My Road Rage

I have never been one to have "road rage". I have never been one to cuss at other cars or throw them the bird. It is just not a temptation that I have ever had. At least not until I started riding a bike. Why is it that people feel that people riding a bike are some how not worthy of their respect.

I have been riding for less than a year and I have been yelled at. I have been honked at, a few times for riding in a lane instead of that little 6 inch wide space next to the curb and a few times for no reason than to try to startle me. I have nearly been hit by a pick up's side mirror because he decided to share the lane with me. I have had punk high school age kids swerve their trucks at me and act like they were going to swing their door out to hit me.

I am going to be really honest here. I have had some awful words run through my head in a few of these cases. My wife will probably kill me for saying this, but I flipped-off the punks that swerved at me. I can't remember the last time I flipped someone off and I felt bad for doing it, but I have a wife and kids and your going to swerve your two ton pick up at me as a joke? I really honestly wanted them to turn around and get out of that pick up. They deserved to get the snot kicked out of them by a guy in bike shorts.

I was riding my bike Saturday. It was cold and I was riding by myself. In one 10 mile stretch I had the flipping off incident and some punks honked at me from behind to startle me. I was riding on the shoulder of the road when this happened.

I try to avoid the big busy streets, definitely if they do not have a shoulder to ride on. I used to love the fact that I didn't have to pay for gas to go get some exercise in, but the jerks on 14th have caused me to load my bike and drive 6 miles before riding. When there is a shoulder I will almost always ride on it. If there isn't much shoulder or it is a small quiet road, I will ride in the right side of the lane and move over anytime I hear a car coming. Now, by law I can hold my ground and cars can either drive behind me or pass in the other lane, but I don't count on people knowing the law so I move over.

I am not condoning cussing and the like just because someone else does something crappy to you. I would like to think I can rise above such behavior, but I can't rise above the bumper of a pick-up driven by a careless or impatient driver. I read stories on the cycling blogs of riders dieing all the time because someone was being careless.

Please, please, please, give us cyclists a break. I have a wife and kids.

Don't Give Up On Baseball

You can't give up on baseball because of AFraud. I am no longer surprised when learn of new users. Think about it, there were 104 guys that tested positive. There are 30 teams with 25 guys on each, that's 750 players. So approximately 14% of the players tested positive. I have to think that number has gone down since then. Granted, they still do not test for HGH so who knows.

We owe it to the next generation of baseball fans to teach the game the way it was suppose to be played. Teach kids to play like Roberto Clemente, Cal Ripken Jr, Ozzie Smith, Tony Gwynn and others that didn't live and die off the homerun. We can do this as little league coaches, as parents (both moms and dads), teachers, an in any chance we have to talk baseball. Let's stop telling stories about the farthest homerun you ever saw. Tell the story of the amazing game saving catch or the all hustle infield single that turned the World Series. Tell about the skinny no-power shortstop that wins a playoff game with an unlikely homerun that squeeked over the right field fence. Talk about the purest hitter you ever watched play. We are the ones that have allowed this beast to live and grow to the ungly monster that it is today. We have to move away from "Chicks Dig the Long Ball" to "Chicks Dig the Guy Who Plays Hard". It doesn't have the same ring to it I know.

There have been other times that people could have given up on baseball. I'm glad African Americans didn't give up on the game when they saw the way Jackie Robinson was treated. I am glad the purest stayed around even after Pete Rose sullied the game with his gambling habits. Could you imagine the tempation to give up on Baseball after news of the Chicago Whitesox throwing the World Series? Talk about wondering if you were watching a true contest or watching wrestling.

Baseball will recover from this too. Don't think I am giving Major League Baseball a free pass. They need to do something about the use of steroids in their game or they really will end up like "Professional" Wrestling. It is bad enough that baseball seems to want to widdle itself down to two stacked teams that play on Primetime TV. They promote their Wednesday Night Baseball as a battle royale of good (Redsox) versus evil (Yankees). It sounds a lot like Wrestling doesn't it? If they don't put a stop to the use of performance enhancing drugs we will see the players coming out to pyro-techniques, yelling trash talk into a microphone held by a shrimpy tuxedo wearing mustached dweeb, and then going to the plate and smashing 55. Don't give up on 700 foot homeruns. I say no more homerun highlights, homerun bonuses, no more Homerun Derby, and no more homerun celebrations. Umpires should start giving outs for excessive celebration.

Baseball needs change, but throughout history permanent change is a slow change. We need to start seeing some movement in that direction.