The Well-Tempered Cyclist
Photography: Amy Walker
What motorists have always suspected is true: When I get on my bike, a switch goes off and consideration for anyone else ceases to exist. Each morning, amped on fresh air and adrenaline, I fly downhill on San Francisco’s Market Street and head for the Financial District. My goal is simple: to make it to work without stopping – or at least not long enough for my feet to touch the ground.
This is how I recently found myself in the middle of an intersection before the light had turned green, when a MUNI bus came barrelling through despite a good solid red overhead. I only avoided a crash by turning in the direction the bus was travelling in; it came so close, I felt the kiss of steel along the length of my right side. The bus driver slammed on his brakes, stuck his head out his side window, looked me right in the terrified eye, and yelled, “Asshole!”
“Screw you!” I shouted back.
“No, screw YOU!” he screamed, slamming his window shut and his foot on the gas. The morning commuters on board lurched violently, the ones who managed to keep their footing glared at me malevolently, clearly cursing me and my people. The other motorists at the intersection gave me the universal sign of disappointment: the baleful head shake. The rest of the bike traffic kept rolling, one fellow bike geek tossing me a sympathetic, “MUNI drivers suck!” over his messenger bag. I laughed it off with relief and kept riding; just your average morning commute down Market Street.
Now I knew that running red lights was risky; I just didn’t really care. Ever since I’d hopped on my first bike, I’d been blowing through traffic signs and signals like a tornado through Texas. It all started with the need for speed, of course – what bad habit doesn’t?
Judgment played its part, too. Since I was traveling solely by my own pedal power and the motorists were passively harnessing the power of an internal combustion engine, I reasoned that I deserved the right of way.
And then I met Martha. She is from the Midwest and is a much nicer person than I am. She’s also an avid bike geek, so it wasn’t long before we were riding together around the city. To my horror, Martha honoured all red lights; and even worse, she stopped – actually stopped – at every single stop sign. Good grief! Standing beside her with my feet on the ground felt like six kinds of wrong. We’d slowly crank back into motion only to stop again at the very next stop sign, one block away. “We’ll never get there,” I thought. “How can you get anywhere stopping at every single block? That’s for bus drivers, not freewheeling bicyclists.” There was plenty of time to think about these things as we rode to our destination across town.
As it turns out, good manners and cycling are not mutually exclusive, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. After a decade of riding with attitude, I finally began to perceive how bad-tempered cycling habits create all kinds of ill will on my city’s streets. It started to feel better to stop, put my feet on the ground, and let someone else take their turn. As the other cyclists flew past me, I could see the consequences of our actions for the first time.
I saw how cyclists flying through red lights and cutting folks off left frustrated drivers all over town unhappy about sharing the road with bikes. I saw messengers and fixie hipsters slaloming through cutthroat traffic, and I saw the fury they left in their wake. I used to observe this with a kind of rebel glee, caring only about my own speed and maintaining my own momentum. But slowing down had awakened my consideration for how other people feel.
These shifts in perspective happened gradually over weeks of riding with Martha. But there was one experience that crystallized everything and made me aware of how much my riding style had changed. I was starting down Valencia Street, heading south on a summer day, with a long flat bike lane stretching ahead of me invitingly. I had a green light and was pedalling fast through an intersection when I saw a MUNI bus just ahead of me getting ready to pull back into the flow of traffic.
I slowed to see if he was going to check his rear-view mirror first, which he did. Spotting me, he gave me the go ahead with a wave of his hand out his side window. Instead I stopped just clear of the intersection at his rear wheel, giving him the go ahead with a wave and a smile. With the flash of a return smile in his rear-view mirror, he pulled out in front of me.
That MUNI bus driver and I leapfrogged all the way down Valencia Street that busy Saturday, passing each other a dozen times in as many blocks. We co-navigated through a Frogger game of bus stops, cars stopping and starting erratically in search of elusive parking, and jaywalking pedestrians. Usually sharing the road with a MUNI bus feels competitive or threatening. But on Valencia Street that day, I could feel, quite clearly, that a good rapport existed between that bus driver and me out of our mutual respect for each other: as he was kind enough to offer me the right of way, I had returned the favour. In exchange for that gift, he looked out for me all the way down the line.
That ride left a beautiful taste in my mouth and it still feels good to remember it. Thanks to that experience with the MUNI bus driver and the example of my Midwestern friend, I have blossomed into a well-tempered cyclist, sharing the road with joy and, frequently, with my feet on the ground.
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