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You know what the problem is? The problem is that “It Is The Wiser and Better Motorist Who Realizes That Fucking With Me In Any Way Shape Or Form Will Have Its Consequences” is really too big to put on the back of a tee-shirt. And even if it wasn’t, it would get covered up by my backpack.

So instead some people have to learn the hard way, which brings us to today’s incident with the idiot in the white SUV on La Brea.

I start the following clip back aways to show you that the soon-to-be-offending motorist coming past me was obviously lacking basic awareness while we were both southbound on La Brea. Had the driver been even slightly less attention-challenged going by me then something along the lines of “bicyclist!” might have registered and been retained in better preventing the blind and entitled veering into me in an unsafe attempt to change lanes. But of course with a pea brain like the driver’s it didn’t.

As a back-up plan to such a lack of awareness had the driver simply turned and looked first to the right before changing lanes into me chances are good none of what follows would have transpired. But it did.

And then, to leave no shadow of a doubt as to the quality of assbag involved, the driver had to go and honk at me for interfering with the vehicle’s righteousness and forcing an application of the brakes. Now, I can put up with half-asleep lane poachers, but when you sound the horn at me like your fail is my fault? Ah, well… the rest as they say is MeNotPuttingUpWithThatBullShit:

In case the comment from the person I passed at the bus stop got lost in all the street noise, she said “A lotta nerve, huh?” Indeed. Me and the jerk in the Explorer.

And speaking of nerve, if there are any folks with enough of the stuff to think what a big man I am for yelling at a woman, please understand two things: 1) I’m an equal opportunity confronteducationalist and I stopped and turned not knowing or caring if the jackass behind the wheel of the vehicle was male or female.

While the entirely unhurried pedestrian making her way so casually across 4th Street could be accused of acting like she was queen of the road, the ever-entitled motorist who — gasp! — lost a few precious seconds because of her pace proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is king of the losers by finding it so ridiculously  necessary to sound his horn at her — and after she’s out of his way. Subsequently I saluted His Disgrace, per custom and protocol.

I don’t know what it is about YouTube. The indignation and insultation one can find there either directly or directed at others often achieves a cro-mag baseness that seldom fails to amaze.

I certainly don’t help matters with my “”This Is Why I Hate” series of posts usually video’d from the POV of me on my bike. I’ve “hated” on mopeds, FedEx, bicyclists, motorists, and boy have I been hated on in return.

Now if you know me, you know that one of the few things I hate is hate. But of course those on the YouToobz, they don’t know me. And whether they’re self-righteous or just good ol’ knuckle-draggers they can get pretty inflamed — especially when I push their buttons.

So you can imagine my surprise when instead of the usual “Get the fuck off the road, Lance!” I found this rather reasoned and articulate reaction from user “simplecreativity” to my “This Is Why I Hate: Fedex” post:

Don’t you think this is a bit much? You hate FedEx because they happen to employ some inconsiderate drivers? Welcome to the world, good sir. This is like me saying I hate people who own Fords because someone in a Ford cuts me off on the road. Take it easy. And while you’re at it, slow down. I bet it wouldn’t have been nearly so threatening if, in the great span of time you had before getting there, you applied the brake.

Relax. Not everything is cause for throwing around the word “hate”. Jeez.

I was actually quite impressed that he resisted the urge to just call me a fucktard or a douchebag (as so many other trollios have on that post), and in cordial response I commended him:

Excellent and intelligent argument, sc (accept for that incorrect assumption that I was somehow speeding on my bike, but I can forgive that mistake). For what it’s worth I used “hate” not because I actually hate, but because its such a loaded word. Somewhere on the Youtubes I even have a vid about “hating” cyclists! Cheers.

Did it stop there? Of course not. The fun had only started and it rapidly sped downhill in the ensuing back and forth (laid out after the jump) until he couldn’t help but demonstrate his hate (no quotes) by calling me a jackass and an asshole and cite the hate-filled comments of all the other mouth-breathing trolls as proof of why he was right and I was beyond help.

Tiring of the folly, I respectfully requested he quit while he’s behind fighting a battle he couldn’t win. When that didn’t happen I then asked him semi-politely a second time, and when again he continued his ranting I was left to the inevitable task of blocking him. Good times.

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Pretty uneventful commute this morning. Everything was safe and sane and the most interesting thing I encountered being an elderly gent in full suit and tie — looking like someone straight outta Copenhagen — biking south on La Brea this morning as I was stuck on 4th behind a line of cars waiting for the green. I was hoping to catch him and get a nice image to share, but sadly I didn’t catch up with him until I got to Wilshire and by then he’d hung a right and was west and out of angle and range of any decent image my sunglasses cam could capture.

