tbannin

So there I was riding home from my friends house after watching SxSW on TV for a bit, minding my own business with my headlight and blinking red tail light in full view for all to see. Then it happened, I stopped at a red light doing my track stand (or attempting to) as always when i heard the jeering. I usually don't respond to such ignorance as "the road is for cars" blah blah blah.... I ignored this comment as usual and rode off when the light turned green. As I was riding I heard the jeering car full of ignorant young ******* approaching. I stayed my course and ignored them still, until they pulled right up to me and spit on me and my bicycle. What the *$#! ran through my head and I was livid with rage. As I reached for my razor to kindly scrape and ruin their paint job I put it away and started to think about how stupid they had to look to pick on someone on a bike. Oh well, I took down the plate number and reported it to the police, they won't do anything, but it made me feel better at the time. Ahhhh life in the ignorance that is Wichita Falls, TX.

DCCommuter

At least you get SxSW on TV there.

tbannin

True that....and man did Liam Finn play one hell of a set at the Bat Bar!!!!

maddyfish

SOmetimes I think your first option is best, the razor blade. The police are impotent. If cars KNOW that pain, dents, scratchs, and broekn glass await bothering bikes maybe they'd stay away. SOmetimes I think that, not my poilicy though.

John E

Congratulations on restraining yourself instead of committing a very tempting, but ultimately highly counterproductive, act of vandalism. We need to take the moral high ground in our dealings with motorists.

bike2math

I commuted for six months in WF-TX. I found everyone to be extremely courteous. Some of the friendliest strangers I ever met were there. Even on my bike drivers of all sorts went out of there way to be nice around me.

Certainly there were some rotten apples (teenagers?) but somehow I never saw them, strange. Maybe because I was looking at it through the lens of visiting the metromess every now and then...

AndrewP

Call back to the police and find out what they did about it.

littlewaywelt

for something like that I would absolutely get the plate number and tell the police you would like them to visit the parent of the driver or you're going to press charges. The police knock on the door should hopefully result in the parents "straightening" their kids out.

noisebeam

I pass by a high school on my commute home. If I leave work early and pass by just at the time school lets out 2-3pm there is lots of posturing going on between kids in cars. Tire squeal, they holler at each other from windows, mini-street race from green lights, etc. If you are riding thru you will get some of the 'play' (including from the many kids also on the sidewalk) - sometimes you can tell the teens know they are being full of themselves as they both yell stupid things, but also find it amusing, like they know they are being stupid and are just acting the part. Some times acting silly (as opposed to the natural reaction of anger or defense) in response brings you to their level and the tension dissipates and turns to laughter.
Never had anyone spit on me or otherwise assault me though.

Al

tbannin

[quote=bike2math;6369806]I commuted for six months in WF-TX. I found everyone to be extremely courteous. [QUOTE]

What time did you commute. I don't own a car so I ride everywhere and at all times of the day. I get harassed all the time, unfortunately. I am beginning to realize that I will never drive a car again, seeing how people act and realizing that could have been me at one point in time. Oh well, maybe things will shape up as I start to promote commuting more and more.

bike2math

Early morning (6-7am), from east of Kickapoo airport to Midwestern's campus on streets. For the return in the late afternoon (5-7pm), I would ride from campus to the golf course then take the MUP south all the way to the dam and then ride the highway and back roads back around to the east side of the airport. There were a couple of guys out on recumbents I'd see on the MUP each day but other than that I only ever saw recreational riders.

No problems ever. Quite the opposite from my experiences in Arizona, Ohio, and parts of Dallas-Ft. Worth. I never went north of 82 (except to the LBS in the downtown area on weekends) so maybe that made a difference, and much of my ride was out in the ranch land south of town... ymmv I guess.

My wife used our car for commuting to work. So that left me using the bike, or the bus. I did our families grocery shopping by bike. There was a great farmer's market at the North end of the subdivision east of Kickapoo airport. I highly recomend it (we could walk there from our house, main reason we rented it in fact). The bus drivers were also incredibly friendly; they called the police to my house to check on me after I bought my bike because they got worried when they didn't see me for a week. As I've said, friendliest place I've lived.

