That Guy

That guy.

My friends in LittleSmoke practice being that guy that Puts their 4ways on and stops in the road in front of Starbucks and get their coffee.

I am That Guy on the Bike.  What I do is mixed.  I practice the Idaho Stop, where red lights are stops and stop signs are yield signs.  This means that I will slow for a stop sign and stop for a red light.  Well, actually it is more complicated than that.

I will slow for a stop sign if I am going through it, straight through it.

I will slow to a near stop, but remain on my petals if there is a car in front of me and let them do what they are doing, if I am going straight through.

I will stop at a stop sign if there is a car in front of me and they are turning right, and therefore in front of me.

I will breeze through a stop sign if I am turning Right and there is no car in front of me.

I will be cautious if there is a car that is going straight and it is in front of me, because cars lie.

I will yield if there is a car and I am turning Left.  

I will be cautious if there is an empty intersection and I am turning Left.

I always signal.

If there is a light, a red light:

I will breeze through it at 3am if there is no traffic.

I will breeze through it if I am turning right and there is no traffic

I will yield if I am turning right and there is traffic

I will stop otherwise.

If there is no traffic and I am turning left at a red light, I will stop and then turn left.  I asked the police on this one, they told me I could do it if there was no traffic.  Because bicycles do not set off the road sensors that turn the lights.

I am that guy that changes lanes before he makes a left hand turn, even at night.  So I am that guy that you are honking at, @5am in the morning riding at the center of the road, (I am to the right of the center line, if you would care to look) and there is a Tim Horton's about ten meters behind you, moron.

I am that guy that is driving within a meter of the curb on the side of the road and not on the sidewalk, because what I am doing is legal and what you want me to do is illegal.  That bicycle path near the sidewalk, I have tried it.  It is uneven as fuck and I might damage my bike on it.  For that matter, pedestrians treat it like a sidewalk and me going 40km per hour not a good thing for their health, when they step off the sidewalk because they are not paying attention and can't hear me yelling because they have earbuds and have their music cranked.

I am that guy who occasionally has to leave the .5 to .75 meters of the curb to avoid a: pothole, crack wider than 1.5 cm (seriously, with your wheel surface and low air pressure it is like hitting a pot hole half a meter wide), storm drain cover (you would not believe how many cities think that parallel slots to the road would never in convenience a cyclist), storm drain sunk into the asphalt ( see crack, but imagine a half meter drop), and the road seams (what, you mean you don't notice those little black lines on the road?  Well they heat up in the summer and get soft and if they are parallel to the curb hitting them feels like hitting a spot of mud and at high speeds will destabilize the bike).

I am also that guy that saw the raccoon ambling down the embankment with the crusty eyes and stopped in front of him before he could commit suicide, death by crossing.  I am that guy that scolded it until it ambled back the way that it came.  I am that guy that almost got hit by the deer jumping across the road.  

I am that guy that gets to see the aftermath of car/animal confrontations, up close.  You feel a bump, I see the squirrels brains shoot across the road.  I see the porcupine that was hit so hard that it was skinned.  I saw the skunk, the possum and the duck, yes really a duck.  I saw them sit in place over several passings, slowly decay and get skeletonized over days.  The skunk was bad, the scent sac did not rupture right away, it had to bloat first for a little while, a few days.  

I am that guy that just passed you, because I am on a bike does not mean that I am necessarily slow.  On a straight away I can hit 50 km per hour easy, going down a hill I have topped 60.  Going down a steep hill I have exceeded 100km/h.  When you see a bike and you absolutely have to get on the highway, slow the fuck down and pass behind me instead of speeding up and passing in front of me; I am going a bit faster than you think, okay a lot faster, and you are going to get in an accident one day and I am going to feel bad and angry that you were so stupid.

I am that guy who you honk at because I just went through that intersection in the center lane and not the curb lane, because your fellows don't signal when they try to pass me to get on the highway and I am tired of cringing as I see another one nearly go over the edge to pass in front of me. 

The last time I was in a car/bike accident was when I was 16, 27 years ago:

I am that guy that takes acceptable risks to my health to get where I need to go everyday, but plays it safe.