Violence, Fate and the Cyclist…A Real Mixed Bag!
I used to challenge every single homicidal motorist who gave me the finger, honked viciously or waved a baseball bat my way. –Until I realized that they were neither thinking nor caring one way or another. They are automatons. And wouldn’t remember the next day if they in fact ended up killing me. I used to stand up on behalf of all cyclists. Here was one who’d fight back. I’d chase em down, too. Beat on their roof, kick their doors. Chased down and dowsed a carload with water on two different occasions. Boy that got em mad.
But in truth, such behavior is coming down to their level. I can feel the thinking go out of me. Suddenly I’m just reflex. That’s how they live their whole lives maybe! They don’t know they’re being taught a lesson when I chase em down. They don’t know anything. My effort is a total waste. Funny, how the realization of this has totally taken the desire from me to fight with them. Did I isolate the desire to fight to the desire to teach? Weird!
Even if I beat them up, no light would shine in their eyes. If I chased them down mountain switchbacks at 50 mph and beat up a whole carload, THEY WOULD NOT BE IMPRESSED. No thought is involved in the anger they express as they try to run me off the road. They’re not even homicidal. Homicide requires intention. These ‘people’ are lower than that. Truly their lives are nearly complete pieces of unaware reflex. If they ever hurt you, they wouldn’t even know it in any real sense. Sure, courts would deal with it, etc. But it would NEVER be worth A SECOND of your time.
If I ever have anything to do with my own death, it will be so that someone worth my while was involved. (How is that even possible? Maybe in war, but would I ‘do’ a war?) Otherwise I AM NOW AVOIDING IT as best I can. I will no longer dance that stupid dance with those idiots.
For the first time, I waved at a menacing neanderthal the other day. Who knows maybe he woulda been the one who killed me. I saw the beady eyes looking in the rearview. He even swerved his 4WD rig trying to see what I was doing back there. He hit his brakes. But kept on rolling.
It might be hard to always ignore the beasts, but I’m very surprised already to feel my own anger dying off. We’ll see this summer!
Here’s yet another twist. I often ride a fully faired or regular recumbent now and motorists all like it! Kids, too! Much different vibe out there now. Not one menacing since I started riding it! I used to get one assault a week. I’m really enjoying the contact with kids and young people now especially! (Do motorists resent ‘naked’ cyclists? Maybe they like the novelty of the HPV…and can also just pass me instinctively like I was a car. Maybe having to be cautious around vulnerable regular cyclists reminds motorists how much they really hate being in a car. Weird stuff.)
I also wonder about my habit of riding on a very busy road. I am a very defensive rider. But I understand that the more intense the traffic situation, well, the more intense it is. If I get hit, I will be responsible. I knew what I was getting into. I didn’t have to ride there. That’s the big picture.
If I get hit, isn’t it more a case of luck catching up than some generic motorist being at ‘fault’ for not looking while turning? This is why they call it tragedy, folks. You take your lumps. You can’t fix life. It catches up to everyone. If it doesn’t kill ya the first, it’s just a reminder that it eventually will. No one gets out! All our lawsuits do not reflect true justice. They’re just our attempt to avoid responsibility and life and an arbitrary redistribution of money. Our attitude of not learning our lesson is probably more a waste than the carelessness of people who are at ‘fault.’ It’s kinda like people getting upset at being thrown in jail for being in a bar fight. Didn’t have to go to the bar. I don’t drive 500 miles to do bike/ski races anymore either. Why put myself in harm’s way? Would I really want to trade my nice car or my health for a bike event?
Yes, I have a new view of trouble. We’ll see how it pans out.
But at the same time I’m more realistic about taking care of myself than before. Fighting now takes a purely defensive mode instead of a teaching one. I realize that someday I may wave friendly-like at a swerving motorist and they might still get out of their car with a tireiron and charge me. I now feel I have a new duty in this regard.
I’ve thought about both mace and a pistol. Back in the old days there used to be ‘cyclist’s model’ pistols made for brigands and wild animals. Seems like those good old days are back again. No sense getting hurt if a loony truly goes loony. Along with my nonviolent stance comes a corrollary: if someone assaults me why should I have to fight back or even risk getting a bloody nose? I’d rather shoot em dead. Most likely I’d be saving LOTS of people LOTS of grief by offing such a beast. Just because they come at me doesn’t oblige me to join their dance in any sense, nor should I have to run–it may not help. Just point and shoot. That would work. I would clearly warn them of course. But even then: what if they were also carrying? No sense in giving them any advantage. Time is of the essence.
It seems that as soon as someone gives you permission to kill them by attacking you, that you should do it. Kinda weird in light of current thinking. But it’s actually respecting them—“Now that *is* a scary charge! I think you mean it! Pow!”
In the old days would a nobleman tolerate a scoundrel rushing him with a club? No, he’d cut him in two with his saber. Basically, at no time in history have decent people—if they had power to avoid it—tolerated assaults by verminfolk. (Peers would hold their temper after grievances so as to not break manners themselves and could challenge at duel usually as ‘decent’ revenge. But you didn’t owe any courtesy to an outright assault by a lowlife you don’t know.)
A person minding their own business they’re automatically ‘nobility.’ Anyone who assaults them forfeits protection. As I’m sure the assaulter realizes. When brutes attack innocents *they’re* well aware that if the person could do anything to defend themselves they should. It’s only the innocents who are ever worried about hurting anyone, even the attacker.
We moderns are in several contradictory positions. And I might well be in legal trouble. But do I really want to risk a bloody nose or experience a panicky run? Maybe lose my bike? Not a chance!
Several have posted about ‘what a world we live in that it’s come to this.’ It’s the same old world. And it’s always been this way. One most people from anywhere else in the world or any other point in time would have no doubts about how to handle.
Sense I’m being realistic here about tragedy, trouble and fate, I should add that I’d be more inclined to defend myself on my home turf. Americans greatly underestimate the safety staying home or in home territory gives them. The mobile unculture we’re developing of course also threatens and dilutes security like it wrecks every other real thing. Even in your own home town you may well have a sheriff who is a newcomer and could care less about reality. But perhaps that’s still the exception. The further we get from home the more danger we’re all in. People nowadays like to travel…but they also like fantasy…they don’t realize that not only their mode of travel endangers them truly, but the unfamiliar scene we think to be so much fun is also a danger. Of course danger is also fun, it being illegal for anything to go wrong.
JP
PS: I was raised around firearms and am safe with same, plus a very good shot.
PSS: I suspect that most homeless people start first by exerting an ego-mania against their families, then their friends, then their community. In a new community, they exert the mania against their last employer. They then have no support system other than the Fantasy Gov’t System. And they perish, in mind if not in fact. It’s a clear lesson in the Truth of Danger and the Safety of Home. (Home, of course, being What You Know—one can have a Bad Family and still have Friends, who are then Home to you, etc.)
