Saturday, February 14, 2009

Hangin on for dear life...

Today we headed out for a loop on Rice and Couser. It was a beautiful day. I was a bit over dressed for the weather, I was really stoked that my Deflect jacket converts to a vest!

The ride was a tough one for me. I found that more often than not I was sucking Allison's wheel, almost desperate to stay in contact. I didn't want to ruin her workout by falling off the back and making her wait for me!!

Like I said the weather was great and it was awesome being out with the wife for a ride.

There was one hitch. We had been on the road for 50+ miles and were coming back through Temecula to get home. We safely crossed a few lanes of traffic to turn left down Jefferson (headed East on Winchester after riding past the Intense factory) and cruised up to the red light. We had just seen a guy in a mini van blast through the red light, he was frustrated because he had to slow down momentarily when we crossed the lanes to get to the left turn lane. A guy in a Jaguar pulls up and rolls down his window and proceeds to tell me that I should be using the cross walk to cross the street. I calmly explained to him that he is indeed not correct, that cyclists are supposed to follow the rules of the road just like a motor vehicle and that it is his responsibility to drive safely. This fat slob then proceeds to start railing me about how I am unsafe, I am going to cause an accident, I almost killed someone... The conversation ended when the light for us turned green and I said I was sorry but he is full of shit.

It left me frustrated and sad that the people of our community are so crappy. Allison and I laughed at the notion of us "killing people in their cars" and joked that it was not us but the people in cars text messaging and smoking and drinking coffee all at the same time that kill people.

Not far down the street we saw another guy in a BMW laying on his horn because an old lady was driving too slow for his liking. He had been held up for less than 5 seconds!

Please everyone, take a deep breath, ease up on the people around you. Sure lots of people are stressed from the financial crap (lots of people are suffering that shouldn't be, the irresponsible people's problems are now mine too!) but there is no excuse for treating other people like this for basically no reason at all. Go outside and get some fresh air tomorrow. Life is short. Stop effing up and live it instead of being jerks. I mean really, it was VALENTINES DAY!

Live, Life, Love... RIDE!

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