Thursday night, the bike team did what a bike team does. Or what our bike team does anyway. We headed out for a night on the town. First stop was the (sorta) home base... the yazoo taproom. On this night, there was a full on crew out for festivities. The occasion was a break in the rain that had blanketed Nashville for 4-5 days previous. From the taproom we headed across the river to one of the Edgier local drinking establishments on the eastside. You are all expecting something here about the ride over probably. Anytime you have about a dozen guys with beer in them who have no qualms about taking chances on their bikes riding through downtown, the potential for traffic terror is pretty impressive. But this trip took place without incident. There was some gap jumping, a security guard run-in (he was pretty cool about things, though), a "Hey" from another security guard, and he who runs redlights on his fixie did in fact run a redlight on his fixie, but no big deal.

(There is a meaningful point to this story.)

So we were out on the porch of the marginally popular "extreme" neighborhood bar drinking more beer and eating some food. Another crew-member and I had obligations early in the morning so we needed to roll out before everyone else, and since we live not far from each other, we rolled together to make the ride home easier. After digging our bikes out of the pile we started to get on and roll out. I dropped onto the road and saw a car coming down behind me, so I quickly circled back to not be in that driver's way. About this same time, two things happened in unison. My friend mounted his bike and was pulling onto the street and the guys were calling out something from the porch. The calls were just enough to distract my buddy so that he rolled out in front of the car. He wasn't in danger of being hit, but the car certainly had to slow down to not hit this fellow on a bike. So that would have been enough, but when the car did end up rolling by, it happened to be the local fuzz. Nice. Great choice there, Ivan....uhh, I mean friend.... Well, he was gracious enough to not make a fuss about it and my friend and I were able to keep on our course towards our homesteads.... Welcome to infamy, my friend... you have been highlighted on "Biking in the Car Lane".

The point of this blog is explained on the right. To kick things off, I feel like it is only appropriate to first point out a mistake of my own...

I commuted to work this morning (a long 3.5 mile mostly downhill, mostly in bike lanes, ride through the residential part of the city of Nashville) on my steel gunnar crosshairs, my typical commuter bike, and was very much enjoying the cool air. It was a nice break from this record hot summer of commuting that is now almost officially past. The first part of my commute is not on bike lanes, but through lightly trafficked residential streets. I take the same route every morning.

To make the transition from the residential streets to the bike lane that takes me the rest of the way to work, I cross a main road at an intersection off of a very narrow road (are you confused yet?) This morning, in the midst of enjoying the coolness and thinking about the upcoming work day, I was riding down that narrow road towards the intersection and noticed a car that turned onto the road behind me and followed me to the intersection. The driver was very respectful of my space and stopped with plenty of room in order to give me time to make my turn across the intersection and to not crowd me. Sometimes this intersection takes a few minutes to clear up enough to safely cross, and so I am used to waiting. I hate causing the drivers to wait when they wouldn't normally have to (because they were turning right, a turn which was clear to make). So I started to look at ways to get out of their way, including riding halfway across the road to jump the median or some other such technique. So as I was looking left and plotting my move and starting to roll across the street that direction, I neglected to notice that there was a driver trying to turn onto the narrow road from the other direction. We almost collided and they had to honk to get my attention and also stopped in the middle of the road. I waved and said I was sorry, and I proceeded to ride down the sidewalk to take another way to work.

That was a wake up call to me. I need to pay more attention. I can sometimes grow lax in paying attention on routes I ride about daily. I also feel bad putting the drivers through the trauma of almost hitting a cyclist. Besides that, she looked like a nice lady and probably went to work and told 3-5 people about her experience with a local bicycle commuter.

Sorry guys. I didn't mean to harm our reputation.