Does Riding a Bike Make You Gay?

Ugh, I hate traffic.

Yes, nobody likes traffic, but I really despise having to drive through it on my way to or from work. In a nauseatingly sprawling city like Phoenix, it's not unusual at all for people to spend 45 minutes to an hour driving each way to their place of employment.

It's not just that I need to have whatever level of urbanity is possible in our vaguely-named polis of "the Valley", I feel like life is very much wasted if you're spending as much as 1/12th of 5/7ths of your life behind the wheel of a car. (The average, according to a 2005 story I dug up on ABC news, is an hour and a half a day or 100 hours per year.)

My faithful readers have already heard me rant about how our favored mode of transportation is subsidized by the government in multiple ways - and how disgusted I am that building more and more roads is a favorite pork-barrel project for Republicans. Make no mistake - driving is a significant part of our culture, and there's lots of money tied up in the driving industry, so it's no wonder that this beast wants to be fed all of the money we can give it.

My solution is simply to live as close to work as possible, without feeling like I've moved into the office. At present, this means that most days I ride my bike to work.

The upside is that I usually don't have to deal with the aggressive driving threatening my life and impolite gestures wounding my ego.

Still, biking and walking in my neighborhood still has it's pleasures

Case #1

So - it was about a week and a half or so ago, and I was biking in the right of way - off to the right side of the road, staying out of the way, being a dilligent cyclist. I was approaching the intersection of Central and Roosevelt Street, going east on Roosevelt, and I had a green light. I saw that the flashing hand on the walk sign was blinking, so I knew I didn't have much time.

I rapidly pedaled through the intersection, and I was halfway through the intersection when the light turned yellow and some guy in a blue Prius couldn't wait any longer to turn left, so he decided to begin barreling toward me. I slowed down as I saw him coming at me, thinking that he was going to hit me.

He came within probably about two yards of doing so, and I have to say that this was not my most charitable moment.

As I was on my way to the other side after realizing he had kindly decided to spare my life that morning (the light was still yellow) , I asked - ummm, yelled - "Hey, hey, hey! Are you fucking going to run me over, you bastard!?!?!"

The reply? The window rolled down and out came something like, "Shut up you faggot!"


Case #2

It was earlier this week, and I decided that I was going to avoid biking in the right of way when I was going home, and instead stick to the sidewalk to make it through the odd intersection of Roosevelt/Central/First Avenue so as to avoid driving in the heavy traffic and getting caught behind a red arrow with impatient drivers on my tail waiting for the light rail to go by.

This time, I was going east on Roosevelt Street just past Central on the sidewalk, and I was slowing down a lot because there's a bus stop just past the intersection where there are often people waiting. If I'm on my bike and people are on the sidewalk, I always either go into the street to go around them or get off my bike and walk so they don't feel like I'm going to run them over.

I noticed up ahead that one guy was standing on the street edge of the sidewalk, looking down in my direction (west), assumably hoping that the bus was coming. I noticed that he was wearing all black, including some type of acrylic or otherwise shiny shirt or coat.

He also had a pair of handcuffs in his back pocket. (A friend who I told this story to asked me if he had two pairs of handcuffs . . . )

Anyway, this guy saw me coming and stepped back off of the sidewalk and under the bus shelter to let me get by just as I was pedaling in that direction. As I rolled by, I said, "thank you" to him for stepping out of the way. Reasonable and polite and all that, right?

So, just as I'm rolling past him, he steps towards me and whispers in about half-voice, "Let's go make love!"

My response? I laughed nervously and said, "Ummm, no thanks, not today."

Hey, it's all I could think of to say. (And no, I don't know whether it was one set of handcuffs or two . . . I certainly wasn't checking anything out.)

==================

Okay - so, guy in the Prius - I called him a bastard, he called me a faggot. I figure that's about fair. (Him just about running me over was not.) But what kind of information was I giving out that made him label me as gay? That's what I can't figure out.

It was probably the same kind of information that black-clad handcuff man drew upon in his quest for an afternoon quickie.

Is it because I was on a bicicyle? Maybe that's considered un-macho, except if you're college-aged. Because I was wearing a helmet? That's gotta be pretty un-macho. Real men don't wear helmets, I'm sure. Did I make a limp-wristed gesture? Doubtful, although I'm the first to admit I'm not the most butch person in the world, but I'm not ready to break out the high heels and lip-synch to Cher either.

Perhaps the first guy was just a jerk and threw together some quick observations to deliver what he considered to be the most immediately-available angry cut, and perhaps the second was a one of our friendly neighborhood hustlers who was simply offering his services to whomever looked the most palatable and convenient at the time. This is probably the most likely scenario.

Regardless of what exactly all of that meant, I find it an interesting exercise to figure out exactly what kind of cultural perceptions we have built into ourselves that cause us to label people as homosexual when we really know almost nothing about them.

What are the "rules" of what's perceived to be correct straight male behavior? I'm sure some sociologists or psychologists must have studied these things pretty intensely and figured out what these are. There's probably some type of list online somewhere.

Anyway, I really don't want to bother looking any of that up right now. I think I want to go for a bike ride.

Simple and Scary

Many of us here in Phoenix are muddling through bewilderment at the Cardinals status as Super Bowl contenders, even those like me who don't play football. More importantly, all of us are gearing up for the inauguration on Tuesday, coming on the heels of MLK, Jr., day . . . and all of us are asking if King's dream is a little closer to reality. It will certainly be a momentous occasion.

It will certainly be a good thing for us to focus a little on this happy news - even if only for a short time. We need a bit of distraction and breathing space.

But on this evening, while I have the time to gather my thoughts, I want to share with you all a couple of very straightforward predictions:

• The economy is going to get much, much worse because we continue to use the same solutions of manipulating interest rates, printing more and more money, re-regulating (aka "deregulation", which bears no resemblance to actual free market principles), and going even further into debt.
  
• The price of oil is going to get so expensive again that people will have terribly difficult times affording gas. This will lead to the economic devastation of suburbia.
• We're not going to be able to take hits of the cocaine of consumption and inflation forever, or continue to prop up the Ponzi scheme of Social Security.
• Massive bailouts of financial institutions who've made horrible choices only serve to show that you can make horrible choices and not suffer consequences for it. This will make things worse, not better.

All bets are off, folks, because this is a depression.

The only way we come out of depressions is if our whole economic system changes - like it did in the 1940s when we moved to a wartime economy.

The only meaningful response to this grim outlook is for us to be ahead of the curve in contracting and adapting our lifestyles and business practices to this new world we're entering, because the era of consumption will soon be over. We're not going to go back to the way things were before, and many of us will not be able to adapt fast enough.

That means there will be a lot of suffering, and most assuredly a lot of desperation. This, of course, can lead to the type of totalitarianism we saw arise in 1930s Germany. Yes, it could happen here, either when we are killed for our own good or caught in the crossfire of a bloody rebellion.

Things will eventually get that bad. Even though I think this will happen sooner rather than later. This means if it does happen later, it will still happen. Yes, you personally may run out the clock, but the chances become increasingly likely with each subsequent generation that they will not.

Okay, enough bad news - how 'bout them Cardinals?