Road rage

Rush hour: nobody likes it, but if you're fortunate enough not to work a 9-5 job usually you can avoid it, right? Depending on your city, rush hour starts roughly at 8 until 9:30, then picks up again somewhere around 5:15 until 6 or 7. The key term being depending on your city. For the life of me, I can't find that mid-day lull in Barcelona. Yes, okay, I understand that I live in a major metropolis with 16,000 people per square km and all those people have to go somewhere sometimes. But since my schedule has opened up with the end of the school year I've been trying to get out more on my bike, but as far as I can tell, there's no break in rush hour (except maybe for 5 minutes some time between 11:02 and 11:07 in the morning). Why? This crazy siesta idea that they have. See, the standard 9-5 work schedule is actually from 9-7 here with 2 hours from 2-4 to go home for lunch. That's the idea. But there are variations on the theme: some people go to work at 8 and have lunch from 1-3, others go to work at 10 and have lunch from 3-5, some work intensive schedules and finish work at 5, or 6, or 3 o'clock. That extra time in the morning when things are more quiet is when the trucks do their morning deliveries - just stopping and putting on their flashers when and wherever they feel like it. With all these extra mini-rush hours I can't find a time when the streets aren't crammed with commuter traffic, kamakaze mopeds, homicidal taxis, drunken truck drivers, and hundreds of busses. And then there's the construction.

So yesterday, against my better judgement (do I have better judgement?), I decided to take my bike out at 5:15 in the afternoon. I had to go more than 5 inches, so there was no way to avoid some sort of central artery traffic. I climbed up my usual hill without any major incidents other than having to out-sprint a tourist bus. At the top I decided to ride down to the other side for a little extra work. I don't usually do this, but it wouldn't be the the first time.

Do you remember how I hate descending?

Damn, that hill was steeper then I thought, and since it was technically OUT of Barcelona, the streets were paved a lot worse. And there was no shoulder. You know the kind of road where the white line on the outside of the road sometimes disappears because there's not cement to paint it on anymore? It was like that. So, as usual I came to the conclusion that I was going to die. I didn't though, until this car came up behind me. I was going 47kmph, 3kmph under the speed limit, which shouldn't be a problem, especially on such a windy road. But still there was this car growling up my butt for most of the way down which made me much more nervous and I panicked a couple of times coming around corners. Panic, that's exactly what you're NOT supposed to do. And here began the "I should have stayed home" inner monologue. What were you thinking? Do you know how many accidents there are on this road every year? You shouldn't be doing this until you get your brakes fixed. Relax and slow the fuck down, who do you think you are?! Why won't this car frigging PASS me? Leave me alone! Aaaaah! On top of that there were mopeds buzzing by me with that urgent agressive noise of acceleration with a crappy muffler and cars were swinging around bends coming in the other direction dangerously close the the middle line. I came down the final straightaway clocking 60kmph and turned around to do it again.

And here we go again, 7k's back up to the top with sweat dripping out of my helmit and my front wheel swerving sometimes dangerously close to the soft shoulder. And here I started thinking about the run that awaited me when I got back to the bottom. I did not feel like running, not that my legs were trashed, but I couldn't think of a rout that wouldn't bring me through a million traffic lights and past thousands of tourists with their necks craned looking anywhere but where they were going. I hate running. I am not a runner.

Over the top and coming back down I was back on familiar turf. I knew this descent and it didn't scare me much. But now there were more cars driven commuters who work over the hill coming home. Beware of commuters, they are tired, hungry, and since they drive the same rout twice daily they think that it can do them no harm, even if they go 30 above the speed limit. I came to the biggest bend in the road, a place where they built a divider a couple of years ago because of all the accidents that were happening there, and started to drift off the shoulder to get a good line (it's a right-hand turn so I was on the inside), and a car started to pass me. This silver VW Golf moved right up next to me just as the turn began and forced me back onto the shoulder. In anger, frustration, and a bit of fear I yelled out loud (in English) "DON'T FUCKING PASS ME HERE!!!" Coming out I turned to give a dirty look at the driver and found myself face to face with a 3-year-old staring at me with fistfulls of some kind of gooey candy. Behind him was a very calm-looking soccer mom type with all kinds of sparkley jewlery all over the place. I shot her daggers with my eyes as she kept driving without even so much as looking at me. Bitch.

Then, farther down the punks on mopeds started to pass me. Their MO is to fly past at about a billion miles an hour on the wrong side of the road with their motors screaming, their skinny little 14-year-old elbows sticking out from oversized t-shirts which are flapping in the wind and some hoochy with tacky, shiny clothing hanging on to their hip gurtle with big hoop earings sticking out the front of her helmit. These kids get out of school at 3 o'clock and they go up to one of the vista points to drink beer all afternoon and blast house music into the mountain air. Every once in awhile I get the pleasure of seeing one of these kids pulled over by the cops and under that flash helmit is usually hidden an attrocious mullet.

Anyway, back to me risking life and limb trying to get back home. I was in the last and steepest kilometer before coming back into the city when I came around a bend and had to grab my brakes as hard as I could. There, feet in front of me was a line of cars that stretched as far as the eye could see. Damn. I hunkered back into the shoulder and started dodging rearview mirrors. I came around another bend and there, in MY space on the side of the road was a pair of moped punks blocking my path. I made sure to heave a big sigh of disapproval as I clipped out and maneuvered past them. A little farther up where the shoulder was particularly narrow homeboy's little friends were waiting for him, in MY SPACE again! As I started my sigh song and dance again and began to pass the first, he pulled away. That dick! I had to stop and clip out so he could pass. Then, as I was coming up on the other trying to find my clip, he did the same thing. She's coming up on my back wheel and... NOW! Vrooooom! Ass hole. 'Have fun pumping gas for the rest of your life,' I thought. 'I hope your hoochy girlfriend gives you siphalis.' Then I felt a bit better.

By the time I got home I was so over being out in the street. I was supposed to run for an hour, but come on, who am I kidding? I hate to run. I hate it. I have no talent for it, I go slow, my butt sticks out and won't stick back in no matter what I do with my abs, and people stare at me. Fuck that and fuck them. Fuck everyone who has ever gotten in my way. So when I got home I gave a dirty look to my running stuff that was sitting there innocently. I walked right by the whole set up, walked into the kitchen and made myself a nutella sandwich. As I was chowing down thought about how I should probably never get a car or a moped in this city. I think maybe I have a little problem with road rage.