Monday
Miles: 9,851
Mood:
Confession #74- This is the cliffnotes edition.
So I get my tire replaced and when I bring the bike home I notice that there is something written on the side of it. In big white letters in chalk is written "Tire Goes This Way" with a big arrow.
I suppose I have two conclusions. One is that the tire-guys have a new policy that the drive direction of the tire is always written in big white letters on the tire, even though its already written in embossed print on the tire itself. Or, the supervisor of the person who changed my particular tire that day was so confident in his ability that he felt he needed to write TIRE THIS WAY on my tire so he wouldn't put it on backwards. Isn't that a pleasant thought?
Surely, if I had a microphone and recorder in my helmet this journal would be much better (despite MySpace's attempt to lure boys to its site by renaming 'journal' and 'diary' to 'blog', I refuse to do so. When you write daily entries about your cat and what your girlfriend said to you last night, its a diary. Sorry, guys). You see, I write in my head while I ride. It gives me something to do. The only voices in my head are thus my own, and I feel less prone to throw rocks at other cars. Of course the result of this is that by the time I ever get to writing any of it down, I've forgotten 80% of it. Really, this should be called "Confessions of a Commuter: Cliffnotes Edition".
But it really doesn't matter. Most of the filler that is in my head on the road could never be properly communicated into electronic form. There's a certain flair that doesn't transfer to the written word. There are cues that we simply do not pick up when we are reading. Great writers have been trying to overcome it since the dawn of writing, but it just doesn't work.
Which brings me to my point. Despite popular opinion, driving is really hard. We're stuck in a box with blind spots, tunnel vision, and countless distractions. We're operating a ton of metal at 60 mph, coordinating our activities with those of hundreds or thousands of other vehicles right outside our door every day. How do we do it?
The simple answer is; we don't. We can't process all that information at once. Add a evil corporate Starbucks cup and its all over. Instead we manage along by way of rules. We have rules on the road that we assume everyone will follow. I know on the freeway I'm not going to encounter a car driving perpendicular to me. Or backwards. Or someone who is not going to stop when I hit the brakes. But as soon as someone violates those rules, only by a small amount, the whole world comes crashing down. We jump out of our seat and slam on the brakes or swerve or slam into another car.
I don't pay full attention to every single car around me and 1/2 a mile behind me. I focus my attention on the car in front, maybe the car to the right. Only when I notice something abnormal does my attention change (such as seeing someone barreling at me at a stoplight), or when I am about to violate the rules myself, such as in making a lane change (in theory, I also theorize that most people don't bother to adjust their attention when changing lanes - its just too much trouble).
Of course imagine if this were to happen anywhere else. As humans we simply cannot interpret mechanical cues as well as human cues. Consider it an evolutionary hiccup. We're not there yet. So while we manage to avoid just about all collisions while walking amongst hundreds of other people, we manage to smash into everyone else once we get in the car.
We motorcyclists have it a little easier, since we can give other drivers visual 'human' cues. But we still have to guess when it comes to everyone else. In fact you may not even get a human cue until you really "pee" someone off, resulting in a wild hand gesture and the mouthing of words that leave little to the imagination. Of course who knows what they are really saying. So comes to mind the girl in 4th grade who mouthed 'elephant shoes' to me and then had a hysterical laughing fit with her friends when I asked her out after class. Kids can be so cruel.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Visual cues. Isn't it interesting that we put words in other's mouths as we drive? Someone cuts me off, we imagine them saying, "Haha! I'm more important, get out of my way!". We never imagine them saying, "Oh gosh, I can't believe I did that, I'm so sorry!" It's always negative.
So here we are, at the end. You may have thought I would have had a profound point to all of this babbling. You were wrong.
DUCK AND COVER!!! 