Have you ridden in the Hottern' Hell yet? I left town before it was put on, but intend to come back for it one of these days. I got the impression that Midwestern's cycling team was pretty good, at least the ones I met seemed pretty serious. I love the two MUP's there, I would wake up early on Saturday and Sunday and ride from the end of the lake one and then all the way around town to the North end of the river one, never saw a soul on those rides.

xerocoma

I'll be riding the HTH 100 this year... maybe your little friends will show up. Be interesting to see what happens when they try to spit on a couple of thousand cyclists....

Speedo

It is harder, but much smarter to maintain your cool. Good job!

BUT, this post is making me feel like an idiot. What's SxSW? My first thought was that you were watching the Hitchcock movie North by Northwest, but then I noticed it was S's and not N's.

Speedo

tbannin

South By Southwest....It's this huge free concert in the whole city of Austin.....I think over 2000 bands played at least 2-4 sets a piece and it's a whole week long from what I gather. It's pretty bad ass.

tomg

and/or:

write a certified letter to the police, include the case assigned number, and brief relist of incident (along with a cc to texas state appointed bicycle advocates) asking for progress status.

as others stated, good work holding yourself back from bending down to the driver/passangers level. by doing that, you "rose above"!!

t

BikeTales 

this one time when I was a teenager, I was driving and my buddy was in the passenger seat. We saw a kid on a bmx bike. My buddy proceeded to toss a glass bottle out the window. It smashed right on the kid's head tube! We laughed and laughed.
That was obviously really stupid. We weren't even anti-bike. I even rode bmx a little in those days. We were just young and looking for trouble

Cyclaholic

It's good to show restraint and if it's just words being exchanged then keep it to just words. However, as soon as I'm spat on the rules change. The lowlife spitter deserves to get stabbed in the neck.

HandsomeRyan

Just ask yourself- WWCBD? (What Would Charles Bronson Do?)

Hobartlemagne 

Just let em go. File a police report and forget about it. In that situation the rider is outnumbered, and razorblading their paint wont result in them remaining calm.

dobber

There is really not much law enforcement can do in a situation of "he said - he said". The teens can simply say they were responding to provocation from a rider. Or that he brandished a weapon.

Taking the moral high ground and restraining oneself is the best option in little tiffs such as this.

catatonic

That logic is part of why I haven't been hit yet...not the razor knife...but that my mountain bike will damage their bodywork enough that they really don't want to hit me, regardless of how bad my presence annoys them.

Plus I have motocross fenders and the like on it...which I noticed makes them stay back more since I've installed them...I'm guessing they think they are metal (nope, just lightweight plastic).

richardmasoner

I was HIT BY A CAR in Wichita Falls in the late 80s. I was riding completely lawfully when the driver of the station wagon blew through a stop sign on a residential street without slowing down at all. I tried to evade but still got clipped and knocked down. I called the police but the officer blamed the "accident" on me. What a creep.

caloso

Battery, not slander

[first year Torts professor mode off]

tomg

[QUOTE=dobber;6378648]There is really not much law enforcement can do in a situation of "he said - he said".


if you file a complaint, the police are made aware of the behavior/car/discription. if this behavior is repeated by the same driver /vehicle and/or passenger(s), then it is on file and give more credit to the next reporter.

this action of reporting incident may be a method that works for the bicyclist to constructively plant seeds to help reduce this type of behavior and "do something about it" that does not resemble gut actions. this does take more emotional control and maybe the driver/passangers are looking for the gut reaction as part of their impulse to do the behavior in the first place. (stimilus/response)

rise above! (if you are able to)

Doored

So how about posting the license plate number, vehicle description, and location here so other locals have some chance of watching out?

Next, take that same information and post it at:
Plate Wire
RoadRagers

Then search the plate databases at those sites to see if other incidents have also been posted for that same plate number. Maybe someone even posted where that car gets parked.