I hear the words “Get. A. Car!” My hackles rise up and instinctively my right-hand drops for the ABUS Bordo lock that, purposefully, is not there. Simultaneously, I drop my head in case a beer can, or worse, is already flying in my direction. Nothing comes. It is still two blocks before I can see properly and my breathing returns to normal. I spend the whole ride home in a Fort Langley flashback.
As much as I try to stick to quiet out-of-the-way routes, back alleys, and the better bike lanes. As much as I yield right of way. As much as I adorn myself in lights like a Christmas tree. As much as I relax, wave, and smile. As much as I’m a chill middle-aged fellow. I cannot seem to make it through a single week commuting my bike to work and home without fighting back my beast at least once.
Honk at me when I take the lane at Brooksbank turning left on to Main. I will politely wave back at you. Honk at me twice, I will turn my head to look. Honk at me thrice and give me that stupid fucking sideways-sweeping-the-street wave and quite honestly, I am not paying attention to you anymore. I am paying attention to me. If my daughter is in the cargo carrier or on her trailer bike, doubly so.
My life, our lives, are worth infinitely more than your three seconds inconvenience waiting to make a right hand turn into the next traffic clog or red light. The bellicose way you wield a few tonnes of automobile makes the beast in me want to put a kilogram of bike lock through your driver side window and pull you out on to the rain-soaked street. I am a different person. Andrew stashed that lock where I cannot find it.
In every other facet of my life, I will smile and turn the other cheek. Make a joke. I will curse you under my breath. I will near-instantaneously get over it. But I have been sick and tired of feckless drivers threatening my life as a pedestrian and cyclist for so long that I simply go to another place when it happens. I do not own an umbrella anymore.
The proven-deadly local cycling and pedestrian infrastructure was all designed to minimally inconvenience cars for the smallest investment. I mean, if you do not buy gas do you even pay taxes? I have zero doubts that I am my only protection. Unless I am lying in a pool of my own blood in a Lonsdale crosswalk or a Glover Rd ditch, I am 100% on my own and responsible for my own retribution.
It’s nearing twenty years since I regularly commuted by bike from 203rd in Maple Ridge, across the Albion Ferry, to 203rd in Langley. I have not had a driver purposely swerve over at me, been pelted with a beer can, smashed a mirror with a u-lock, been doored*, been hit, or heard the words “buy a car” every damn day for a long time now. No routine daily morning and evening cups of blind rage for me.
I am hoping that in another twenty years, drivers will be bike-aware or even bike-friendly to the extent that riding a bike can be the fun, healthy, traffic reducing, life-improving mode of transportation that it has the potential to be. Then when my friend jokingly calls out “get a car” it will just dumb, not enraging.
*though I have had some near-doorings