Current mood:

angry

1% extra free!
I'm highly unlikely to get on the bike tomorrow (other plans), so I'll post the weekly numbers now.

Miles biked: 55.55
Lengths swum: 28
Targets: 55 miles and 28 lengths

Mostly a good week. North Park - Shaker Blvd is definitely better in terms of road quality than anything involving South Park or Fairmount, and I've been more consistent about going for 5-10 mile rides on days when I wouldn't otherwise get any exercise. Having said that, Green Road south of Cedar is possibly the most bone-shaking street I've found to date, and I am still tired of getting in from a ride with aching arms.

Today I went for my longer ride, though it was half the length of last Sunday's. It was an unremarkable one, except for a couple of incidents with other road users.

First there were a few dickheads honking me and rushing to get past when they didn't have the space on Euclid Avenue. I took great pleasure in catching up with the same cars at one red light after another - in fact it's proven something I had idly assumed to be true: that once traffic reaches a certain not-that-high level cycling is just as fast as driving.

Then there was the big event. Coming up Harvard on the steep but short hill going West from Richmond, I realised that the right hand lane was about to turn into a right-turn-only lane. I looked back, and there was a truck coming, but it was a couple of minutes away from me, so I changed lanes. I wasn't going very fast because this was up a hill, but anyway I was approaching a red light. As I was almost there, the truck was bearing down on me, showing no sign of wanting to avoid me (even though there was an empty lane to my left), and honking. My desire not to die being stronger than my pride, I let the fuckers intimidate me, but I couldn't resist shouting at them while I pulled into the right turn lane, let them pass, and pulled back into the correct lane to wait for the light to change. The light changed and they didn't move. When I got tired of waiting for them, I started to pass them, at which they point they started matching my speed, making it impossible for me to get into the correct lane (and there's no way I was going fast enough to be anywhere but the inside lane on a road that size). Eventually I hit the brakes and they carried on, too fast for me to note their licence plate details. I did notice that they were drivng a Value City Furniture delivery truck, so I shall email that company, but I doubt anything will come of it. For one thing, no non-cyclist seems to give a toss about cyclists' welfare, seeing us as an irritant who probably deserve such treatment, and for another it's just going to be easier for the customer service department to say "sorry sir, you haven't given us enough information to identify the driver" rather than do anything about it.

And finally... just as I was calming down from that, I had a near miss with an SUV at Van Aken. Of all the near misses I've ever had as a pedestrian, driver or cyclist, this is the one I am most convinced was not my fault, because I was in the middle of a long green phase, and this car just shot out going across me. So leaving aside that they didn't bother to look where they were going, they also jumped a red light, and did so in the middle of the red phase. They're lucky I wasn't in/on a motorised vehicle, because if I had been going any faster I wouldn't have been able to stop in time. Oh, and when I shouted at them, they gave me this dirty look like I was doing something wrong.

I'm tired of being treated like scum who doesn't belong on the road. I have a shiny new copy of the Digest of Ohio Motor Vehicle Laws (which I used to confirm that both times I've had encounters with police on the streets here, I knew the law better than the cops did), and it makes perfectly clear that I do. Not to mention that my road use as a cyclist doesn't have any knock-on cost to those around me, unlike everybody in a car, whose fumes I have to breathe.

Actually I think it's symptomatic of a more general thing about this part of the world. People just can't bring themselves to care about their fellow human beings. It shows up in all manner of ways, from urban design to the crazy municipal authority structure to the extreme racial segregation of Cleveland to the behaviour of indvidual drivers, and I've had enough of living with the consequences.

I'm counting the days (13) till I get the hell out, and over the coming year or so I'll get the chance to discover if Seattle is different enough that I actually like living there, or if this is in fact a disease of the entire United States.

Next week's targets: 60 miles and 30 lengths. It will be my last week of doing this in Cleveland, and I imagine I'll want to change the system once I'm settled in Seattle given that the ground is so much hillier there, access to a swimming pool may be more or less convenient depending on exactly where we live, and I'm pretty determined to get back into kung fu, having even been given a referral for a good teacher there.