Christmas tree. It's not comical at all: it's survival.

I have little doubt that most bike haters are also anti-motorcycle. But they can't say so in public, lest the Hell's Angels show up at the front door to express their feelings. It seems safer to them to attack the smaller number of perceived outsiders on the weaker vehicle, a group the hater perceives as comical and defenceless.

Dupont comments that he finds bicycles "complicated." This opens the door to yet another possible motivation of bike-haters: jealousy. If one never learnt to ride a bike, one might direct one's anger and frustration at that failure toward those who did learn.

This is probably the point at which Dupont rises up to say that his column was entertainment, not journalism. I agree that it isn't journalism. It is the sort of drivel that most of us have produced under deadline pressure at one time or another. But the Globe, having little that passes for sound editorial judgment, actually prints such copy. The trouble with this form of "entertainment" is that it validates hatred of the more psychotic variety: the type that deliberately grazes or hits cyclists, opens doors in their path, assaults them when they're stopped, runs them off the road, or pulls guns on them. I'm not making those examples up. They've all happened to me or fellow cyclists. No, Kevin, I'm not entertained.

Perhaps, as Harrumpher commented on my last go, bike-hating is a secret handshake of solidarity. If so, what an utter waste. A rational society would direct its outrage at individual offenders on public ways, no matter what vehicle, if any, they use. Applying the same curse equally to one group, and that the least numerous, is nothing but hairy chest-pounding. I don't expect that sort of rationality anytime soon. Kevin, hie thee to a hockey rink.

Why can't we all get along?

Recent rumblings here and there have had me thinking over the extreme difficulty Americans have in sharing the road. I am a cyclist: also a motorist and a pedestrian when the occasion demands, and we'll come back to that. Twice a week, when I work an afternoon shift, I've been riding to work, about a nine-mile round trip, half of it on busy streets. Thursday was typical: no assaults or catcalls from motor vehicles, which in all honesty was more common when I started this, over 30 years ago, than it is now. However, three, that's three, jaywalking pedestrians walked in front of me in the space of a few blocks, all less than 50 feet away. Being especially careful to avoid pedestrians, I stopped for all three; not one showed any sign of registering my existence. I'm rather slower than I was in my salad days, which makes avoidance easier.

I believe I once before quoted bicycle activist Richard Ballantine on this subject. He advocated very defensive cycling, based on two assumptions. First, to most people you are quite literally invisible. Second, to those who do see you, bicycle=nine-year-old kid= five mph=no threat. Despite repeated experiences to the contrary, both observations hold true today. Even at my advanced age and relatively low speed, I represent a gross vehicle weight of over 200 pounds travelling about 175 feet in ten seconds. That means if you dart out 50 feet in front on me, I'll be on you in under three seconds. If I am alert, it will take nearly half that time to stop a bicycle going only 12 mph with four brake shoes smaller than a baby's little finger. If I am even slightly inattentive, that impact will happen and it will hurt, because I will hit you with a force close to 1000 foot/pounds. And you will blame me. If you are in a vehicle and do the same thing, the physics are the same, but I will sustain most of the damage, and you will still blame me.

The cycle of ignorance wouldn't annoy bikers so much if it were not they who are almost always at the end of the circle of blame. I have seldom met a pedestrian dedicated to carrying on a lifelong vendetta against motorists, or vice versa. Yet one can hardly bring up this subject without turning up both pedestrians and motorists who stoke and nurse lifelong hostility toward cyclists. Dig a little and one finds, often, that this rage stems from one incident some variable time ago. Pedestrians, yes, do have something to fear from collisions with cyclists, collisions both can usually avoid by purging their minds of half-century-old delusions. Hostile motorists, on the other hand, may want to consider anger management as well as education, since what they drive meets the legal standard of a deadly weapon. The number of drivers hostile to bicycles has been slowly shrinking over the last 30 years, at least in my experience, but the ones who remain seem dedicated to making up the difference with aggressiveness and noise.

The circle of pedestrian blaming cyclist, cyclist blaming pedestrian, motorist blaming cyclist, etc., ad nauseam, resembles nothing so much as Thomas Nast's noted 19th century cartoon of the Tweed Ring, with everyone pointing the finger of blame at their neighbour:




In fact, everyone should be pointing that finger at themselves.


Speaking objectively, what makes a certain portion of motorists so enraged at cyclists? Probably one part is an unwillingness to share the road: note that motorcyclists report similar experiences. It's a commonplace among them that noisy pipes are a defence mechanism: the loud exhausts make the presence of a motorcycle patently obvious. The pipes plus the leathers plus the reputation make motorcyclists too intimidating for all but the most psychotic of drivers to cross. This does not work for bicyclists.

Further, all drivers are sometimes pedestrians, and most pedestrians are sometimes drivers. Despite the trouble both have in respecting the other's space, neither can claim ignorance of the other's experience.

A much smaller proportion of the population are adult cyclists. Thus we have ignorance of rights and of physics; thus we have invisibility, and thus we have a eagerness to shift blame onto the piece of the equation most people do not understand.

No one around here should put on airs and compare themselves favourably with other road users. In global public opinion, everyone occupying Greater Boston streets is almost as hostile and homicidal as Boston drivers, whose hostility is legendary the world over. The average performance of Boston cyclists can only rise above the norm if all cyclists originated in another dimension. At times, everyone concerned seems to think this is true.

If I weren't writing this, I'd already have forgotten those pedestrians (and the wrong-way bikers who complicated my life a couple of days before). Even writing about them, I'll forget the incidents I've mentioned in a fortnight. Why then is it necessary to nurse these grudges against cyclists for months, for years, for a lifetime? Does life offer nothing better?

