They Got Me At Last. I Became A Cyclist

I’m not a very good one, I ought to begin by saying so. I only started riding a bike to work this summer; the last time I rode a bike this regularly I was in high school. My first day biking I got yelled at. I deserved it too, worse luck.

I had developed a belief, based on my repeat observations of cyclists blowing through stop signs over my thirty-nine years of life, that people riding bikes didn’t have to stop at stop signs, so I rode my bike through a stop sign, and someone yelled at me from the other side of the street. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cyclist stop at a stop sign, come to think of it. Have you? If you told me you had, I don’t think I’d believe you. I looked it up afterwards. We do have to stop at stop signs, as it turns out, and ever since I have gone out of my way to observe the custom.

I’ve never wanted to be a cyclist. At heart I’m a walking man. There remains in me the soul of the pedestrian even when mounted and wheeled, and it pains me to cycle past people going about on foot who don’t recognize me as one of their own. “I’m just like you,” I want to say, instead of “On your left.” This isn’t who I am, not really. It’s not the wheels, but the feet that matter.

The worst part about riding a bicycle, in my opinion, is having to say things like “On your left” to people as you pass them. Whenever I go walking and hear someone call out “On your left” behind me I am filled with a murderous rage so intense I can hardly speak or move. I could easily slaughter and gut a full-grown cow in such a mood, I think, although I’d probably need some help moving the legs.

I have always prided myself on being a calm and relaxed driver. I feel nothing but contempt for anyone who displays irritation or anger on the road. Nothing pleases me more, on a walk, than to exchange absurd little courtesies with strangers as we pass one another. A nod, a sly little salute, a “Good morning” or better yet, “Mornin’—”; it can’t get too folksy for me. But to hear someone call out “On your left” behind you, with no hope or chance of friendly eye contact, and to have to leap out of the way lest they jangle their hateful little bell at you — without those little courtesies, I become an animal. I would happily kill and kill again.

Part of my commute involves a hiking trail that is shared by cyclists, pedestrians, and the occasional horseback rider. There’s an intricate little rock-paper-scissors method to determining right-of-way (cyclists must give way to pedestrians and everyone must give way to horses), and it’s part of my obligation as a fellow on wheels to announce myself to anyone who can’t see me coming.

With people walking towards me, there are no problems. I can slow my bike down to a crawl quite happily and toss out all the folksy greetings I like. “Mornin’!” “That’s one good-lookin’ baby!” “You again!” That sort of thing.

But the people who are walking in the same direction as myself — who dare to turn their backs on me, their brother and their king — I must directly address, and it is as poison to me. I will not say “On your left.” It is demeaning to say such a thing to a human being. When you say such a thing to one of your equals, he jumps back. His face closes against you. He gives way, but not out of fullness of heart and the spirit of being fellow-travelers on the road; he merely sets himself aside from you.

My compulsive need to be liked¹ will not allow for this. What I am prepared to say is “Good morning [or evening, as the case may be]. Pardon me. I’m on your left. Thank you!”

This, as you might imagine, takes a few seconds to get through, so I have to slow down to about a quarter of a mile per hour in order to deliver the whole thing. Between 70 and 80 percent of the time it works. I don’t just mean that it works in matters of road safety, which is only an incidental concern, but it works in getting them to treat me like a fellow pedestrian instead of a cyclist, which is my primary goal. I often receive in return for this courteous little speech a sincere “Good morning!” or better still, a “Thank you” that I believe implies “Thank you for addressing me not as a cyclist, but as a brother; in your tender hands I believe power would never corrupt.”

Once someone asked me to ring my bell instead of making my little speech, but I will never put a bell on my bicycle. The day I use a bell to communicate with another living creature is the day I leave polite society forever and set my face against humanity.²

Occasionally I ride the bike with the baby strapped into the gunner’s seat, and I have no problem at all then. People will say to me things like “That’s a good-lookin’ baby!” or stop their cars to let me know the baby threw one of his shoes onto the shoulder a quarter-mile back. But I can’t haul him to work with me every morning.

The problem remains: I am a calm and steady driver, a friendly and conscientious pedestrian, but as a cyclist I am so beset by ruinous urges towards violence, self-loathing, and self-denial that I must fit myself with a straitjacket of courtesy and rigid rules, lest I tear myself in half like Rumpelstiltskin.

But it’s not all bad. Last week when I drove the big bus at work, I came to a red stoplight right next to a city bus, and I knew before I turned my head that the city bus driver was going to look through his big window and nod at me, bus driver to bus driver, fellow to fellow, brother to brother. He did it, too. We were at the exact same height, seated behind the same big wheel, and in my heart I knew he wanted to honk his horn in greeting. Neither of us did it, but I felt it just the same.

1. Admired. Let’s say adored, to be on the safe side.

2. If I were to become a captious sort of invalid, like one of Ethan Frome’s girlfriends or Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and I were to come into possession of a little silver bell on a bedside table, I might ring it then. But that’s the only exception I can think of