Share the Road
There’s an elderly urban cyclist cruising indefatigably around Southwest Portland. Today, I looked right at him and mouthed the word, “asshole.” He probably couldn’t lip-read because of the sun glare, but at least I got it out of my system. I can’t leave my house without seeing him, pedaling with dogged determination as rush hour in the burbs swirls around him, looking like a helmeted Dr. Benjamin Spock.
A simple run to the convenience market? He’s powering down a grade with no bike lane, making me fear for his life, and my blood pressure. Friday, five p.m.? He’s barreling through an intersection full of stacked-up cars with glowering motorists waiting for light changes so they can get home in time to watch the NBA finals—just beating the elapsing seconds of a yellow light. Rain? Here he is again, in a poncho, delaying with an incomprehensible hand-signal my left turn onto busy Multnomah Blvd.
He knows he’s irritating the people gunning past him for emphasis, but I can tell by his expression that he’ll never stop. From 3:10, when the schools let out, to around 6:50, when rush hour abates, the two-lane labyrinth that connects the subdivisions and strip malls in this part of the Rose City becomes a cyclist’s juggernaut, with most city biking infrastructure funding having gone to more woke and/or less affluent neighborhoods in the southeast or northwest quadrants of the city.
What bothers me about this man is what I believe is his two-fold mission: to forestall the sedentary death that awaits many lazy seniors, and at the same time prove something about the right-to-cycle on roads meant only for multi-ton vehicles. I doubt this seventysomething gent has any pressing need to get anywhere. He’s perfect for one of Real Time host Bill Maher’s “I don’t know it for a fact, I just know it’s true” bits. I’m convinced he has a Subaru Forester in his garage.
Portland’s a big bike-rights town. The phrase “Share The Road” isn’t just an advisory or suggestion, it’s a mantra. Millions have been spent to facilitate two-wheel commuting. As the city grows, the intersectionality between cycles and machines is more fraught. There’re usually several annual fatalities. Despite the cognitive dissonance of watching a mom with a kiddie-kart on her bike sail through a five-arterial crossroads, every responsible motorists tries to be bike-friendly.
But this warrior running around southwest is no friend of mine. He’s committed to demonstrating that it’s his right to negotiate some of the worst vehicular clusters in the metro area with nothing more than a bike helmet and a lot of chutzpah. Here’s the thing about SW Portland’s traffic-clogged, hilly, blind-cornered arterials—he could end up dead-right. I’ll say this for the SOB however; he’ll make for a fit corpse—he’s very thin.
That’s the other thing: a possible subconscious truth that causes resentment. Unless he gets rolled over by a distracted teenager just feeling his oats, this man will probably outlive me.