Playing in Traffic
Let me be totally frank, I do not live in a large city. There are about 50,000 people who live here--a little more when school in session, a little less in Summer, it seems--so take what I say here with a grain of salt. Manhattan it is not.
That being said, I love riding traffic. I love dodging cars. I enjoy--odd as it sounds--being very close to the iron beasts that could take me out with their inattentive drivers. Heck, the likely don't know that I'm there until I am past. Maybe not even then. Clearly it's not the safest thing to do, so why do I like it?
I think it's because I don't live in a large city. If this is what it was like every time I got on the bike, I would likely be using this space to decry the having to deal with traffic all the time. As it is, this is only about a mile, or so, of my 12 mile commute. The rest of it is either primary roads with very large shoulders or secondary roads with little traffic. Yeah, I've got it good.
And, if I choose, I can avoid dodging cars downtown altogether. So really, the fact that I get to decide whether or not I race from stoplight to stoplight increases the fun. It makes for great sprinting exercise, besides.
Then, once it's done, I get to settle in and cruise the countryside. Or hills.
It's good to be on a bike.
2 comments:
Well said. As a Portland rider, I prefer either the full-intensity of the city riding (so this is it, I'm going to die), or the zone-out you get in the bliss of the countryside. It is the in-between that is awful - the 'burbs, where you have just enough blissfully-unaware traffic that you have to constantly be vigilant.
traffic riding is fun, nice break from zoned out spinning. The stories of bouncing off cars makes good conversation.
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