Bike Riding in the City at Your Own Risk

Bike riding is a day trip and a fun-filled and healthy exercise. The air wafting through your hair, or across your bare head, or helmet, as the case and local law may be, and the drone of bike wheels as you coax your old-bone legs for more speed and extra hill power. Your gloved hands tightly welded to the handle bars as you wriggle from here to there. The feeling and fear you sense in the self-survival control of your muscles and an unknown destination. It’s the best of times. 

But, oh yes, there are some knee-scrapping no-nos that should be aired out at the beginning, especially if you ride in a city. The elusive and constantly narrowing curbside bike paths along the city streets; the verbal and sign-language interaction with motorists, especially those imposing on your space with a right cross to make a free-right turn; your respect of traffic laws (or lack thereof); intervention by helmet police; car doors casually opening in front of you as you squeeze along the right side of the right lane; mud puddles along the curb; and asserting your right to the road with a 20-lb bike vs. a 2-ton truck. This is some of the hair-raising fun you can expect. 

Don’t tailgate behind a city bus unless diesel fumes are your eclectic taste for dizzy-spell city air. That’s not fun. Don’t kick back at the chasing canine trying to retrieve your leg for lunch. That’s not fun if the mutt attaches teeth into your pant leg or ankle bone. 

However, there are ways to combat the biking traffic turmoil tragedy. A rear light blinking on your bike night and day, a reflective vest or a safety triangle on the back fender, also night and day, are a couple of subtle lifesavers. Choose wide or slow streets or even back streets on weekends and navigate the city by traversing through neighborhoods, the slower a car is going, the more time the driver has to take aim.