Shaking My Confidence

[Tri Girl]

Amanda, how scary. Glad that you're ok and that you went for a long ride alone today! It IS hard to get back out there and feel confident, but you will before long. Do you have a rearview mirror so you can see upcoming cars behind you before they get close? I used to secretly make fun of those silly looking mirrors, but now I wouldn't be caught dead on the streets without it. I like that I can see what's coming up on me, and that I can be on the lookout for crazy hooligan drivers before they sneak up on me. I'm dorky on my bike now (especially when I commute). I have a neon green/yellow vest and my mirror. At least I know they can see me- problem is that sometimes they don't care if I'm there or not. Ex: the other day on a deserted stretch of road- three lanes wide- the car in my lane would NOT move over and buzzed me. There were THREE freakin' lanes for him to move around me. Grrrrr... He got the f word from me. I'm quick to anger sometimes, and now maybe I'll consider turning that anger into memorizing his/her plates.

Barb- I hope the officer puts the fear into that hoodlum-y boy. Hopefully he scares the crap out of him. And since I teach, I guess I know better than to think that the parents will be disappointed and punish him. There are so many parents who will defend their child to the death (even in the midst of alarming evidence), that I hope his parents are truly good and will come down hard on him.

[Mr. Bloom]

OK, I'll come clean, I didn't follow my own advice.

Today someone came too close to us, I signaled to him to get over...he gave me a "signal back".

SOOOOOOOO......I chased him! I almost caught him too! I was simply going to inform him that I was within the law and he wasn't!

Don't worry, there wasn't ANY traffic and I wasn't being unsafe, but I do wish I had caught him.

Can you see where on the ride this happened?????

[northstar]

I got buzzed by a honking Suburban yesterday on a residential street with virtually NO traffic, and I was riding about three feet from the right curb. (They started laying on the horn about a block back, buzzed within two feet of me, then layed on the horn again and sped away.)

I think I am going to start playing a game with myself on the bike where I read plates of vehicles that pass me and chant/repeat them to myself for a block or so every once in a while. I was TOTALLY shaken up by what happened and now that I know MN has a website where you can submit reports of aggressive driving (and apparently they send the owner of the vehicle a letter) I want to be sure I can start feeding in the reports when needed.

[Mr. Bloom]

and now that I know MN has a website where you can submit reports of aggressive driving (and apparently they send the owner of the vehicle a letter) I want to be sure I can start feeding in the reports when needed.

Now, THAT'S cool!

[Geonz]

I got buzzed by a honking Suburban yesterday on a residential street with virtually NO traffic, and I was riding about three feet from the right curb. (They started laying on the horn about a block back, buzzed within two feet of me, then layed on the horn again and sped away.)

I think I am going to start playing a game with myself on the bike where I read plates of vehicles that pass me and chant/repeat them to myself for a block or so every once in a while. I was TOTALLY shaken up by what happened and now that I know MN has a website where you can submit reports of aggressive driving (and apparently they send the owner of the vehicle a letter) I want to be sure I can start feeding in the reports when needed.

I kind of do this already. Taking a visual "snapshot" and then a few quick recitations finding patterns in the numbers, chunking them into pairs and threes if necessary, and I can have it in short term memory pretty quickly. Okay, I do it enough so that I know at least ten of my friends' license plates - when I wave at them driving by, it's 'cause the license plate jumped at me, not their faces.

HOWEVER... priorities, please! Three of us were resting off the road once... but not quite far enough off the road... when this car careens around a corner at us. Yours Truly thinks "A-hole! Let me get your license number!" - fortunately, my friends were hauling their bikes and butts out of the way when the driver clipped off a wheel, went across the street and mowed down a mailbox, veered back, stopped and then started backing up ... *then*, (having seen one too many Rockford Files episodes) I started across the cornfield, sure he/she/it was coming back to finish us off. (She wasn't.)

I realized I should have MOVED first... then gotten license plates .

Fortunately, a week later when a truck started coming right at me making a left hand turn and cutting the corner across my position in *my* left hand lane, I MOVED and he only clipped my basket. (Oddly, before or since, I have not been struck.)