So the other day I was biking home from my lab, as I often do. Actually, it was several weeks ago--it has gotten too cold for me to brave biking of late. But as you may have noticed, I often get a tad behind on updating my blog. Since I find the incident highly blog worthy, however, I will tell it despite being immensely tardy.
So, there I was, biking home like I always do. I was on a four lane stretch of road (two lanes each direction with a little island in the middle), approaching a stop light up ahead, shortly before which the right hand lane becomes a right-turn only lane. As always, I was in the left lane at this point because I needed to go straight through the light and didn't want to be stuck in the right lane and forced to turn right. I have found that it's best to get over to the left lane early, because changing lanes on a bike with any car traffic around can be tricky (I can't go nearly fast enough to merge into a different lane easily with cars around.)
As I approach the light, I see a lady crossing the street. She is not too far from a crosswalk, but is nonetheless blatantly jaywalking. She is walking reeeeally slow, and I can't quite tell if she's trying to wait for me to pass before she finishes crossing or not. I slow down also, so I can gauge what she is doing and decide whether to go past or stop (in the case that she doesn't stop for me.)
Suddenly, she looks at me and says, "Excuse me." I stop, mistaking the forcefulness in her voice as her desperately needing help of some kind. (I think she was just angry at me, it turns out.) She has a strong accent (Russian, I think) and so I am thinking maybe she is new or visiting and needs some sort of help. "Yes?" I say.
"Do you know the rules of bike riding?" she asks. I look at her, confused. "You are supposed to be riding in the right lane!"
"Oh, well I need to go straight through the stop light, so I'm in the left lane," I explain.
"NO!" she scolds me. "You must cross there, were the pedestrians cross." She points to the crosswalk to the right of the turn lane.
"No, bikes follow the same rules as cars," I insist, feeling extremely defensive.
"NO!" She barely lets me get a word in edgewise. "I am a bike rider too, and I know you should be here by the curb. I didn't see you as I was crossing because I didn't expect you to be there. You almost hit me!" [By the way, I did NOT almost hit her. I was going very slowly, completely prepared to stop if she did not.]
"You're not even in the crosswalk!" I protest.
"That doesn't matter. You should be on the right. It's not safe!"
Let us pause for a moment here, to savor the full irony of the situation. Here is a woman accosting me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (yes, we're still stopped on the road--luckily no cars were coming just then) to give me a lecture on bike safety whilst jaywalking herself.
At this point, I notice that the light has turned green and get back on my bike. "I have to go," I say.
"You look up the rules on the internet--you will see I'm right!" She yells after me.
I turn and yell back. "I will, but you look it up too! And you should get in a CROSSWALK!"
Okay, so I did not display a lot of grace at the end of this interchange. But the audacity of this lady had me steaming mad. I mean, who does that? She may have had a (slight) point in that I had changed into the left lane earlier than necessary. However, she was dead wrong that I was supposed to cross the intersection in the crosswalk! And even if she was 100% in the right, I think stopping a biker in the middle of the road to lecture them equals complete lunacy.
Okay, rant over. You may all now commence in telling me how right I am. :)
