I Believe The Term Is Schadenfreude

This is just so much amazing. He’s like superman! (make sure you wait till the very end)

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Are You Part Of The .05%?

From the BCU:

Bostonians making polite requests for a clear path on one of the city’s key bike routes were met with disdain from the state agency responsible for maintaining the paths.

With a rapid-response social media campaign, Boston residents put a face on the purported “.05%” of cyclists who bike through the winter. Photo: Boston Cyclists Union

Here’s how one unnamed official from the Massachusetts’ Department of Conservation and Recreation responded in an internal email thread to a message from a Boston resident asking for better snow removal on the Southwest Corridor, an important off-street bike path. The leaked email was published on the Boston site Universal Hub (emphasis ours):

Frankly, I am tired of our dedicated team wasting valuable time addressing the less than .05% of all cyclists who choose to bike after a snow/ice event… We should not spend time debating cyclists with poor judgement [sic] and unrealistic expectations, and stick with [the staffer]‘s recommendation that they find other transportation. If someone is completely depending on a bike for year-round transportation, they are living in the wrong city.

read more here.

Oh man, someone either doesn’t know how to do math, or hasn’t been outside lately.  I see literally dozens of cyclists riding EVERY DAY, through all sorts of weather. If I am seeing that many while riding around that means there are likely hundreds of people cycling to work every day even on the most shitty of winter days, and on cold but dry days many hundreds.

Even more would do so if the DCR cleared snow out of bike lanes/paths.  It’s not so much that I get pissed when the paths are not plowed to perfection (although I was on the SWC today and it was in a horrible state), but the attitude of this person is just atrocious, do they really think so little of cyclists?  Would they say the same thing to people driving cars if the roads were not cleaned well enough?  Perhaps people driving a car in Boston are living in a city that just can’t accommodate clearing the roads…maybe this person needs to find a new line of work?

I have started to think that people are not skilled enough to drive cars in the snow and that doing so puts them and others at risk for injury.  I would think the DCR would welcome more cyclists, as it means less cars, and less road damage, and less work for them….not to mention all the lives that would be saved by getting people with only a basic set of car driving skills off the road in the winter.

hit up the BCU website if you want to help fight this kind of silly behavior.

Update:

Read more here from BCU and here from MassBike

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Driving In Boston Makes You Mean And Stupid

Today on the way to work I was threatened by not one, but TWO idiots in trucks. I can say with some assurance that I was in full compliance with the law, did nothing to provoke or enrage them. They simply felt the need to threaten my life. I feel like in the last couple hours I have gone through all the stages of rage, from “KILL!” to “why?” (In case you were wondering the full stages of rage are KILL KILL KILL KILL AHHHH! KILL KILL KILL Kill Kill kill why?). So in the interest of letting the world know about these goons here are my stories.

1. White dodge dualy (the kind of truck with two back wheels on each side) Maryland plates licence number 220-260 lives/works in JP (followed him to his home). Drives up next to me, rolls down his window and says “get out of the road or I will run you over.” Older portly moron, with gray hair. The kind of person you can tell solves problems with violence. Bad breath.

2. Two pedestrians were standing in the street as I approached. I start screaming “a little room please!” they go about talking to each other looking at a paper not even paying attention to me or any of the other traffic in the street. Giant WB Mason truck decides to take a hard right, in the exact moment that I am swerving around the two morons standing in the street. When asked why he didn’t even turn his turn signal on the truck, he responded “get out of the street asshole!”

So we have two guys, in trucks, a couple of clueless pedestrians, and the end result is a lot of ill will. So after my red hot desire to bludgeon these morons to death with my u-lock calmed down, I started to wonder “what is is about people in cars, and especially trucks that makes them such ass holes?”

A lot has been written about the de-humanizing effects of people in cars, about how they stop seeing other people in other cars as humans and start seeing them as impediments to their progress. I have written a lot about it as well (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) But I think it is more than that. I think that in a city like Boston we have gone past the point where it is simply that people have stopped thinking of each other as humans, I think we are into some “next level” road rage situations here.

