I saw this guy the other day, on a bike, seemingly following traffic laws, which was a good thing and something everyone who rides a bike should strive to do. Not because traffic laws always fit perfectly to riding a bike on the road, they sometimes don’t, but because doing so helps keep the peace. Violating traffic laws, running stop signs and the like, merely pulls a pin on a potential hand grenade.

Since I’ve been so obsessed over this asphalt dynamic lately I laid off the gas to watch this guy and his performance as he approached the biggest intersection in town (yeah, I know, I live in a small town, there is but one biggest intersection believe it or not). This intersection is so big if you can imagine, that it even has a left turn lane complete with a left arrow light to guide you on your way!

Okay, so this cyclist came over from the right shoulder in the northbound lane, as he should have, crossed two lanes of highway and came to stop behind three cars waiting in this left turn lane to go west onto the mountains. In a few seconds, the red arrow predictably turns bright green…and what does my impatient, spandex clad friend do? He out accelerates, out sprints if you will, the three cars in front of him and passes them on the left, in the intersection, as they were turning.

My switch flipped. WTF!  I was trying to admire a responsible cyclist and then this…a real slap inmy motorist face.  One minute driving along, then the next minute I was gripping and shaking the steering wheel like I’m trying to subdue a boa constrictor that found it’s way into my trucks cab. Then I caught myself, began running those thoughts of vehicular manslaughter through my rational brain, and calmed down. Mindfulness thankfully at work.

In my experience, the vigilante justice dished out on the street to an errant cyclist is often ill befitting of the crime, a felony conviction for the likes of jay walking. At times, it reeks of middle school, of the schoolyard, and the bullying that had me thrown in a big green dumpster more than once during recess. This guy, however, really crossed the line in my opinion and should have been ticketed somehow. Aside from the rule breaking, every driver there that day that witnessed that stupidity has a bad taste for cyclists thanks to his actions.

Let’s be honest. What are you really saying to the driver of an auto when you run a stop sign right past a guy who was looking both ways long before you were there? It’s like saying a big “Screw You Buddy!” that’s what, and it’s just not right in the moral sense. Why wouldn’t he be pissed? It’s like continually goading your overweight coworker about his morning cruller until he snaps while you fill up your mug at the office coffee pot and socks you one, squarely in your big, fat mouth. What did you expect?

That incident in the intersection and my reaction to it gets to the very heart of my argument and the whole point of this blog. At the moment I witnessed the so-called knucklehead, my mind was firmly in the group “Motorists” and that guy on the bike…well, undoubtedly, firmly in the group “Cyclists”…how do I know? Because I’ve been there, many-a-time, in both groups.

When I’m in my truck and see someone sneak through a light just after it turns red or make a turn without signaling, I notice…but I don’t have the urge to chase them down and verbally bitch-slap them like I might when I see a cyclist do it something similar. Why? Because the other car is part of my tribe, part of my group when I identify myself as a motorist sitting behind the steering wheel.

Now it starts to get weird…when I throw a leg over my single-speed townie bike in my street clothes to do some errands around the big metropolis of Bishop, CA, I don’t feel like a cyclist. I’m on a bike, sure, but don’t define myself as a cyclist in this instance; my group-view is just as it is when I’m driving, a motorist, and I do my best to follow traffic laws just as I would if I was in my Ford F-150.

And now it gets a bit crazy…when I throw a leg over my race bike, shave my legs, and don my spandex cycling kit, I change into a different beast entirely. I identify myself as a “Cyclist” and I wholly, consciously and subconsciously, become a part that group and all-together separate from the group “Motorist” yet using the very same road.

I become the cyclist that sees the road as a limited resource, a creek full of fish, and begin to compete. There is even an accompanying feeling of somehow being a freedom fighter that courses through my veins as I ply the streets, at odds with the imperial, subverting, car driving motorist. Seizing lane space not because I have to, to ride safely, but because of a strange feeling of obligation to “teach” motorists to share, show them that cyclists belong here as much as they do. I don’t think twice about blowing through stop signs or distractedly screwing with my playlist; cars are viewed as adversarial–and their rules? Their motorist rules just don’t apply to me. In short, I act like the very knucklehead I described above.

What the hell is going on here? Am I a madman? No. In either case, whether I’m pissy with a road-hogging cyclist, or fighting for road space clad in spandex, it’s all very automated and subconscious. It’s my primate brain doing what it’s always done and trying to keep me safe. Literally, worlds are colliding, the present and the ancient past, right there and I really have to pay attention, be mindful, of what’s going on in my head or else I get all caught up in the senseless roadside drama.