point well taken

It was a lovely evening, so i decided to go on my normal 24 mile tour of cedar rapids. 80% of the route is nature trail and most of the remaining 20% consists of low traffic roads. wouldn't you know it, on the one short section of a busy road i ended up almost getting hit by a guy on his phone in a brand new ford f-150. as he went by, he indicated that he thought i should move farther to the right (i was riding to the right already). so, i went through the normal motions of cursing (he couldn't hear me) and indicating my displeasure with hand movements.

here is where the story is different though. i motioned for him to come and talk to me, really i wanted to just talk and explain to him why i have a right to ride there. i pulled off almost immediately after he passed me (this is my normal route)--so he saved a total of 3 seconds by passing me too closely--and expected to see him just down the road i was now riding. as expected, we had a meeting.

it was a little heated at first, with him telling me i should be farther right and that the law said i should. after calling his bluff and asking if he knew the law several times, he calmed down as i explained where a person on a bicycle should be. though he never acknowledged i was right, his language and motions seemed to indicate he had conceeded. however, through our 5-10 minute talk i conceeded to his points as well.

he was driving a huge f-150, brand new and shiny. through our talk he pointed out some obvious things, his truck is huge and weighs 3000+ pounds and in comparison i am tiny and insignificant. this is completely known to me and therefor not too scary. but, almost in passing he mentioned some very scary things about his driving. 1) his vehicle has several blind spots...why would you drive this thing? 2) he talks on the phone all the time while driving...always a great idea. 3) he thought if he ran me over it would be no big deal to himself, i was the one at fault...we all know the answer to this. 4) never did he think about hitting the brakes, when i mentioned the brakes as an option to avoid rearending a cyclist, he was more worried about the car behind him not paying attention and hitting his truck...could be true, the driver behind him may be as bad at driving as him 5) maybe the most entertaining was him saying that if he still drove his hummer he may have hit me...thank god he stepped down to the huge 4wd ford. 6) he mentioned the fact that he was all about widening the roads...why not drive a smaller car? 7) "why not ride the sidewalk?"...we need some sort of education on cyclists' rights in drivers education courses.

so, thank you sir. you opened my eyes. your terrible ability to focus on driving and telling me about it may save my life in the future. i thought most people were terrible drivers before talking to you, now i know many are especially terrible and drive huge unmanueverable vehicles. i should mention that this driver was very nice and not in my face and things like that and i thanked him for this. i should also mention that i remained relatively calm and didn't make any remarks about how i hope gas prices go up to $5 a gallon and how he was an idiot for talking on the phone and driving, though i wanted to very much.

so that was an interesting way to end a ride.