Monday, August 4, 2014

Road Bike Road Rage: Happy Ending

This morning I woke up in the middle of a shitty dream. Not a nightmare mind you but a real pile of shit. This was not a good way to set the day in motion. I was in a crappy mood at breakfast. I had less than the usual amount of patients with my girls, (Who are freakin' awesome.) which made me feel even shittier. I hopped on the road bike and headed to work with my shitty crappy attitude in tow. After a mile or so I was doing swell; fresh air, bike, etc. Then someone honked at me and the shittyness of the morning came on like garbage truck, dropped off the Empire State Building. My mind swirled with the fictional altercation that would ensue. The perfectly dispatched justice the honker would receive via my mouth and fists. In the middle of the swirl of anger my rational side would intersect words of calm. "You are really spinning on this. Take it down a notch."  Slowly my mind stepped back from the edge and I let the bike ride consume me. Thinking about nothing I crested a hill at a busy intersection with no light. An Escalade pulled up behind me. With no chance to cross I circled back around to let the big guy get in front so he could make a right turn. As I passed his window he rolled it down and said in a loud voice...

"You know, it really annoys the shit out of me..."
I'll stop the quote there. It was at this point that the bear woke again. This is going to be the culmination of my mornings shit pile. This mother fucker has no idea what he's about to open up. It may result in some jail time but this fuck stick is about to get the business end of a beat down!
"You know, it really annoys the shit out of me how fast you got up that hill! I just started biking. It's changed my life! I've been doing my best but god dammit!"
In that instant the several things happened:

  1. I got happy. I'm not going to jail!
  2. I got really happy. My previously mentioned bear was now on a tire swing made out of marshmallow dandelions, blowing kisses at squirrels and bunnies.
  3. I got pride. This dude found biking.
  4. I got gratitude. I was grateful this guy took away my rage and replaced it with some deep introspection to chew on.     
"If it helps you I kinda feel like I'm gonna throw up a little bit" I said. An with a belly laugh he exclaimed "Bless you!" and sped off.

I don't often feel that kind of anger, but today I did and was lucky enough to have someone come along and extinguish it, and for that I am grateful. 

I should say this is not a car vs. bike thing, it's just where the two of us happened to be this morning. 


2 comments:

nc dirtbag said...

I like that story.
I've had mornings like that, where a succession of shitty things happens and the drivers around you seem particularly aggressive in their plan to run you off the road. Instead of a random driver saying something life affirming it usually just stays crappy. One thing that helps me is to picture that each crappy driver that acts like an asshat is exactly that, a "crappy" driver, as in just crapped his pants and is mad because he can't get a diaper change until lunch break, so he has to wear sit in his own steampile and all of his coworkers will know that he pooped himself. That usually helps me laugh about it and enjoy myself in the face of crappy drivers.

Driver acting like a jerk? It's because he crapped his pants.

Troy Gutter Cleaning said...

Great shaare