Maybe My Lowest Moment

I use my bike to get around. I enjoy riding it, theoretically. In the vacuum of space, I can imagine the wonderful time I could have on a 10-speed in the handful of seconds before my lungs explode, likely causing my death. If I was ever caught in "Time Enough at Last," that Twilight Zone episode where all humanity disappears save one book loving nearsighted gentleman, you can't even fathom how much joy biking would bring me. 

However, I'm biking in the real world, with cars and pedestrians and other bikers. They are not all assholes. Well, all the other bikers are assholes, but I can understand why they develop their unpleasant personality traits with each bike journey I take. 

It does not help that I am not a skilled cyclist. I may never become one. To the best of my knowledge, I am the clumsiest human in the state of Oregon. Couple that with the self diagnosed developmental topographical disorientation I'm pretty sure I suffer from, and you have a recipe for quadriplegia at some later date. 

Still, I try to make the best of it. Whenever I need to take a left hand turn, I go to the sidewalk, get off my bike, and wait for the pedestrian lights to tell me what's what. I don't ride my bike across the crosswalk, because I'm a stickler for the law. In fact, much of my bike riding is more bike walking, as though I treat my bike as a sentient and exotic pet. 

What I'm getting to is, I am absolutely horrified during most bike related commutes. It does not matter how often I do it. I may be getting more skilled and less likely to cause a terrible accident, but I don't feel it. 

I discovered something about myself while biking earlier today that I wish to share with you. This is what happened: 

I rode my bike up Lombard, in the suburbs of Beaverton. I just passed Stars Cabaret. I was in my bike lane - the right one this time, the one that goes with traffic, and I felt pretty okay about myself. Then - 

HAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

was yelled directly into my ear. It needs to be seen as an independent paragraph, larger and bolded, to convey just how unexpected and jarring this yelling was to me. My inadequacies are so acute on a bike that I must be hyper attenuated to the sounds of the road if I want to live, so this screech - already bellowed with the volume of a My Bloody Valentine live show - really fucked with me. 

It is at this point we learn the difference between me on a bike and me in everyday life. As a bipedal, I shy from conflict. As a biker, I am like Craig T. Nelson: I run crew deep, and if you fuck with Dauber, I will take you out. 

 

I turned around, got off my bike, and confronted these two girls who I now recognize were high school students on their way home. 

"Excuse me," I said with extraordinary forced politeness, like Henry Rollins or something. "Why did you just yell at me like that? I wasn't doing anything and you really should be a human being and not screw around with people." 

Those may not have been my exact words, but I was not swearing or yelling. Not at that point. 

The two girls, of course, started giggling to each other as I wrapped up my introductory remarks. Now, it was at that point that I went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond the pale. I attacked their appearances. I attacked their parent's proficiency at sexual intercourse (for some reason). Did "cunt" slip out my lips? Why yes, it did. Did I call these kids "whores" & "sluts" in the same sentence I hypothesized they would "die virgins?" You bet! 

It felt good for about 3 seconds to let all that frustration out. Then it felt horrible. I didn't let that stop me. I didn't stop. I looked preposterous, flinging my bike helmut to the ground, yelling the worst things I could think of at teenage girls. Now I was too far in it to extricate myself with any kind of grace from the encounter. I wasn't going to leave these two high school girls until I'd hurt them bad with my cutting, Oscar Wilde like wit. 

Also, these fucking kids wouldn't apologize for yelling at me! I'm well aware that I had long ago ceased as the aggrieved party, but what was in it for these two chuckleheads? What did they gain by holding their "sorry" inside their dumb fat little teenage heads? In retrospect, I'm pretty sure they were too scared to say anything at the raving lunatic in front of them.

It took me far longer than it should have to notice the countenance of these two kids betrayed real fear. Yes. I scared the hell out of two teenage girls as I'd never scared anyone before in my life. And then I just turned around and left on my bike. And here I am now, typing it up. 

And now I'm going to play guitar or something to soothe this stuff out.