My head is held at that perfect angle that I can almost see the road and at the same time the rain isn’t going directly into my eyeballs. That doesn’t mean that the water isn’t drenching my bald head and soaking through my helmet and drawing all of that old, crusty sweat that I never wash off and draining into my eyes. I reach up with my soaked glove and wipe my brow hoping that it will help ease the sting.
I’m in the drops. Somehow this seems to protect me from the deluge and also helps me with maintaining the angle needed to see. My bent arms sting. The rain is coming down so hard that each drop that hits my bare skin welts it. I glance to my right and notice my arms are quickly turning red. I thought that maybe it was hailing but there were no stones on the ground. I keep pedaling.
Lightning streaks across the sky to my left pulling my attention away from the road and I look up. The stray light flashes and disappears. And immediately my eyes are full of water. I whip my head back forward and wipe my eyes with gloves that are completely saturated. And then to the right another strike and I repeat this action of looking, wiping, looking, wiping, looking, wiping. The lightning starts to feel closer. I begin to count the space between flash and the pursuing thunder.
I tuck my head just a little more and try to pedal faster.
And I just start to chuckle. You could say that I LOL’d but then I would have to kill you, but I was chuckling. The rain pouring down around me in buckets. Unbeknownst to me, the City of St. George is issuing a “please stay at home” statement due to the amount of rain coming down. People’s houses are beginning to fill with water, roads are rivers and I’m just pedaling home.
Watching the electric storm through the rain filling my eyes, I can’t help but feel lucky to be riding in this weather. It’s probably not the safest place to be. I can’t imagine that the cars passing me can really see anything, let alone me, but for those 30 minutes I was exactly where I wanted to be.
And then there’s this.
My anecdotal research might be jaded. I do consume an unusually high amount of cycling related media, but I can’t go a day without reading a headline similar to this bull shit. It was less than a year ago that a cyclist was killed here in St. George and only a few weeks since a runner was hit and killed. Each and every time the car is given the benefit of the doubt and latitude in what can be considered acceptable driving.
There are legitimate accidents that happen in this world, it’s not a perfect place. Shit happens. Typing a message to a coworker whether you are a cop or just some guy on his way to the office, is not justification for driving your car into and over someone taking their life for no other reason than that you couldn’t wait a few moments to reply to that message.
In the traffic world, there is always someone to blame. There are a given set of rules set that govern the way we travel via public motorways. When two cars collide an investigation occurs and whoever violated those rules is cited and responsible for the damage. When a car collides with a cyclist, those rules are thrown out the window. Instead, whatever justification can be found for the “accident” is used as reason not to prosecute or in other words, hold the driver responsible.
How many times have you heard about a cyclist getting nailed and the reason for not holding the driver responsible is that the sun was in his eyes? The next time you get pulled over for speeding, rear end someone or run a stop sign, whatever it is that you “accidentally” do, try to get out of it with that excuse.
“Officer, I honestly couldn’t see that stop sign. The sun was in my eyes.”
His reply will be, “If you can’t see to safely maneuver through the roadway, you should pull over and remedy the situation.” He’s still going to give you a ticket. You’re still going to be on the line for fixing the other person’s car. But hit someone on a bike, and they will accept it as a perfectly rational justification for killing someone. Everyone is the same in front of lady justice unless you are on a bicycle and then that bitch is blind.
And that my friends, is what’s known as a shit sandwich.
P. L. and R.
