So I left the office at 6 p.m. yesterday to make my way across town to the Larchmont Village restaurant where I’d join my Bay-bee! at her company holiday office party for dinner.
In all, it was a trek requiring a heightened sense of awareness because there were just a bunch of motorists out there in hurries and out of their minds. Moreso than to what I’ve become accustomed the streets were gridlocked and subsequently there were right-hookers and bike lane blockers, and harried horn-honkers and short-fused speed-racers all over the place.
But I made my way successfully across town, whereupon I found myself eastbound at 4th Street, waiting for traffic to clear so I could make a left and go north on Rossmore. It was there I had what I’d have to say is the most LOL-able encounter with a most pscyho nutbar of a Volvo wagoneer.
It started off innocently enough. I was stopped out over the limit line on 4th when the southbound Volvo slowed and made a right turn from Rossmore. But instead of heading westbound it stopped and then proceeded to slowly arc its way behind me until it was on my right and waiting with me for the southbound traffic to clear before the fully jammed northbound traffic got going again.
But that didn’t happen, leaving us both sitting there for the few more moments until the lady’s patience ran out and she started inching her way out into the southbound lane of Rossmore as if there was some referendum to the vehicle code specifically allowing her to stop the now-flowing northbound traffic so she could get across.
Trouble is, the northbounders didn’t get that memo.
So it was at this point that I started commentating on her actions to no one in particular. First I wondered openly why she opted to make a right to creep around behind me to cross Rossmore when a left turn from Rossmore to 4th would have been the far more efficient maneuver.
But then again, I’m a fucking cyclist talking to himself, so what the hell do I know?
Next, as she kept on hitching forward and braking and hitching forward some more and braking trying to cut the continuing caravan of cars, I offered my worthless opinion in the form of “Ya know, from where I come from it’s usually safe and proper to allow traffic with the right of way to clear before entering an instersection.”
It was then that the Volvo quit its hitching entirely driver’s side window powered down and from the driver’s piehole out came: “Are you talking to me?”
Surprised that the driver found it important to pay attention to my blatherings while breaking various traffic laws, I replied to the soccer-mom version of Travis Bickle: “No. I wasn’t talking to you so much as about you.”
To which she considered the possible responses available to her and settled on “Why don’t you just shut up.”
To which I considered the possible responses available to me and settled on “Happy holidays!” in large part because the northbound traffic had stacked up to a stop again and the southbound traffic was coming once more so I decided to get a move on and make my left turn while the moving was good.
End of story? Hardly.
From there I pedaled up to 3rd Street, where I made a right and got in the left turn lane to make my usual left onto Arden, the next block over. Well, as I waited at the red, guess what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Volvo, ripping a left northbound from Arden westbound onto 3rd to slam to a stop next to me in the No. 1 lane. Apparently she’d successfully forded Rossmore, but then I guess with a lingering dissatifaction with the conclusion of our conversation she decided I needed a hearty “Fuck You!” hurled at me, which is exactly what she delivered a couple arms’ lengths away through the half-lowered window of her wagon.
So I blew her a kiss and told her to quit stalking me, which was apparently not the right thing to say or do to a lunatic like her because she then righteously declared: “I’ll kick your fucking ass, you loser!”
So I asked her if she had change for a $20.
“Why?”
“Because I would gladly pay you ten bucks to see you try!”
And she blinked, but did nothing.
“$15 then?”
She yelled her go-to expletive again, and then lurched her head back then forward and made this funny-weird face — her mouth forming into an “O” that froze. Like maybe she was trying to hawk some spit or a wad of gum at me but swallowed it by mistake because nothing came out.
I couldn’t help but laugh — even more when I realized the bigger picture of what she’d done.
“All that hard work getting across Rossmore and here you are heading in the wrong direction back toward it?” I asked. “That’s what I call a fail.”
With the light turning green and the westbound traffic behind her starting to move, I pushed out into the intersection leaving her to stereotypically gun the Volvo away into the left turn lane, where I could only hope she’d opt to make a standard left turn from Rossmore onto 4th rather than fishhook her way across again.