The curse of three.., sort of

There is this quartet of, umm, let's say connoisseurs of brewed alcoholic beverages, all of us (in theory) cyclists. In the recent past, we have suffered 50% casualties, and the question has been who would be the unlucky third?

Casualty #1 occurred on a Metro area bike path. The cause is unclear, as the vic suffered a concussion, despite wearing a helmet, and can remember nothing before coming to on the ground.

Casualty #2 took place on a Boston street. The culprit is believed to be an oil slick. In this case, the vic broke his clavicle and an unspecified number of ribs.

Of the remaining candidates, one is sunning himself in Florida, and his bike is presumably still doubling as a laundry rack at home. I, on the other hand, have begun commuting by bike two days a week. Despite today's events, I will continue to ride.

There is a bicycle path between the Salem State campus and Marblehead. The Salem end is chastely paved, short, and a fraction of its potential. The Marblehead end is gravelled and negotiable even on skinny tyres. The junction between the two ends leaves much to be desired.

Salem's path meets Route 114 near the harbour, on the oblique, as the original railbed did. Continuing the oblique evidently struck Salem's crack highway engineers as untidy, so they supplied a standard crosswalk at right angles to the road. To hit off the Marblehead path, the cyclist must make a slight left, cross the road, and reach the far side to the right of the path. That's right: the cyclist is obliged to cross the road, take a sharp right, and ride against traffic for 50 yards or so: so much for the rule of law. This doesn't even take into account the barriers at the two bridges just beyond the entrance. Anyone who can get through the barrier much above walking speed is ready for the Tour de France.

One can do all this--just--if there are no distractions. Today, leaving aside the usual traffic, there was a motor scooter. The operator seemed a bit new to the machine, and was piddling down the road in a shaky and indecisive manner. he had clearly not discovered his turn signals, because he never used them. This made yours truly a little confused about Scooterman's intentions. At the last minute I decided to make for the sidewalk instead of the shoulder, since I was on a collision bearing with the scooter.

With my eye on the scooter, I failed to allow for two things: that the soil between shoulder and sidewalk was an unknown quantity, and that there was a sizeable tree inside the arc of my turn. (You see where this is going.) The soil was too soft to support a skinny tyred bike making a tight turn, and neatly pitched me into a turn with the tree as axle and my right arm and leg as bearings. Bare skin doesn't make a good bearing surface.

Meanwhile Scooterman had pulled up next the path entrance, and continued to show no sign of normal awareness, not even to look up and say "you all right?"

These are the sort of extensive abrasion that are not so bad now, but likely to be uncomfortable tomorrow. Considering the relative scale of injury, I ought to count this as 2 1/2, not 3. Meanwhile, I'm adding motor scooters to my cycling Enemies List. One ought to expect a shred of fellow feeling from someone else on two wheels, and that may happen with others. This scooterist had left his clue at home.

Potpurri

The sole benefit of living near the high school is being able to hear the outdoor band practices this time of year.

A biggy-size-it toy I detest is the "SUV stroller." Entitled suburban mothers already take up enough room, what with their obsession with breeding and with always walking side by side. Why add to that with baby conveyances the size of a Deux Cheavaux...then try to roll them in tandem into a small shop?

There will be more thoughts presently about Tyler Hamilton, as the other shoes drop over his--and others'--cycling confessions. My first immediate comment is addressed to those who took issue with my earlier defence of the homeboy: you were right, so there.

My second comment is to hope that this scandal has no effect on recreational and transportation cycling, now that both have at last gained some credibility in the auto-obsessed US of A. Past disturbances in the chi of bicycle racing have had negative effects on the use of bicycles at less exalted levels. For once, one can hope that public cynicism will do some good, and allow us to slough off the latest obnoxious pro sports drug spectacle.

Nice peoples

My friend Mass Marrier has been known to rant a little on bicycles. His comments are generally right, particularly when he speaks of two things: the purblind idiocy of most American public policy toward bicycles as transportation, not children's toys; and how the existence of anything human-powered on two wheels brings out the asshole in the majority of Massachusetts drivers.
(I wasn't born here either, so I don't think that asshole is very deeply buried.)

Now that I'm back on the bike for commuting, I've been reminded that there is another form of idiocy afflicting adults on bicycles: the nice people.

The obverse of the coin of disdain for cyclists is represented by the asshole effect. The nice people are the reverse. Like the assholes, the nice people assume that if you are on a bicycle you, not they, are lacking something in the upper storey. The nice people offer a new spin on Richard Ballantine's hypothesis that you on a bicycle are invisible to drivers. The nice people can see you, but they cannot figure you out. This is sometimes true of the assholes, too, but the assholes project and figure that if they don't have a clue, it's your fault. Being innocent of the law, the nice people think: "bicycle: mind of a ten-year-old. Treat the cyclist like a child."

At one point on my route, I leave a bike path and immediately execute a 90 degree turn right to get to the street crossing, then execute a 90 degree left. This slows one down, especially on fat tyres. The nice people, meanwhile, stop as soon as I exit the bike path. They hold up two lanes of traffic until I've completed my gymkhana maneuver and regain forward motion. The nice people certainly don't understand my scowl as I get underway.

Lest one think this is an argument against bike paths, much the same happens in traffic. When I want to make a left turn, I signal left, hog my lane, and put a foot down to stand if necessary. I expect... demand... that traffic in the opposite lane should keep moving until it's clear for me. Noo! The nice people arrive and stop dead as my bracing foot hits the ground, then don't understand that I don't exactly do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds.

I think I'll resort to a tactic that served me well in my younger cycling days: wait. You, nice person, have the right of way. I am a vehicle obligated by the laws of the Commonwealth to yield the right of way. I'll wait until hell freezes over to see if you get the point.