My friend (we’ll call him “Mike”) is telling the story to everyone at the table out on the patio at the brew pub. It’s a beautiful night, we’ve all just come in from a great run around the base and we’re having a beverage and nachos to celebrate. But I’m barely hearing what he’s saying. Not that I’m going deaf. I just can’t wrap my head around it. He told us that he was riding his bike along Middle Road in the bike lane, minding his business, when his rear tire flatted out. No, “exploded” is a better description. The tire literally shredded itself with a huge “bang!” He skidded over to the ditch and luckily, avoided injury. The bike shop guy who fixed it for him said he’d heard of someone spreading tacks on the road there “because of all the bikes.” All of us at the table agreed that 1) that would be awful if it were true, because it means an insane person is trying to injure people, and 2) there’s a good chance this is just another urban (okay suburban) legend. I’m leaning toward option #2 myself.
What sucked was that I had a bike story that I had to tuck away until now: When I ride home on Front Road, I get a bit stressed going through the construction where the lane is down to 1.5 lanes for two way traffic. The bike lane has been reduced to nothing. Some drivers can be real jerks when they encounter a bike in this situation by driving too close, too fast and with too little thought for the person riding (or the people doing the construction work just a few inches away on the other side of the cones). So yesterday as I’m about 1/2 way through the scary part doing a crazy 27 kph, a big truck comes up behind me…I brace myself, looking for the place where I’ll crash and roll, but…nothing happens. The driver stayed about 20 metres back the whole way until we hit open road again. At that point he gave me a wave and went way over to the left as he slowly drove by. This guy blocked for me!
Mike’s story was great. It had everything: action, drama, conflict, and crazy conspiracy theories. People love that stuff!
Mine by comparison was kind of dull. Some guy did some decent thing for some other guy. Who wants to hear about THAT?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 10:20 am by Jim Elyot and is filed under Jim Elyot, Morning Rush, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.