On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 11/1/2006
Confessions of a Raging Roadie
This is not a column I'm too thrilled to be writing. Nor is it one that will be likely to bring much joy to you, the reader. It's about road rage; about bad behavior; about being a jerk. I'm writing it primarily as a cathartic therapy for myself, but I'm hoping that maybe, somewhere out there, a few of you might identify with some of what I'm spooling out here, and if the therapy works for me, then perhaps it will work for you too.
I suppose most of us, most of the time, would like to spin-doctor our images so that we come off looking like extremely cool dudes and dudettes. Put a filter on the less-than-flattering facets of our lives and bump up the color saturation on the occasional moments when we do manage to get it right. Unfortunately, image massage is seldom consistent with honesty. And the honest fact--as most of my friends will tell you--is that sometimes I am not only not a cool dude, I am or can be...a total jerk.
I'm not talking now about the jerk aspects of my life in general. We haven't got the time nor the column inches here to really put a dent in that topic. I'm talking about those uncomfortable--not to say downright embarrassing--bouts of jerk behavior that I now and then throw together while riding my bike.
I'll give you an example--or a bunch of them--from a recent ride. It was a solo ride of just a few miles. A quick afternoon spin to loosen up the legs and give me an excuse to take a shower. The weather was lovely...early autumn...crisp and balmy at the same time. My life was in order. Stars in alignment. No worries, mate...a happy camper. Or so I would have thought. And yet, for some reason, I was riding with a chip on my shoulder. No, a large brick. I was nursing a pissy attitude for reasons I can't begin to fathom. I just was. In a funk.
My first bit of aggro flared up when a lady pulled out into my path from her driveway. It wasn't so close that I had to brake or really even take any avoiding action. And I certainly wasn't in any danger of T-boning her front fender or having her plow into me. It was a non-event. But I chose to be upset about it...to get up on my hind legs and make an issue of it. As I rolled across in front of her car, I let out a bellowing, "HEY!!!" and followed it up with a kabuki actor's glowering stare. The poor woman hadn't seen me at all. When she did, she was totally shocked. Her mouth formed that round O of utter surprise, and her hands came up to her face in the classic gesture of, "Oh my god...I am so sorry!" But by then, I was past her and riding off in huffy indignation...tinged, perhaps, with just a tiny bit of remorse at having been a wee bit too ballistic for the circumstances.
Then, a mile or two later, a fellow comes riding toward me on his bike...on my side of the road. Now, I really do think it's wrong when cyclists do this. It looks bad (by which I mean it reflects badly on all cyclists when some cyclists do wrong things...or at least I believe this to be true.) And I contend it creates a dangerous situation, a heightened potential for an accident. To me, this guy is a loose cannon. So as we pass, I gesture to the far side of the road and yell at him, "You're on the wrong side of the road!!!"
I do believe what I said about this bad riding. But who appointed me Chief of Police? If the two of us could sit down over a couple of long necks and have a chat, I might attempt to explain the rules of the road as applied to cyclists. That might do some good. But just to explode at the guy out of the blue? What does that accomplish? It makes him defensive and pissed off, so he'll pretty much have to reject anything I say. And it just gets me all churned up inside, which can't be good for my health...physical, mental, or spiritual.
So on I ride, with my own little storm cloud hovering over my head. I almost finish the ride before the third flash point shows up. (These things always come in threes. It's a convention of story telling.) I am approaching a stop sign at a highway. I'm on the right shoulder but am planning to turn left. (This is a country road: no left turn lane and not much traffic.) While I wait for the cross traffic to clear, a guy in a little Honda pulls up behind me, but just a few feet back, so I signal that I'm going to turn left. When the road is clear, I start out and so does he. I'm cutting across in front of him because he wants to go straight and I'm starting from the right shoulder. He seems to give me the room to go, so I do. Then he seems to move toward me as I cross in front of him, so I immediately assume the worst--a bully driver--and I give him my patented "HEY!!!" bellow and finish my pass in front of him. As he passes behind me, he says something out the window, not too loud, but loud enough that I'm supposed to hear it. I don't hear it exactly, but I again assume the worst: that he's giving me a raft of shit. We've all been there, right?
So what do I do? I really hate to admit it, because it's so infantile, and I almost never, ever do it...but I flip him off. What makes me do this? I wish I knew! So dumb... But anger operates from some unreasoning place within us. It just wells up and spews out. And, for whatever reason, I really am angry. And now, I look in my mirror and I see that the guy is doing a quick U-turn and he's coming after me. And like the mythical happy warrior, I rejoice in this! I'm thinking: "Alright! Bring it on!" I quickly roll my bike well up off the road where he can't easily run over it, and I turn to face him, ready to rumble.
Now, let's have a little reality check here. I used to get in a lot of fights when I was a kid (meaning up into my mid-20's). I wasn't a bully or a sociopath, and I seldom started my fights. But if things got ugly, I was willing to mix it up. But geez, I'm almost 60 now, and my last real brawl was over 30 years ago. Furthermore, in theory anyway, I think of myself as a peace loving, mellow, reasonable kind of guy. Conciliation and mediation are more in my line than thumping people on the head. Further furthermore, it's crazy to be baiting a stranger in a car. He might have a gun and be just demented enough to use it. Or he might simply be bigger, stronger, younger, and nastier than I.
