Whatever
So you’re biking along in a city of hundreds of thousands of other people all trying to get places simultaneously. And suddenly you run into an obstacle.
Yes, you run into a big giant Whatever.
A “Whatever” is a person who indifferently dismisses everything you see as supremely important (your life, health, along with necessary societal rules) with a word most commonly used by teenage girls in the mid-nineties. They do it in such a chronically disaffected way they cannot be argued with, not even engaging a discussion that checks off all the anti-cylist clichés. Any expression of passion or appeals to their empathy as a human being simply falls on deaf ears as they simply go about their life as if they are the only person on the planet.
This is a disease and the symptoms are clear.
However, a cure is not so clear. Especially because there seems to be many other Whatever’s out there to help perpetuate this.
Uber drivers
I don’t live in a place where this is a problem (no real bike infrastructure) so someone who does, please organize and film this protest, if only to amuse me.
1. Acquire cheap bikes. Very cheap, as in dumpster disposable, barely rideable.
2. Ride in the bike lane during rush hour.
3. When there is a break in traffic, pull into the normal lane, stop, and lay your bike on the ground or kickstand in the center of the lane.
4. Wait for a car to approach, wave at the driver, and say “I’m just leaving it here for a minute.”
5. Leave the bike and go into a random store.
Take a photo of their car parked there. It works every time!
A friend of mine was charged when she ran into the back of a car parked illegally in the bike lane! Granted she shouldn’t have hit him, but the cops argued that his stop was an emergency (he stopped to take a phone call) so it was allowed. I think he should have gotten a ticket for stopping in a no stopping zone.
I generally give a hard slap on the drivers window and “you are in a bike lane” and leave it at that.