For most of my adult life, I held an entirely fatalistic attitude towards the bicycle-automobile relationship. From riding my bike to work on Glover Rd in Langley where ignorant fuckheads would shout profanities and throw shit at me. To dodging the entitled fuckwads of North Vancouver in their BMWs and Audis trying to negotiate the proven-deadly cycling infrastructure of our city. To being grazed by obviously identifiable mountain biker fucksticks in their pickup trucks driving to exactly the same trailheads I was riding to. Well, I just came to terms with the fact that I was going to get completely creamed one day.
Sure, I’ve been hit by a car. More than once. But, I’ve been hit the way most people I know have “cracked a rib.” You know, back riding in a few days or a few weeks versus being reverse-impaled by my own skeletal system. My experiences are nothing. I know numerous people who have been FUCKED BY CARS. And not one of those people has been at fault. In multiple cases, they have been rear-ended minding their own business stopped at a red light! And what can you do? What can you do when someone pulls a right-hand turn RIGHT INTO YOU in a bike lane? What can you do when the delivery truck rubs you into a pack of parked cars? What can you do when the texting phone-fucker reverses on you at full speed in their Tesla?
And that’s why every time you see a cyclist get honked at when they’ve taken the lane to protect themselves, their face screws up like they’re using every ounce of adulting they have to not put their fucking bike through the driver’s windshield. Because every cyclist knows other cyclists who have been FUCKED BY CARS.
And when my daughter was born I became a lot less brave. And when I started taking her places by bike I became a total coward. I ride in alleys, paths, quiet streets that add kilometers to my destination if I have to – when I can. Every morning when my wife pedals to work I’m anxious from when she rolls out until she texts to say she made it okay. When I have to take a lane I turn and smile and wave to the driver behind me in hopes of pre-diffusing a shitty situation that is always a lurking potential in North Vancouver. It doesn’t matter who has the right of way if we’re the ones who are going to end up dead right? But it does matter.
And then in January 2019 when I heard that a genuinely sweet, very experienced, fellow cyclist named Mike McIntosh was killed avoiding a car door on Esplanade I added an entirely new level to my commuter cycling experience. I call it the ‘psych up.’ Oh yeah, I learned to watch mirrors a long, long time ago, but until Mike was killed, I honestly didn’t realize that I didn’t know what to do with that. What am I going to do when I’m pedaling along and I see that fucking zombie about to fling their door out wide? Tow my daughter out into traffic?! Fuck That! Fight every instinct. You just take that fucking door. Fight. Every. Instinct. Every time I see someone in their car as I’m riding up I remind myself: Just take that fucking door, Andrew. Just Take That Fucking Door, Andrew.
Hit the brakes hard, flex your arms and legs, hold that front-wheel arrow-straight and relax everything else, fight every instinct, and JUST TAKE THAT FUCKING DOOR.
Mike’s accused zombie was found not guilty today and dodged “a maximum $81 fine, including a victim surcharge.” Mike was a genuinely nice guy and though I only met him a couple of times between Different Bikes and Bikeroom, I can picture his wry smile every time a little bone of a cycling infrastructure upgrade pops up in North Vancouver. And I think about him every time I see a close call between a cyclist and a car – and I’m sorry to say that’s too often.