Karma (Bike-Ma?)

I thought I would take advantage of a window of opportunity when it was NOT raining. Well, it rained. Live Doppler radar has its shortfalls, evidently. AND, it turns out that khaki pants are not the brightest choice when there’s rain in the picture. BUT… I enjoyed the ride in more than I would have imagined. I enjoyed it a lot.

One of the best moments was waiting to turn on to Old Morgantown road. Here’s the picture… I’m waiting to turn left this very busy road, and there’s a stream of cars waiting to cross the railroad tracks at the green light. The light turns red, and I make eye contact with this lady in a small car and gesture to her as if to ask if she’ll let me turn in. She looks away and speeds up and closes the gap between her and the car so that I couldn’t even fit between them. The car behind her does the same thing. I’m soaked, and those drivers are MEAN. That’s what they are, just plain mean. Ah… but sweet karma (bike-ma?)is on my side. I hear the train coming, a slow, tortuously slow freight train, huffing just to get up speed. Had she not pulled so close to the car in front of her, she could have turned left and taken a back road to beat that train, but because of her unwillingness to show a soaked bicycle rider the tiniest bit of courtesy, she’s trapped (in more ways than one, I might add). She can’t back up, she can’t turn, she can’t go ANYWHERE. But me, I have options out the wazoo. So I turn left and ride by her on the left hand side, smile (REAL BIG) and wave, go down and cross the tracks as the barriers come down. That line of cars wasn’t going to go anywhere for a while. Long, long slow train. Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.

I’m grinning as I write this. I hope she wasn’t late too late to work, because that would just be AWFUL.