Crosstown
◊ It was rush hour in San Francisco and I was about eight (million) miles from my base at Pier 39. I had fought my way to the top of the biggest hills in the city on a borrowed mountain bike, pushing the bike up hills when I was too exhausted to pedal. There was no way I was going to take the bus and miss the long downhill ride home.
So I hopped on my bike, dodgy brakes and all, waved to my friend and headed into traffic.
I was terrified. San Francisco is stocked with every kind of stupid, confused driver in the book. Tourists, day-trippers, commuters, buses and cabs mix it up in narrow, unpredictable streets on crazy hills. The sidewalks are crammed with pedestrians, skaters and crazy old guys with shopping carts, so the only bike route is in the street. There aren't many bike paths, and traffic lanes are barely wider than the cars in them.
After five minutes of creeping along next to cars and braking every ten seconds at every near miss with a car, something in my head snapped. I've got too much dignity to ride like a cringing little novice.
So I started riding as if I were a taxi.
Every three-foot gap in traffic was mine. I shadowed buses, riding right up behind them to get through intersections. I weaved through cars stopped at red lights, their side panels brushing my left leg as I passed. When I came up on cars stopped in the right lane with their flashers on, I took the whole lane and gave the drivers my best How can you be this dumb and still remember to breathe? face.
I soared down hills next to parked cars, just a breath away from being gutted by a side mirror or flattened by a suddenly opened car door, or having my helmetless head cracked open on the curb like an overripe melon. I steadily gained speed as I slid down the long hill toward Market, my too-loose brakes squeaking in protest.
The rest of the ride, once I got downtown, was all bike lanes and flat roads and well-behaved traffic. I was back to worrying about timeliness instead of survival, pedaling my ass off trying to catch the 7:00 train back to San Jose. When I finally got to the station, a little of the ride's craziness was still with me: I was sweating and panting and regular human beings couldn't understand anything I said.
I lashed my bike to one of the stands in the bike car and tried to make a fellow passenger understand that I wanted her to remove her backpack from the seat across from her so I could sit down in the very full car. I sat sideways across the seat, legs hanging in the aisle, and opened a book. The train barreled down the tracks while its passengers read, did paperwork, listened to portable CD players, slept. None of them looked out the windows at the cities passing by on either side.