colorisnt
06-14-2013, 01:36 PM
I was on mile 100 for the week. About a mile from my parent's house in town. I was right by the courthouse at a rather busy intersection with a standard street crossing a 4-lane street at the light. Red light comes for us before I get to the light. I stop, of course. There's a lot of traffic on the cross-street. Because of the bad lights, trucks can't ever seem to time crossing these cross-streets right. So, now a semi is blocking the intersection. I can't get across because of the truck. All of a sudden I hear a horn BLARING behind me. I can see several cars behind me in my mirror and then this guy HANGING out of his car screaming at me, "Hey B*tch move your f*cking bike", I realize he's screaming.
I'm like, "Whut?" I scream back that he will have to wait his turn because NO ONE can move right now. What was I supposed to do, climb over the truck? Go through it? How would he have gotten through it?
I figured he would stop it but he came up around the right of me, went through two parking spots and around two cars in this HUGE SUV and starts screaming at me, swearing, carrying on.
I asked him what he thought any of us should do while waiting on traffic. The light takes forever, the truck was still stopped, and as long as I have been alive, this was the case.
He calls me "little lady" and then tells me that he could hurt me if he wanted to so I'm pretty brave. I told him to go ahead and try. I called his bluff. He goes, "this car could kill you". I said, "Yeah, but you're not gonna do that. There's cops, a courthouse, and a bunch of people." He then swears at me some more, tells me to learn the "laws of the bikes" and drove up over the curb, almost hitting pedestrians, to make a right. I never got his plate because he had Indiana plates (no front plate) and turned really fast out of there. I wish there had been a cop there. I was never afraid but boy was I mad! I'm glad no one got hurt and everything worked out but I couldn't believe he would talk that way to me. Guess he's just another idiot who expects I should ride on the sidewalk. This place isn't even as bad as MO usually because the volume of over-confident male cyclists is far lower here and there aren't bike lanes most places so people respect that they need to share the road rather than expect us to be segregated to often badly-designed bike lanes.
I'm like, "Whut?" I scream back that he will have to wait his turn because NO ONE can move right now. What was I supposed to do, climb over the truck? Go through it? How would he have gotten through it?
I figured he would stop it but he came up around the right of me, went through two parking spots and around two cars in this HUGE SUV and starts screaming at me, swearing, carrying on.
I asked him what he thought any of us should do while waiting on traffic. The light takes forever, the truck was still stopped, and as long as I have been alive, this was the case.
He calls me "little lady" and then tells me that he could hurt me if he wanted to so I'm pretty brave. I told him to go ahead and try. I called his bluff. He goes, "this car could kill you". I said, "Yeah, but you're not gonna do that. There's cops, a courthouse, and a bunch of people." He then swears at me some more, tells me to learn the "laws of the bikes" and drove up over the curb, almost hitting pedestrians, to make a right. I never got his plate because he had Indiana plates (no front plate) and turned really fast out of there. I wish there had been a cop there. I was never afraid but boy was I mad! I'm glad no one got hurt and everything worked out but I couldn't believe he would talk that way to me. Guess he's just another idiot who expects I should ride on the sidewalk. This place isn't even as bad as MO usually because the volume of over-confident male cyclists is far lower here and there aren't bike lanes most places so people respect that they need to share the road rather than expect us to be segregated to often badly-designed bike lanes.