“If you go lookin’ for hot water, don’t act shocked when you get burned a little bit.” – Jack White of the White Stripes
Perception. Consider a young boy comes home from kindergarten and announces to his family, “When I get big I want to be a fireman.”
His whole family smiles and agrees it’s an excellent idea.
Meanwhile, his father is really thinking about how he doesn’t want his kid to be a fireman. For one thing, they don’t get paid enough. They spend their life running into burning buildings. He’d much prefer his son become a doctor or lawyer.
The mother thinks, “Hmm, I like firemen. The other day I saw a couple of them in their uniforms at the grocery store. I thought about starting a grease fire in my kitchen just to get them over to my house.”
And the sister thinks, “Fireman? More like arsonist, maybe.”
I told you that to tell you this. The point I’m trying to make is no matter where you are on this planet, your perceptions will be different from others’.
If you happen to be the guy riding the bicycle, your perception is, “There’s a car coming up, the driver will see me and go wide to the left to miss me.” Why? I’m sure the driver realizes I have a family at home that loves me and they’d like to see me get back home safe and sound.
The guy in the car has a different point of view. He sees the cyclist and immediately gets pissed off. Why? He remembers the cyclist who cut him off in traffic last week. Or the three idiot cyclists who rode three abreast taking up the whole lane. Beside, how does this jackass get leisure time to ride a bike when I have to go to work?
The answer is they’re both correct. But the bottom line is we both have to share the road. Remember drivers, cyclists pay just as many taxes for those roads as you do. We have every right to be there.
And, yeah, it’s easy to be a bully when you are nestled in a two-ton cage while cyclists are as exposed as a golf ball sitting on tee. But keep this in mind: We don’t want to be dead. And I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be a murderer.
In the words of Rodney King, why can’t we all just get along?
Cyclists, fall is upon us, and it will begin to get dark early. There’s a great company, and I think I own everything they make, called Road ID. They’re an affiliate right here on my site. They make dog tags and bracelets with vital information that can speak for you if you can’t speak for itself. I don’t run or ride my bike without one.
This company also offers reflective gear and flashing lights. It’s the stuff I use for all of my night training and ultra racing. The cool thing about Road ID is that it’s never too expensive.
