Friday, October 23, 2015

Biking Home from work in Brooklyn

I mentioned in yesterday's blog post that I had ridden to work.  The ride to work wasn't so bad except for a few people that really didn't give me much space between the parked cars and them when they were driving by me.  The ride home was different.

Don't be alarmed, I DID NOT get hit by a car.  I biked up New York Avenue with my backpack full of stuff that I had delivered at the office.  Most of the stuff was Christmas gifts.  There is no place to leave packages at my apartment, so if delivered there, they end up being held at the post office.  The lines on Saturday are very long and packages frequently get "lost" when sent to my particular post office on the corner of Broadway and Gates.  For this reason, I usually have packages delivered to the office.

The bike up the hill was uneventful.  Once I reached the top, the traffic was terrible.  I still don't know what caused the back up.  Fortunately, on a bike you can just ride next to all the cars and the backup doesn't affect you.  At one point, a large bus had pulled to the right and there wasn't much space between it and the sidewalk.  I slowed and inched up to where he was stopped.  The light was red, but I wanted to make sure he saw me, so I was focused on him.

Now I am usually a pretty calm person.  I may be full of energy sometimes, but it takes a lot for me to yell at someone.  As I was making eye contact with the bus driver, an elderly Latino man who was crossing the street was apparently too rude and lazy to walk around my "enormous" bike.  Instead of doing that, while my head was turned away, he clapped his hands together three times as loud as he could right next to my ear.  At first I thought I was hit or shot.  I jumped in fright and then realized what happened.  I screamed at him...yes, I was not polite.  "EXCUSE YOU, A** H*L*, LEARN SOME F*&KIN MANNERS."  He seemed unfazed and didn't even acknowledge the fact that I had yelled at him.  The lovely elderly lady next to him, on the other hand, acted as if I was yelling at her and cowered.  It made me even madder.  I was temped to bike over to him and really give him a piece of my mind, but decided to just steam for a few blocks while I rode home.

I was closer to home and still steaming about 10 minutes later.  I was riding down Throop which is a one-way street.  I was riding in the bike path on the left hand side.  Three blocks from home, and a food delivery guy on a moped zooms into the bike lane without stopping, looking the wrong way, and going the wrong direction.  Our tires collided and I yelled, "HEY, HEY, HEY."  Luckily I was paying attention and had squeezed both brakes really hard, so hard in fact that my back tire came up off the ground.  He apologized, and I continued on my way even more steamed.

For that reason, when my fiance arrived to meet me for dinner, I was still distracted and looked angry. It wasn't until this morning that I realized why I was still not in a good mood.  Fortunately, time with him always helps.  We went to Pilar for dinner and had amazing food with delicious mojitos while doing some wedding planning.

My lesson from this is that even if you are a rule follower in this world, there are plenty of people who aren't.  Try not to let people who break rules and endanger you get you angry.  It doesn't help anyone.  Instead, just pay attention and try not to get killed or hurt.

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