Adventures In Bicycling: The crazy, honking, old man

Posted By Hup | November 4, 2008

Each weekday morning I ride my bike to the CalTrain station here in Palo Alto, then I take my bike on the train up to San Francisco(there’s a bike car) and finally I ride my bike from the CalTrain station to my office up in San Francisco. It’s not a ton of riding, but for the short amount of ride time there always seems to be plenty of action. I figured that some of this action would be good to document, so I’m going to start posting the random and usually funny stories that happen to me as I continue to brave the bike rides up to San Francisco and back.

Today was pretty funny due to a white-haired old man that was driving a Subaru Outback down the road today as I was hauling ass to the CalTrain station(I’m always cutting it close, of course). When I’m cruising at ‘Damn, I might be late’ speed in the morning I can practically keep up with the cars on the one-way that I speed down, due mainly to the fact that I don’t stop at any 4-way stops. This method is neither safe nor legal as far as I know, but it gets me there on time so I go with it.

Well, as I was speeding along and creeping up on a Subaru Outback on the right side of the road, the white-haired driver must have found a parking spot that he wanted to squeeze into, so he slammed on his brakes without giving me any type of turn signal or anything that would have let me know his intentions. This is no big deal to me and my superior bike skills, even if I was half-asleep and riding like I stole something. I simply swerved into the left lane of the one-way, passed the old-man-turned-parallel-parking-expert and kept peddling towards the train, which was set to arrive at any second.

For some reason this must have really pissed this old guy off and instead of pulling into the spot he decided to step on the gas, lay on his horn and try to catch up to me as I continued towards my nearly unattainable goal at this point of actually making the 7:14am train. As he kept on inching closer to me while honking and looking really mad I just kept on peddling, even though I really, really wanted to see what he wanted to say to me once he caught up. But, instead of stopping I just looked back at him a few times with a ‘What the hell, dude!??!’ as he followed me for over 2 blocks while he honking got became even more mad at the fact that I was an out-of-control bicyclist in Palo Alto. I was getting a real kick out if it at the time, but obviously he wasn’t.

If I didn’t want to catch that particular train, I would have so stopped so that he could lecture me on whatever was on his mind this morning while trying to literally hunt me down in his SUV. I started wondering what he would have said if I actually would have stopped. Maybe he was scared for my safety? Maybe he had been hit on a bike before and wanted to warn me that my unsafe ways are a surefire way to get hit, too? Maybe he just needed some coffee and was pissed off at the world and wanted to vent. Unless I somehow get to see him again, I guess that I’ll never know. But, one thing that I do know is that I’ll have another Adventure In Bicycling - there’s no doubt about that.

Filed Under adventures in bicycling, random thoughts

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    One Talkie! to “Adventures In Bicycling: The crazy, honking, old man”

    1. sWell on November 17th, 2008 7:36 am

      i don’t know why, but a lot of motorists REALLY hate bicyclists. it can be super-scary!

      i hope none of them get too nasty with you, though, but i look forward to reading more stories.

      (anyway, that old man was probably jealous because he probably has forgotten how to ride a bicycle.)

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