The push

The push.  It is the push that drives me.  I left for a lunch date in Big Smoke with not enough time to get there.  I had already decided to take my bike with me.  I got of at a station before where the brunch was going to be and I just pushed it.  I pushed myself hard.  I did not go through any red lights but I pushed myself the entire trip, 5-7 km in ten minutes.  The traffic was not that thick, but it surprised me that there w a lot of foot traffic walking on the bike lanes.  People walking with their back to traffic on bike lanes with ear buds in and music turned on.  Loud enough they could not hear me give warning.  But acted surprised when I brushed past them, because brush I had to.  

The streets are quite close together and my destination came faster than I anticipated.  I drove by the place where I was born.  I drove by places that people I knew lived, I drove through streets that I walked everyday.  After my brunch date I drove around on my bike on streets where I used to walk.  The school were the first X-Men movie was shot, a park that I used to walk with my first girlfriend.  All along bike lanes that were not there, when I lived there. Wide bike lanes, where bikes could pass other bikes.  They were all packed with bikes.  Then it was down to the lake shore and the path there filled with joggers, roller bladers and dog walkers.  And bicycles.  The bike path is set up like a smaller roadway with a double line separating the lanes, East and West bound lanes.  The cyclists understood the division, but the others did not.  I did not hit anyone, but I wish I had, as there was the same mix of oblivious people as before, walking in the middle of the lane backs to the traffic with music in their ears.  Dodging one group I nearly hit a cyclist going the other way; I felt her personal body heat wafting off her shoulders as we passed by.  

I admit that I was going way too fast, atleast forty to fifty kilometers an hour, but the signs were posted everywhere that it was a bike lane.