Bicycles

Because I had decided not to wash my hair yesterday before I stepped out to go grocery shopping, I was stopped by a CityTV news guy with a giant camera on his shoulder at the corner of Jarvis and Carlton streets.

He wanted to ask me some questions about the Jarvis Street bike lane, the painted line demarking which had been, under protest, removed the week before.

But it was Saturday morning, for heaven's sake, and I hadn't washed my hair, so, while I did not refuse to answer questions under the glare of the big, empty-eyed camera, I struggled for something not stupid to say.

My mind went instantly to the construction of the bike lane on Sherbourne Street, but that seemed off topic. The racing electrical pulses in my brain then took me to the conversation I'd had earlier in the week with a colleague who lives on Jarvis Street and who had witnessed the protesters sitting in the path of the City vehicle specially designed to remove paint stripes from roads.

She said that the Sherbourne lane - which I had offered up in our conversation as a fair trade off - was not the answer. "There should be bike lanes everywhere," she said, making a solidly irrefutable point.

So I said to the man behind the camera, whose face I could barely see, that I thought there should be bike lanes everywhere. 

He then asked me about the drivers. At that point my struggle truly began. I blathered something about the ridiculousness of worrying about a minute or two added to a commute that could be made in any case in about ten minutes on the subway and it was too bad it was a political decision and fuel is getting more expensive every day and did I mention that I thought there should be bike lanes everywhere.

I felt like an idiot.

He let me go then, and I went on to do my shopping.

I didn't give the interview another thought until I'd finished my shopping and was on my way back home. A guy on an electric bike, riding on the sidewalk, had his vehicle barely enough under control to narrowly miss me and stop right in front of me as I walked up to the fateful corner of Jarvis and Carlton. I looked him in the eye and said, in an even tone of voice, "You're a menace, you know that?"  

The cyclist then advised me to do something both pleasant but inappropriate in public. I thanked him for his kind advice and encouraged him to do the same.

And then the best answer to the camera-guy's question about the bike lanes occurred to me: "I'm fully in favour of anything that will keep cyclists off the sidewalk."  

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The Sherbourne Street bike heaven was supposed to have been completed before the Jarvis lanes were removed.

But it's less than half done:

So share the road, folks, and have a great week!

Karen