Writing
The most irritating thing cyclists do? Wear their helmets indoors, of course. A few years ago I wrote about the folks who shopped for groceries with their helmets on (“What, you’re going to crash into the tomatoes?!”). A friend who had read my essay came over for dinner one evening and began to chop vegetables at our sink, with his helmet on. Ha ha. I was uncorking a bottle of wine, so I wadded up the metal foil top and threw it at my friend’s head/helmet.
I missed, barely. The metal wad hit him right between the eyes. He didn’t need stitches, but he bled all night during dinner. And he took off his bike helmet.
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“Get the fuck out of the motherfucking lane, motherfucker!” was a more poetic way of putting it than I may have chosen, but the bike messenger shouting at the cabbie on Sixth Avenue the other day was merely expressing an emotion all cyclists share.
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New York cyclists are a tribe. Within any tribe, there are distinctions. We parse our smallest differences and look down on one another, even as we look down on everyone else.
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Wreck no. 1 was in Central Park. I plowed into a guy who looked like Jesus, if Jesus not only had a beard and flowing locks, but also rode a Bianchi fixed-gear across traffic to retrieve the bouncing cap of his water bottle. I flipped over Jesus, and met the pavement. I bled.
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“There’s a crazy guy running!” I shout. My daughters and I gather at the window and look across the street. On the 12th floor penthouse roof of the neighboring building, a man is running around an SUV-sized bush. Tight, counterclockwise laps. We time him. Each lap takes 10 seconds. He runs round and round the bush, for half an hour. He is obviously insane.
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