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| A mom taking six kids to the science museum in Portland. |
Yesterday when I went for a bike ride a white car (plate 159
FVY) had to slow down to safely pass. The
driver screamed at me as he sped by, being delayed about 15 seconds.
I suspect this was a teenager having a bad day, but it
reminded me that in one of the best cities for bicycling, on a road clearly
marked that bicycles will be present, drivers like this one felt that extra
patience/caution on his part was nothing short of extortion. This is America
and the car is king – everyone else is obligated to yield the road or suffer
the consequences.
Being yelled at reminded me of growing up in the Midwest in
the 1970s and 80s as people routinely yelled wisecracks when I rode my bike on
county roads and trucks and cars passed dangerously close, even if there was no
other traffic.
Although Portland is a great city for bikers of all stripes,
non-cyclists often characterize the place by the fanatics, who would seem to run
traffic signals as an ideological statement, endanger pedestrians, clog streets
with misplaced narcissism, and participate in The World Naked Bike Ride as a weird sex rite.
Each year Portland sees a larger number of bicycle commuters
which suggests that cycling to work, and bicycling as a way of life, is creeping
into the mainstream. I hope that as more people ride the stereotypes of the
urban cyclist will fade. I like the thought that in Denmark when a grandmother
rides a bike to the grocery store such is so common an occurrence that it doesn’t
warrant a blog post or video.
This is the future I want for my kids, where they can ride a
bicycle on an urban roadway and know that there is civic culture that respects
cycling. I love Portland because we have started this public discussion, but
there is still a long way to go.
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