Note to "Cheer Mom": Open You Mother&$%# Eyes

These days, I am a busy person. I don't have a lot of time to fart around when I'm always running late to my next appointment with my obligations and duties as a daddy and a bike shop owner guy.

I ride a regular route to and from my home and my shop. Sometimes I run down a quiet side street, Manitou - but mostly (when I have no baby in my cargo bike) I haul ass on Lincoln Heights' main commercial drag: North Broadway.

This Thursday, I had a special bundle of bike stuff in my bakfiets: four wicker baskets and a bike in a box (straddling the bakfiets). I do stuff like this all the time, it's not a big deal for me any more and my ride to "the office" coincides with light mid-day traffic of the unemployed, the lazy, the stay-at-home, or the government/service worker. It is a totally uneventful ride that allows the stresses of home life to be overtaken with the stresses of work life, sometimes with one set of stress overlapping the other when someone from either world calls me (or people from both worlds call me simultaneously on both of the phones I have now) during my commute.

Wednesday was rainy. Thursday was hot. I was pissed off, tired, and running late. A bike was straddling my cargo bike so I had to take the full lane on Broadway.

I was hauling ass, keeping up with the cars and trying to keep my cool when some jerk accelerated around me, cut back in front of me and then hit her brakes at the stop light in front of us. "Cheer Mom" her rear window says in it's lower right hand corner. Right, spreading cheer the whole world over. This type of thing happens all the time. People just can't stand to be behind a bicycle, even when you're both going the damn speed limit.

Two intersections down Broadway and we're both stopped at the light at Griffin Avenue. The right hand lane is painted red (for right turns and slow vehicles), and the downhill portion of my ride is officially over. I pull my bike into the right hand lane, alongside "CheerMom". I don't care about what she did earlier - it is a natural human instinct to overtake those you perceive to be "slower" than you. Whatever. This isn't Copenhagen. This isn't even the Westside. Strictly working class, and my bike is a big question mark to everyone who sees it regardless of social class, so I'm the one not fitting in. Cut me off, it's cool, we're in Hard Driving Car Landia. Whatever.

I ride this street every day, and I think I know what is coming next. Cheer Mom will feel a tension when she sees me at the right hand side of her window. She will be afraid I'm crazy, or that I was offended, or simply that I will pull in front of her again.

I just want her to do what 99% of dumbasses like her do, and zoom away as fast as they can so I can resume taking up an empty right hand lane (moving at a slower pace) to my turn two blocks down the road.

The light turns green. She gets off to a slow start. I put my pedals in motion. We cross the intersection side by side.

My mind starts to tingle, "What the f*&^ is this idiot doing now?"

As we near the gas station on the opposite corner her car shimmies. No brake lights. no turn signals - the goddamn car is moving in my direction.

SHIT! My bike, if it gets broken, is not replaceable. I can't go to the local bike shop (i.e. my own) and slap some generic, out-of-the-catalogue parts on it. This bike is a freaky Dutch-made cargo bike - it is my everything. I ride my baby in it. I shop with it. I cannot afford, quite frankly, for it to be out of service for a single day - I will go broke without it. This idiot is going to trash my livelihood and my salvation.

I immediately start applying the brakes, but I'm under load with baskets and a bike straddling my bike and about 60 lbs. of assorted baby crap, blankets, crumbs and toys. There isn't enough room with the bike box on top - I'm almost as wide as a car.

"Hey! Hey! HEY! HEY!! HEY!!! HEY!! HEY!!!!", I yelled.

Whump shhhhfffbbbmmmmm.

Bitch hit the bike I was carrying. I was able to steer my bike out of the way and onto the curb cut the gas station has been provided with. The bike I was carrying (boxed up, thank god) got knocked to the ground. It stamps it's corner with with grit and slides to a stop. I am able to lunge off to one side while keeping my bakfiets mostly upright.

"What the f$%& are you motherf&%*$ trying to f*&$#@* do you pinche pendeja?! Open your f***** eyes puta!"

The passenger rolls the window down and extends his middle finger, "Fuck you!"

Note to Cheer Mom: open you mother&$%# eyes.

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Hat tip to Ted Rogers, Alex Thompson, Will Campbell, Gary Kavanaugh and others who've shared their ride reports and their reactions. Some day, my hard-riding brothas and sistas, these same jackasses who have spent fractions of their lives putting ours at risk will be toting their kids around in cargo bikes like mine and voting for politicians who bring home the bike lanes. Some day soon.