Driving a vehicle in Boston is a hellish nightmare. Traffic, parking, honking, tiny streets, and now some damn cyclist in your way! Oh the humanity! A driver might be forced to wait as many as 30 seconds before they are able to pass me at high speed to the next red light. Then indignity is piled upon indignity when I catch up to you at that red light and then once it is green speed off to my destination. While you are left fuming in your vehicle stuck behind an infinite amount of other vehicles.

A normal well adjusted person would be able to take a 30 second delay in stride, a normal person wouldn’t roll down their window and threaten to kill another person, a normal person after they had just nearly killed someone would have apologized (and mean it). It would seem that driving a vehicle in Boston on a regular basis can actually turn you from a normal well adjusted human being into a murderous asshole. I am not speaking figuratively here. I honestly think that the regular stresses of Boston traffic can cause actual behavior and personality changes in the poor souls who are forced into it daily.

I think driving a car in Boston traffic damages your brain, and makes you a moronic rage-a-holic. Before you dismiss this idea as silly or far fetched think for a moment about what we know about brain science.

Buddhist monks who spend their lives meditating on happiness have been shown to have physically different brains than people who don’t. They are also some of the happiest people in the world. (see here here and here)

We also know that children if exposed to either a lack of stimulation or negative stimulation they will actually develop brain damage and personality issues. (see here here here and here).

We also know that brains continue to develop as we grow (which is different to what we used to think). As they grow they continue to lay down new neural pathways and new behaviors. Even though your brain develops a little slower as you age, it still is developing and changing every day of your life right up until the day you depart this planet. (see here here and here).

So if you look at a daily car/truck commuter from a neural point of view you have the perfect recipe for brain damage. You are placed daily in a situation of high stress, you are forced to deal with lots of other angry people (more negative stimulation) and you do this to yourself hundreds of hours a year. If Buddhist monks spend hundreds of hours thinking about happiness and have become some of the happiest people on earth, what do you think happens to people who spend hundreds (thousands) of hours a year being stressed out and honked at?

Besides the obvious danger of getting fat from sitting around in your car, and the danger of all the fumes you breath while sitting in traffic, and the danger from global warming caused by your car, and the political destabilization caused by the use of oil to power your car, I feel it would be appropriate to add brain damage to the list of things you should worry about.

Because it is impossible to know what other people are thinking inside their head, we instead rely upon how they act to diagnose problems with them. We as a society have more or less come to agree upon a whole host of things we consider “abnormal.” We think trying to kill others, or trying to hurt them, or not feeling bad about hurting other people, as abnormal “crazy” behavior. When we see someone who wants to kill others, or who doesn’t feel bad about hurting others we lock them up, or force them to be heavily medicated. Why then do we allow people who are trying to kill other humans (be they on a bike, walking, or in other cars) simply so they can get where they are going faster to live freely among us?

In a way I feel sorry for people who are like this. Sure they are jerks, and yes several of them did conspire to end my life today, but if you think about it from a neural science point of view you almost have to treat them in the same way you would treat anyone with brain damage. They are sick, and they have a defect in their brain. A defect caused by hundreds and hundreds of hours of what amounts to psychological torture in traffic every day of their lives. These poor souls have been sold a bill of goods, they were told that the automobile was going to be their ticket to freedom, to mobility, and to happiness, when actually it is a ticket to poor health, dirty environments, and mental defects.

I want to hug each and every one of them and take them to the bike shop to get them a bike. I want to help them get into cycling, I want to show them that there is another way! Throw off the chains of driving, repair the damage done to your brain by years of traffic torture. Come take a ride, the weather is nice, the cyclists are too, come on out of your metal cages and see what life has to offer you.

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I Would Say This Is About Right

Beware the car effect!

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“I’m Going To Kill You!” (Beware Car 52K E81)

Sometimes you really have to wonder what is wrong with people. Like why do we as a society not give people a psych exam before we give them the license to drive a huge hunk of high speed metal around (I mean there are kids walking around out there!).

