Riding my Bike in Denver

I don't know what it is about this city, but it seems that cars here cannot stand the reality that bikes are a quicker form of transportation.

"You didn't stop at that stop sign back there," this car yelled at me. The person driving was fairly overweight with her daughter in the car and had apparently been emotionally hurt by a bicycle at some point in the past.

Now, I had been going stir crazy in my house and that great feeling of confidence/anxiety that overtakes sometimes got me moving, to get tea and ice cream somewhere. There was a cream cutoff dress shirt in the free box and I sported my grandpa's blue and white hobo hat with some blue pinstripe pants my juggling partner had given me. It looked like I was off to a nude beach or something and I was feeling good.

"I'm not putting you in any danger," I yelled back. She tried to cut me off not completely overtly but only to the point where she knew she was wrong. At the next stop sign she started ranting at me about how if they had to obey the law then we had to too. I couldn't get a word in.

As she was driving off I yelled "that was a pretty one-sided dialogue, if you want to talk about this we can." Instead she yelled at me again at the next stop sign. Two stop signs I stopped at and was berated by this fairly unhealthy looking, non-cycling hard head.

I blew the next red light, fueled by anxiety drained of its confidence, wondering why my nice outfit would requisition such a negative approach from this somewhat buoyant and bike-traumatized mom.

My Thoughts: Bikes should not have to obey car laws. Car laws are for cars. Two cars crash into each other, car occupants die. A bike and a car crash into each other, there is very little chance that the car occupant will die, though I'm sure there are cases. Bikes take up a fifth the width a car takes up and are more maneuverable and do not travel as fast. Stop signs are often four-way on cycling routes, why the hell would I stop at them unless there's a cop around? Why would I wait at a red light if there are no cars coming? Who am I protecting? If anything, I think I am endangering myself. I've been swiped by cars, run over by cars, mirrored by cars, broadsided by cars. This isn't due to riding recklessly. I defer to them, I don't egg them on. They're bigger, they'll kill me. However, they'll kill me whether or not I carefully roll through a stop sign or go through a red light when there's no traffic. They'll kill me because they're playing a video game, they're living the dream, they're angry at me for not living their dream (apparently.)

Anyway, cardriver, I wish I could sit down and have words for a little while, before the apocalypse, while you're still in love with your pet dinosaur.