BIKE: Re: If biking is so fun, why am I so grouchy?

[dana_price]

Mike,

Thank you! You got it, exactly! And you helped my attitude too. I'm in the
MOLCMR phase. And it's lonely and stressful. Next year will some of y'all
ride to Wildlife Expo with me? There were 22,000 people there and I only
saw one other cyclist.

The situation would not have been at all stressful normally. I've biked to
this event for 3 years now. This was a situation where normally left turns
*are* allowed. Saturday they were allowed. Sunday the traffic controllers
arbitrarily decided they wouldn't allow left turns, so I was surprised.
Yes, I was indignant. The only vehicular option left (if I couldn't get
onto Burleson going west as I wanted to) was to proceed to hwy 183 or Ben
White. Thus an area that was bikeable had been turned into one that
wasn't. And that's why at that moment I felt that my rights were violated.
BIKES ARE NOT CARS. Even though we're supposed to follow the same rules,
the rules (especially temporary, made-up ones) are not always safe and
practicable for bikes.

Of course it made sense to pedestrianize and I realized this as soon as
the suggestion was made. It's just that I wasn't expecting it at that
place and time.

Mike, thanks for hitting on the bigger issue and finding the lesson here.
I've become very sensitized to injustice, real or perceived- maybe reading
too many letters in Cycling News and stuff on the website. So I tend to
react negatively too quickly.

Dana

>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 20:02:54 -0500
> From: Librik or Babich <mlibrik>
> Subject: Re: BIKE: If biking is so fun, why am I so grouchy?
> To: bike <forum>
> Message-ID: <416495BD.EAB966DD>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>> So I hope I'm getting this straight:
>> On the one hand, you're mad that your rights are being violated,
>> and on the other hand you expected to be able to turn left (as a
>> vehicle) when cars weren't being allowed to do so?
>
> As so often happens, Mr. D observations are accurate, but some evil
> enchanter has caused him to state them in so brusque a manner that he
sounds like some kind of asshole, which he is not.
>
> dana_price wrote:
>
>>I love riding my bike. But reading about and experiencing so many
>> negative >>encounters has left me really irritable. How do you keep a
positive attitude when you're always treated like a second class
citizen?
>>
> (snip)
>>
>>On the return trip yesterday, once we left the Expo grounds we were able
>>to ride on Smith School Rd. to the intersection at Burleson with no
>>problem. As I stopped at the intersection with my left-turn signal arm
>>extended, one of the traffic-control people asked "where are you going?"
>> I stuck my arm out more firmly, thinking "What part of a left hand turn
>>signal do you not understand?" She said "we aren't allowing left turns,
>>where do you want to go?" I immediately got upset. "HOME! and this is the
>>only way I can get there! Now let me make my turn!" Finally someone came
>>over and advised me to cross with the pedestrians (who were on the
>>opposite shoulder). So I did and we were soon underway. But Liam who
>>witnessed this all from the trailer was disturbed by the whole thing.
>
> Kudos to whoever it was that suggested that you "pedestrianize" the
> bicycle. It seemed from the way Ms. Price got into the expo center that
she is no stranger to this tactic. I think with more experience (and I
know Ms. Price already  has plenty of experience, but this is a subtle
situation not quickly mastered), the cyclist knows to immediately bail
out, pedestrianize thoroughly, get clear  of  the intersection, then
vehicularize once again and be off, thus letting the
> traffic control person off the hook. It seems clear from the description
> that  bicyclists were not being discriminated against (as if the cars
could turn left but not bikes, "because it isn't safe").
>
> Digressing for a moment, the development of my own odd style of biking in
> traffic went through a couple of distinct phases, and I imagine that I am
> not unique in this regard. The first phase was "curb hugger," based on my
> parents' warnings to stay of traffic on my wee bike. Then I got older,
grouchy and politicized, and I realized that I have rights dammit, and
that by exercising these rights I could get better treatment in traffic.
But I still did not quite get it right, thus entering the "My Own Little
Critical Mass Ride" phase.
>
> In this phase I tended to run up my own blood pressure along with that of
> the drivers around me. There are these big, sticky injustices hanging
off of the ugly and ubiquitous automobile problem, and so deep are these
ingrained in the culture that that the hopelessness of undoing them is
frustrating to a maddening degree. This leads to cyclists road raging
against incompetent
> motorists, which pretty well embodies the act of stressing out both
> oneself and
> the motorist in one's righteous indignation. But it is one's own stress
> that
> lingers, long after the motorist is gone, and must be lugged home.
>
> An incompetent motorist was not Ms. Price's problem, but the effect is the
> same. In frustration, coupled with a little righteous indignation, the
> cyclist
> is left stressed out by the encounter and feels miserable afterward. The
> presence of stress in traffic and its lingering effects is a subject of
> the
> Urban Cycling class. When a beginner, in the curb hugger phase, gets
> over-stressed by allowing traffic to pass them too close, he/she gives up
> and
> quits cycling, to society's detriment. When the more experienced cyclist
> in the
> MOLCMR phase gets over-stressed because of a perceived injustice, (s)he
> rages
> about with the old righteous indignation and then feels awful afterward.
> At
> least I know that I have.
>
> This problem can be overcome, and the MOLCMR phase eventually transcended,
> but
> the problem must first be identified. This is why Ms. Price's letter is
> significant food for reflection. No, there was not much cause for her
> feeling
> persecuted, as Mr. D succinctly pointed out. But I will bet that everyone
> must
> deal with this on the way to becoming a traffic ace.
>
> --
> Mike Librik, LCI #929
> Easy Street Recumbents
> 512-453-0438
> 45th and Red River St., thereabouts
> Central Austin
> info
> www.easystreetrecumbents.com
> www.urbancycling.com
>
> "Is it about a bicycle?"
>
>