Dee 'sgusting

That was your warning.

I snot-rocketed so fantastically, the business-suited motorist next to me, with an astonished (perhaps admiring?) smile, mouthed, "WOW." As if to say, "That was an achievement. I will arrange for a plaque." People are strange, particularly when it comes to non-verbal commentary.

Verbal commentary, unfortunately has yielded crappier results of late. Biking mid-afternoon the other day, a guy in the passenger seat of what looked to be his 20-something son's car. He opened his window and shouted to me as they pulled away, nodding at the woman on a bike in front of me, "I wish I were riding a bike behind HER, too!" He threw in a lecherous grin for good measure. Initially stunned into stutters, I didn't want the woman (who didn't acknowledge this exchange at all, or at least didn't turn around) to interpret my silence as complicity, so I shouted "ASSHOLE!" at the parting car.

Something about the range of communication on the streets between cars and bikes intrigues me. It's intrinsically combative, I think, as both cyclists and motorists feel entitled to the road. But it's also a little bit intimate, as the commuter sphere is a personal space - think of all the things you do in your car, think of how it's your own traveling bubble. Most bikers I know have a certain biking face, a certain biking mentality they enter, which I think is comparable. I'm more apt to talk to a stranger when I'm biking than walking or grocery shopping or whatever. Still, the latter example shows that being revealing is a two-way street, if you'll pardon the pun/cliche.