But consideration of all of the above requires thought and reflection and calm, and just now, I am not any of that. I am pissed and ready for war. So the guy rolls up next to me, and before I can say or do anything, he puts up a hand in a clear gesture of non-threatening appeasement, and says, "All I said was, ‘You should have just taken the lane.' I was waiting for you. Hey...I like cyclists! You guys are fine by me. So no problem, okay?" And he sticks his hand out the window to shake. In an instant, all of my anger and all of that stiff-legged warrior posturing drains out of me in a single whooosh, and the empty space left behind immediately fills up with sanity and relief. I shake his hand and say, "Hey, soooo sorry! I got it wrong...my bad! Thanks for sorting it out"
I don't know what he took away from it. I hope it was positive. I'd say it was positive for me, but at the same time it was so embarrassing and so chastening that my primary emotion was shame, coupled with a profound sense of bafflement as to how I could possibly let myself get into such a state of surly belligerence while doing anything, let alone while riding a bike, that activity that brings me so much peace and contentment and joy.
So that's my sorry story--for that one ride, anyway. What does it mean for me or for you...for all of us? Let's have a show of hands here: how many of you have had an angry moment on the bike? How many have acted out in some aggressive, indignant, obnoxious way as a result of that anger? If you can honestly say that you have never done so, then you may stop reading now. Or you can continue to read this as if it doesn't apply to you...as if it were an account of the violent behaviors of primates in the jungle. Maybe Jane Goodall writing about chimps thumping on each other. But if your hand went up, even a little, then hang in here with me.
I am not going to set up shop here as a guru, promoting some higher plane of enlightenment. I've got too many problems of my own to be telling others how to live. And frankly, I'm fairly certain there are some occasions when being angry is the right response. I don't think I'll ever be able to embrace the famous old Will Rogers line: "I never met a man I didn't like." I've met quite a few people I don't like, and some of them have been driving cars and trucks on roads where I've been biking. Some of them have behaved very badly toward me, and while the Dalai Lama might be able to smile and shrug it off, I guess I'm just not that evolved yet.
However...pause and take a deep breath...those occasions when really righteous anger can be a force for good are not all that common. In most cases, it won't do you a lick of good to get all riled up.
First of all, there are all the cases where the bully boy driver does his bad thing and then drives on. I can't touch him, verbally or physically. And in most cases, I can't even get his license number. About the only active thing I can do with my anger would be to make some gesture and hope he sees it in his mirror. And why would he see it in his mirror? Because he's looking back to see if he got a rise out of me. Because if he did get a rise out of me, he gets to suck some energy out of me...a psychic vampire. So don't give the lowlife the satisfaction. Don't let him know he scared you or made you angry.
And then there's always the possibility that, if you flip him off, he'll slam on the brakes and come after you in one way or another. If you the biker happen to be a very large and well-trained fighter, with nothing to lose, then perhaps you want this to happen. But how many of us really fit that description? Television and movies saturate our poor little brains with endless images of extremely macho men--and a few Lara-type women--who can kick ass anywhere, anytime. So we somehow imagine it's easy to do. It's not. Close contact violence is painful and wounding, whether you win or lose the scuffle.
Ninetynine percent of the time, it makes the best sense just to let it go. And we're still talking here about those special incidents when someone has really done an intentional bad thing to you. Now add in all the cases where the other party was simply clueless and meant us no harm, like the lady in my story. Or where it's just a simple misunderstanding, like the guy in the Honda. How is anger going to improve those situations? It isn't. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
And it isn't just about maintaining civil discourse and courteous amity between me and the other guy. It's about keeping my own house in order...what's inside me. Anger is like an acid. It chews away at us from the inside out. It's a devouring cancer, and it feeds on itself, building and burning and churning...until we lose all track of common sense and perspective.
I know this is nothing new. It's the oldest, most shopworn bit of philosophizing in the history of the human race. I'm simply writing it down here--again--to add my tiny jot to the great weight of wisdom that has been passed down to us. My great-great-great (insert a few more greats)-grandfather, Freidrich Christophe Oetinger, an 18th century German theologian, wrote a little prayer that most of us know well. (It is often attributed to another man, Reinhold Niebuhr, but when he used it, Niebuhr acknowledged that he picked it up from Oetinger.) It has come to be known as the Serenity Prayer.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Good words to live by, in all that we do. But never more apt than when we take our little lives out onto the road with us on our bike rides. I've spent far too much time and energy being angry and letting that anger turn me into a fool and a jerk. It's a losing proposition. I know that. I also know that I'll probably be angry again some day...perhaps quite soon. But I'm going to do my best to not go there, and if I do find myself in that red haze again, to remember great-grandad's words of wisdom, and let it go...let it go.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net