The pickup that almost took me out today
All this talk about idiot motorist lately and I was thinking how lucky I am that my commute is pretty tame and the drivers are generally courteous. Not so on my way home tonight. I'm going down the one big hill on my commute, doing around 25 mph (where the speed limit is 30) using the center of the lane because the right side is too bumpy, when a car comes up behind me and passes in the other lane. That's fine, but there's a pickup truck behind that car which starts passing me also. The pickup starts in the far lane like the first courteous driver, but as he pulls even with me, he starts to cut back over and squeeze me to the right. I move to the right side of the road but he doesn't stop squeezing me. He pushes me down to the last 2 feet of pavement, and then there was a square grate in the road sunken 4 inches below the pavement that I'm rapidly approaching. If I hit that hole at my current speed I'd either wipe out or badly damage my rims. Luckily there was a thin strip of non-sunken pavement between the grate hole and the edge of the road which I managed to thread the bike through. By then the idiot in the pickup had gotten ahead of me so I could pull back over onto the road. I just coasted down the rest of the hill shaking my head. There was a woman behind me in another pickup who pulled next to me at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill and yelled out here window "He tried to take you out! What a jerk!"
Oil is good, grease is better.
2007 Peter Mooney w/S&S couplers/Terry Butterfly
1993 Bridgestone MB-3/Avocet O2 Air 40W
1980 Columbus Frame with 1970 Campy parts
1954 Raleigh 3-speed/Brooks B72