Week Twenty-Three - Day Three: Release the Beast

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 30 min.
TIME BACK: 33 min.
WEATHER: overcast, -7C (-13C with wind chill), 15 km/hr wind there; overcast, -6C, 9 km/hr wind back.
WHAT I WORE: warm-up pants, turtleneck, fleece mid-layer jacket, lobster gloves, balaclava
NOTES:

With a belly full of dinner and my toddler tucked away in bed, the events of the day take on a very different perspective. I feel calm now, content, at peace. Not every second word of my inner dialogue is a swear. However, earlier today, such was not the case.

It started when I was biking home on-road along 100th Avenue, along the northern ridge of the river valley. With the recent snowfall and mild weather, the terrain has been fairly treacherous - what snow exists on the ground is either slushy, mushy, mousse-like, hard-packed, or some combination thereof. This makes for some difficult biking because I never really know when I'm going to be able to plow through, get stuck, or end up sliding in any given patch of snow I have to go through. So I'm cautious: I bike slower than usual, take turns and curves at low speeds, and I "take the lane", which means that I bike as far to the right of a road lane as is safe, but sometimes that means taking up half the lane to bike in a tire rut.

I was doing my usual cautious riding today when a red minivan pulled up beside me. The passenger side window rolled down and all I heard was a woman yell at me: "Try using the bike lane!" before the minivan sped past without allowing me to respond. This woman's adorable little gesture of intolerance infuriated me.

A couple of blocks away, I ended up catching up to the minivan at a red light, and I was very tempted to knock on the window, ask her to roll it down again, and offer my reply. I would have liked to say something like, "Excuse me, ma'am, please allow me to retort. There are TWO reasons I am not using the bike lane: first, the only designated bike lane on this road is a contra-flow bike lane on the left side of the road, which is designated for cyclists traveling against traffic on a one-way street; second, the contra-flow bike lane is currently covered in snow. I understand that you don't like being held up behind me, but I have just as much of a right to be on this road as you do, so a little more courtesy would be most appreciated."

However, I didn't do this. The reason I didn't assert myself in this most informative way is because in the moment, I realized that there was no way that I would say anything like that. In fact, if I actually had confronted that woman, it probably would have been a lot more like this: "Fuck you, you ignorant, entitled bitch! You don't own this fucking road! Who the fuck do you think you are yelling at me from your tinted fucking windows - on a minivan?? what the fuck! - telling me how to ride when you don't even know what the fucking rules are. I have RIGHTS, mother fucker! AND I know your license plate number! So don't fuck with me!"

It's probably a good thing I bit my tongue.