But I certainly caught this guy who made me sigh as he rolled the red at 4th and Normandie while I waited for it (click for the slightly bigger picture):

First things first: I love that this guy’s out there on his bike, using it to get from his A to his B. He is simply righteous and awesome because of that and I applaud him. And I award bonus points for having the brains to protect his brains. And furthermore, when I arrived at the intersection, he was even more righteously and awesomely stopped and considerately awaiting the green on the other side of the street.

Or so it seemed. Because in the blink of the Don’t Walk sign, the good Dr. Cykyl sudeenly turned into the evil Mr. Ryde and he ran it — you’ll note from the opposing traffic signal that the crosswalk counter was at 3 by the time he reached the above point. So for the sake of argument maybe it was at 5 or 6 when he commenced.

Dude couldn’t've waited all of one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand six one-thousand? Clearly not.

But see here’s the deal from my hunched and curmudgeonly perspective over the handle bars. I am in no kind of second-shaving hurry when I’m on a bike. Certainly I’m not always ahead of schedule when I ride, but rarely do I saddle up intent on undertaking a trans-city time trial. Instead of aiming to get there as fast as humanly and illegally possible, it’s pretty much a given that I’ll get there when I get there. I’m on a freakin’ bike for crank’s sake.

Not to be the pot calling the kettle black, over the course of my life as a cyclist, I’m guilty of jumping a red or 200. But if I do so, it’s usually after some interminable wait at an intersection whose sensors won’t ever detect my bike and is devoid of any traffic, cross or otherwise. And honestly when I am seen committing such a violation, even if it’s by a motorist way up or down the street,there’s a twinge of embarrassment involved. Crazy, right?

I prefer “conscientious.”

Because showing my fellow travelers that some of us cyclists do obey the law and respect others’ right of way is worth far more to me than that 12th of a minute the fellow saved reinforcing the popular myth that cyclists don’t give a shit about the rules or how we look breaking them.

Coming home east along Venice Boulevard I spotted a black coupe a half block up poking out from a side street fully across the bike lane waiting for motor traffic to clear so the driver could make a right. I slowed hoping he’d get his chance but the flow of cars was too thick and I ended up having to merge in with it to get around him. Silly me: I dared give him a disapproving look in passing and in return he deemed it wholly appropriate to give me the finger.

I’m still doing pretty good at not getting goaded by such idiocy, but I couldn’t help stopping and turning  and shrugging an incredulous WTF at his display. He then responds by gunning into his turn, making sure as he comes out of it to angle a bit toward me as he zooms past — a shortsighted maneuver because the light at Cattaraugus was red and he then had to come to a quick stop behind the line of cars in front of him. When I arrived beside him and looked into the cabin at the trapped dickbag suddenly he wasn’t so bold. Sucker just stared straight ahead with something of a wide-eyed cross between defiance and embarrassment for the 10 seconds I examined him, which was just as well. If he’d given me even the slightest excuse I think I would have lost my senses of peace and humor. Insetad I just shook my head, crossed Cattaraugus and left him behind to consider what might have been had I been a bigger Francis than him.

Alternate Title: A Less-Attentive And Intuitive Cyclist Would Have Become A Momentary Hood Ornament

Here’s the slow-mo video of the slow-speed encounter beginning when I proceed from my stop on 4th Street a couple blocks east of Western Avenue as the northbound vehicle crosses the intersection (worth noting in that first frame below how the southbound vehicle hasn’t arrived at the limit line):

All in a day’s ride, folks. Aaaaaaaaaaaall in a day’s ride.

Susan and I made good on vague plans suggested a couple weeks ago to forego our usual Saturday-morning porch time and get ourselves over to Griffith Park for a near-sunrise hike from the Observatory up to the top of Mt. Hollywood.

It was my first time on pretty much any of GP’s trails since the devastating fire back in May of 2007, a disaster that part of me is sorry I missed experiencing first hand, but a larger part of me is glad I was far away on a ship somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea as it happened (but I must say it was odd learning about my virtual playground going up in smoke while floating about so far removed some 6,000 miles away).

I literally could not bring myself to visit the burned areas in the ensuing years because the park is so close to my heart and  I knew if I got up close to all the damage I’d risk breaking down in tears — or at the very least walking through the denuded areas shaking my head so incessantly I would appear to have the most severe case of Parkinson’s ever. I even had trouble looking at pictures of the park in the fire’s aftermath.

So yesterday was my first day in it. And while I still despaired at the lingering evidence all around me, I was heartened at the recovery taking place — bolstered no doubt by this past week’s storms.

