Keep Smiling
I admit that sometimes I get frustrated with biking in the city. There are days that bring out my inner curmudgeon and I feel like this guy:
But try not to put negativity out there. I don’t want a fight. So I try to stay positive. Sometimes I’m so positive it freaks the shit out of drivers. Like when a driver doesn’t see me and is about to left hook me…
When I wave to them all smiley they really don’t know what to make of it. They just look surprised and let me pass safely.
Try it sometime. Or feel free to experiment with your own positive reinforcement approach.
Well, maybe not this approach.
But you know what I mean. You’ll not only make others smile, you’ll cheer yourself up too.
If it does not lead to greater public civility, cycling is valueless. Whatever the provocation, it behoves us to be faultlessly courteous and considerate of other road-users at all times. In my experience, cyclists who spend their lives taking offence at the behaviour of motorists and pedestrians – a common breed on the streets of London – will be just as censorious of their fellow-cyclists: for example, bullying women riders who’ve stopped short of traffic lights into creeping forward on the inside so that they can later be squashed against railings by a left-turning heavy truck. If the Saudi Public Morality Police rode bicycles they would behave in a very similar manner. Their self-righteousness fairly glows from inside their horrible yellow jackets.
Bikeyface, your drawings are really rather good (English for “brilliant”) and we all await you bringing them out in book form. Your style reminded me of someone, and I didn’t know who it was until I remembered the late Bernard Kliban; he of the strange enigmatic cats. As an artist, that’s good company to be in.
You are, Bikeface, right as ever.
I am probably rather like number one (albeit I don’t yet have a helmet camera). But I do try to stay positive about my fellow road users.
I had, as it happens, just posted to my own blog before I saw this a piece (http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/why-cyclist-should-write-londons.html) about trying not to see other road-users as members of a group but as individuals.
I suppose that’s all part of the same positivity effort.
Invisible Visible Man.
Sorry, I meant at the start, “You are, Bikeyface, right…” It’s very rude to get someone’s name wrong.
In honour of this post, I rode shirtless on Tuesday. No response of any kind, alas.
I am particularly fond of those guys hanging out of the passenger side window yelling “Hey, Thor Hushovd! Find someplace else to train for the Tour de France!” (Make that Lance Armstrong on your side of the pond, perhaps)
I tend to blow kisses at them as they speed off.
So what yer sayin’ is that you really don’t WANT one of my “My Bike Lawyer Can Beat Up Your Dumb Lawyer” jerseys???
Steve Magas
The Bike Lawyer