Eirglish

The angry biker.

This is a persona I’m not particularly keen on displaying but it does rear it’s head every once in a while. I much prefer to be the nice courteous biker who stops traffic to let people cross the road when nobody else will…. That sort of thing. Sadly situations do occur that make my blood boil to the point where I have no option but to use expletives. This usually allows the subject to understand that they have done something to attract my attention. two of those occasions happened within three minutes and 300 yards of each other on my way home this evening.

Situation one. A set of lights at a pedestrian crossing go red. This allows me to pass the three vehicles in front of me to get to the front of the line safely. For some reason the red van coming the other way decided that as his van was also red he didn’t need to stop. Very nearly took out the woman crossing; swore at her as she was obviously stupid to be crossing the road when the lights instruct her to and then stared blankly at me as I called him a “very sill man who should pay more attention to the road ahead”.

So, two cyclists proceed to cross in front of me as we all shake our heads in dismay at what has just occurred. The light goes green and off I go. Then…..

Situation two. I accelerate up to about 40Kmph and out of a turning on the left an elderly gentleman in a silver Yaris takes a good look at me and just when he’s sure it’s dangerous pulls out into my lane of traffic. Now the turning circle on a Yaris is pretty good and still he requires half of the oncoming lane to get round this wide open corner. So, I jam on both brakes and drop down to about 5Kmph about three inches from his bumper. A short way ahead the traffic stops and I pull along side his open window and say something along the lines of “excuse me sir. Did you not see that I was there? Maybe you should go to an optician for a test?” He sits staring at the car in front with hands at the ten to two position and makes like I’m not there.

Ignoring me just wound me up so I pulled in front and have a rev of the throttle to which he responded by revving his engine and trying to make his bumper kiss my back wheel. My reaction to this was to knock into neutral and kick out the side stand with the intention of having a “wee chat”. I haven’t seen blood drain from somebody’s face that quickly in a while. The little Yaris was placed into reverse as he attempted to start a “get around the biker and run” maneuver. I wheeled the bike back to stop him. It was at this stage I gave a polite “wave of the hand” and pootled off.

I think seeing the fear that the concept of an angry biker shouting at him caused managed to reduce my blood pressure and as such I was happy and enjoyed the rest of the run home. I know that bikers can be idiots and sadly they’re the ones that get remembered. That doesn’t give drivers of other vehicles the excuse to be ignorant idiots and do things that may cause other people their lives. I’ll just stick with my biking mantra: “Ride like every other road user has full intention of killing you!” It has served me well…..