But the worst reminder was the pocket to the west of Mt. Hollywood’s summit known as Captain’s Roost, which prior to the fire was a wonderful oasis, but now stands done-in and still waiting any kind of organized attempt to restore it to its former glory.

Whereas the breezes used to blow overhead through the boughs of towering eucapytpus and other trees, those are all gone now but for their charred stumps, leaving little more than a promenade of palms — trunks blackened but surviving.

Among the many things carved into them by representatives of the legion of mouth-breathing cretins compelled to furtively leave definitive evidence of their inbred stupidity, I found one to be the most laughably ridiculous of the bunch: a peace sign.

Given how wordy I’m known to be, I could of course go on and on and on seething about the irony of using a living thing as a canvas upon which to destructively carve such a hopeful symbol, but instead I’ll convey how incensed it made me via the fragment of a dream I had sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, one clearly influenced by having watched “Inglourious Basterds” earlier that evening.

In it I was walking along the fire road above the Roost, shaking my head in despair when I  found the culprit in the act of  immortalizing his idiocy. Though it seemed as if the dream started with me empty handed, when I looked down I had a baseball bat in my left, and a giant knife in my right.

I did nothing stealthy in my approach because the young man turned, saw me and simply went back to it as if either he was entitled to do or my walking in a park with a bat and a monster knife was nothing out of the ordinary, so I just walked casually down to a place directly behind him and watched as he continued, the bat resting on my shoulder, the grip on the knife loose.

My guess is he thought I was admiring his work, or at least up until the violence began. But unlike Quentin Tarantino I’ll leave what happened next up to your imagination — other than to say that what I did with the weapons distinctly mirrored their most horrible uses in his movie.

So I’m on 4th Street this morning, dutifully waiting for the green at Wilton like the conscientious and grown-up cyclist I am — a green that is always ooooh so slow to arrive. Finally, as if a gift from gawd the flashing red hand appears, and the countdown commences until I am morally and legally free to go.

But across the street on the southwest corner are two peds feeling decidedly less contractually obligated, the youngest of which just can’t wait those few more seconds so he jaywalks. A couple seconds after he goes, so does the older man who sets out at a more casual pace.

But then: bonus capture! Into the frame races a silver Ford Mustang running the red. Had the driver gunned it a mph or two faster or perhaps arrived across the intersection a second or two sooner there could have been a total collision with the second jaywalker. Conversely had both pedestrians waited for the green chances are one or both might have stepped off the curb and been hit. So for all concerned impatient lawbreakers, everything worked out. And fortunately for me I didn’t get to witness any carnage.

Pop Quiz Hotshot: You’re on a two-laner heading through a residential area deep in the westside of Los Angeles. As you can see from the first frame in the clip below directly ahead of you are parked cars on your right, there’s a speed hump, and for good measure you’ve got that trash truck parked and blocking the opposite lane to your left. Best of all, unseen is the white Hummer H3 coming up behind you piloted by an appropriately inconsiderate driver who is of course hand-dialing a number on his mobile phone as he keeps coming despite you rightfully moving into the traffic lane to the left of the parked cars. Trouble is, even if he wanted to be courteous and safe (which he doesn’t) and swing out around you the trash truck’s position prevents that, and his over-active sense of superiority coupled to an overtly ignorant sense of roadway entitlement keeps him from slowing down and waiting the few seconds it would take for you to clear the parked cars and bear over to the right.

So, what do you do? What. Do. You. Do.

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This past week or so I’ve been testing out a pair of sunglasses that have a built-in video camera. Pretty low-rent James Bond type stuff. The 320-x240 footage leaves lots to be desired and so does the audio — all the worse to low-quality immortalize a Venice Boulevard incident this morning on my bike commute to work in which a motorist couldn’t be bothered to look around to make sure he could turn left safely, much less actually yield for any cross traffic, which at that moment was basically me: a worthless invisible commie bicyclist.

Fortunately, since I am able to mentally bike about 0.65 seconds into the future, I saw the left-hook just shortly after he commenced it and was able to slow down from 12mph to 11mph and thus avoid t-boning the bastard.

Over the wind against the mic as he fires across my bow you’ll hear me admire his idiocy with “That’s so fuckin’ awesome” before I yell “You super idiot!” after him as he pulls into the adjacent strip mall he was in such a hurry to get to, but after that I opted to be nothing more than exasperatedly civil when he exited the vehicle (and in Army Airborne uniform, no less). He listened to me call out his fail in an oddly mute an unapologetic fashion and then I got the hell on my way urging him to be careful.