My response is always anger, my go-to emotion.
As the crappy, white pickup truck began merging into the physical space that I and the motorcycle occupied, I honked the bike's horn - it's loud, an aftermarket horn that scares me everytime I inadvertently hit the button with my left thumb - and sped up to avoid the collision. He swerved back into the right lane, clearly unaware that he had nearly veered into me. No harm, no foul. Of course, when Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk... So, there I was, slowing down, yelling at the driver, flipping him off, generally acting the ass.
Hurricane, my wife, is always concerned when she finds that I've been riding... precipitously. But when I am riding fast, it isn't reckless; I know my limitations, the bike's limitations, and I'm not a half-bad rider. So when I'm traveling along at speeds that would land me in the pokey, I won't say that it's not dangerous, but compared to the travel from Cleveland to Madison today, it's downright Kindergarten.
Today was all heat and boredom, a plodding tour of all-too familiar farmhouses and trees along the I-90 West corridor between Cleveland and South Bend, Indiana. Cars, trucks, minivans, the drivers of which yawned tiredly, the passengers sleeping, the only interesting aspect being the Ohio state troopers actively pulling over speeders, fishing from an overstocked lake, making their quotas, funneling the state funds.
Our dirty little secret, we motorcycle riders, is that the police mostly leave us alone, unless we're just acting downright stupid. Most cops ride motorcycles or know other police who do and they know that the safest mode of travel for a motorcycle is to be slightly faster than the flow of traffic. You want to concern yourself mostly with what's in front of you or to the side, not behind. Also, it's devilishly hard to get a good read on a motorcycle with radar as radar picks up the largest object so experienced riders stay in a slower lane, still moving along at a generous speed of course, and pull into and out of the faster lanes as needed. Also, I use rabbits extensively; rabbits being other speeding cars, the ones doing greater than 15 MPH over the posted and give them a long lead time, about a quarter of a mile. I can still see them, note if they slow down suddenly but quite probably they'll get the ticket long before I would.
Today I rode with my GoPro attached to my helmet, looking for anything interesting, anything at all, to capture on the monotonous trip.
Two co-eds in a silver car, possibly an older Camry, Phish stickers plastered to the bumper, to the rear window, passed me, saw the GoPro. They slowed down, matched my speed, and the passenger flashed me.
Nice.
I waved.
They sped off. I didn't even get a picture.
Anyway, in retrospect, it was no wonder the truck pulled into my lane. The driver never looked, never even registered in his mind that someone else would be on the road to his left, until he heard the horn and was confronted by an angry motorcyclist cussing and screaming at him. He just mouthed, I'm sorry. I flipped him off one last time, just because.
But that's the reason a day like today is so dangerous. Ennui.
Madison, Wisconsin is my home-away tonight and I don't plan on doing much exciting this evening. This will be a touch-and-go. Madison is the state capitol and a university town. There's trouble somewhere here; I'm just not in the mood tonight to find it.
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