Yesterday I had one of the strangest encounters with a motorist I have ever had the displeasure of living though. Lets set the scene.

State street, 5pm, heavy rush hour traffic, bumper to bumper. I am riding at a very cautious pace down the right hand side of the street, on my right is a large concrete wall, on my left an unmoving mass of traffic. This is a daily ride for me, so my head is on a swivel, scanning for darting pedestrians, cab doors opening, homeless guys wandering about in the street, pot holes, construction, etc. State street can be safely classified as a grade A shit show every day at 5pm. I have learned that everything can happen so I watch out for anything.

Which is why I was only slightly surprised when a black car full of men pulled directly in front of me (to the right mind you) gunned it for ten feet (narrowly missing taking their own mirror off on the jersey barrier), only to slam back over to the left. They nearly ran me down, almost damaged their own car, and nearly ran into the car in front of them all for a one car advantage in the great car battle that they must have imagined they were participating in. What really caught me off guard was when they waited till I was right next to them to open the back right passenger door and eject one of the passengers.

I was going very slow so when the edge of the door came to a rest against my handle bars (right between my pointer and middle finger thankfully) my back wheel barely left the ground. I was immediately confused as this car was stuck on all sides in traffic and there was a large concrete wall on the right, what the fuck? The passenger immediately began screaming “what the fuck are you doing” to which I thought briefly and responded in a logical and cool manner “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING ASSHOLE!” This was to be a clue as to the future interactions I was to have with these road scholars.

After explaining unambiguously (using small words, this guy was clearly some kind if space cadet) that this asshole can go eat a dick (he opened his door in the middle of traffic on the wrong side, without looking). He clearly was not mentally prepared for the debate, and wandered out into three lanes of traffic to find adventure else where. The entire time I was educating him as to the error his ways his three Southy accented friends were busy shouting poorly formed obscenities at me from the vehicle.

As the car wasn’t going anywhere I had more than enough time to take a picture of the cars license plates with my cell phone. You know just in case. This seemed to rustle the feathers of the driver, who must have rubbed his remaining brain cells together and realized that he was now identifiable (52k E81 in case you are curious). He exited his car and allowed me the pleasure of getting a good look at him (by putting his ugly pock marked stump of a face right up into mine) and through a haze of spittle he uttered “I am going to fucking KILL YOU!” The rational part of my brain should have registered that there was now three thick necked troglodytes threatening to end my life (and informed my legs that now would be a good time to run away). Instead the irrational part of my brain took over and frankly I lost my shit.

“You are going to kill me?! You just tried to kill me TWICE, I doubt you got the sack for this kind of work bitch, now get back in your fucking car before this shit gets nasty!” Have you ever seen a skinny person lose their shit, it is at once comical, and terrifying. The complete lack of concern for ones own safety can foster a deep disquiet in even the hardiest opponent, and my shit was most certainly lost at this point. You try to run me over, then you try to door me, then you spit in my face and tell me you are going to kill me? Your car was the threat, you are just a pathetic little man with an over inflated sense of importance.

He immediately returned to his car, his passenger then asked if my bicycle was OK, (to which I responded by holding up my middle finger and saying “you almost broke my finger asshole.” This entire encounter took less than 5 minutes, and at no point did traffic move an inch, I remounted my bike, rode off and the passenger was nice enough to roll down his window so I could inform him that he and his compatriots were worthless pieces of shit, and I had a very excellent ride home in the nice weather last night.

In retrospect this entire encounter was a failure. No one learned anything (other than the driver of the black car with plates 52K E81 is a worthless waste of air). I could have been seriously hurt, by bad driving, poor door opening, or militant thuggery. I completely lost my cool and was most likely biting off way more than I could have swallowed (there were still three dudes in the car, a near certain recipe for an ass whoopin). And yet I don’t feel that bad about it, I stood my ground, defended myself, no one actually got hurt, and I get to warn the world about the driver of car 52K E81.

Consider this a public service announcement.

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