Off the seat of a bicycle
Off the seat of bicycle: Conclusion

I was a bicycle road activist for more than 30 years … and became an activist after getting hit from behind by a drunk driver … somehow I went over the top of the drunk’s car and ended up in the road on my hands and feet completely untouched while the bike lay crumpled off in the ditch.

This incident propelled me into activism because I felt it was my fault for letting the car get that close to me in the first place.

Off the seat of a bike, I can tell you that people in motor vehicles have more respect for a wood pallet laying in the street than they do for a defenseless unprotected person precariously balanced in the wind … and we all know it … and the proof is simple … no car driver honks and gives the finger to a wood pallet.

To counter the endangerment and disrespect inherent with bike riding, I began taking the full lane from cars, and by doing so, I refused to grant tacit approval for a car’s entry into my lane … therefore making a public claim for the fundamental right of equal protection under the law.

I demanded to be treated as an equal vehicle on the road …. and this is a defensible legal position since there is no law that permits one vehicle to enter a lane already occupied by another vehicle regardless of where a bicycle ‘is supposed to ride’ … and this is an important disobedience that bikes must pursue because the courts determine ‘fault for an accident’ by asking which vehicle broke lane law …. EXCEPT when a bicycle is involved.

Lane law is the fundamental basis of all traffic law, yet this law is thrown out the window whenever a biker gets run over … it’s important to understand that when a bike allows a motorist to enter his/her lane, the cyclist has actually relinquished any reasonable claim to equal protection under the law … and only by demanding the full lane are you afforded equal protection under the law.

The result: i was tailgated and swerved at by every ordinary vehicle for sure, but also by several police vehicles when i routinely. demanded all vehicles make a considered legal pass and follow the simple automobile laws they made for themselves.

I saw it every conceivable response from auto drivers: in Chicago one morning I had a guy hanging out the passenger window swinging a baseball bat … it was hilarious … it was so stereotypic ‘car-driver’ that you just have to laugh.

Of course my demand for the lane was legally based and no ticket was issued … but when I moved to my present home in Texas and started riding a bike on the rural roads here, the local folks were stunned and sent into frenzy so the local judge here in Rosenberg Texas (the shoot-first state) ordered the state police to hide in the bushes and shoot at me four times across an open field while I rode down a rural road just outside town.

I kept riding and circled up behind the shooter who turned out to be a strapping fellow standing behind his unmarked car with a little boy at his side (the police will disguise themselves by bringing along small children) … I said nothing to him but wanted to say his first shot was low, and rode away knowing full-well who was behind the action.

After the shootin’ failed to intimidate me off the road, my financial mail started getting disrupted, and then they started screeching tires in front of my rural house at all hours (and it was the police because it was always a single male in the truck), they started following me everywhere, they put stuff in my coke at restaurants (just as a note: i’m a non-drinker which is shockingly un-texan since even our texun president got a DUI from weaving drunk on public thoroughfare like a giant red-ased baboon).

… they also started running women at me, and they went to all my painting-business customers and to my friends and to my suppliers and told them I was violent… without one act of violence ever … the police shot at me and then went around telling everybody i was the violent person … and i don’t even own a gun.
… and with all that investigation, they had to know I was a mere bicycle activist … I even paid every cent of tax I owed, but instead of Simply writing me a ticket so the issue could be heard out man-to-man in a court of law, they started running purdy women at me trying to create a lifetime stain with a sex offense … as if women are the primordial reason a sweaty bicyclist would demand equal protection under the law … hee haw.

… and any of you who are on the cutting edge of legal issues … beware the police will use sex and try to put women close to you as a tactic because men trust women plus if they can make a sex charge, then it comes with universal condemnation and a lifetime stain… and believe me the police are quite eager to add ‘fees to your bill’ just like a banker tacking-on service charges.

The fire chief’s high-school son and his friends sat across staring at me in a restaurant one morning …. because the important people in the community encouraged people to enforce the local code of driving conduct without bothering to run their point of view past the courts … and this happened in free America.

Finally the police started following me everywhere and making themselves visible … sitting next to me in restaurants and wherever I went glaring and staring at me … following me around and going up to everyone I spoke to and telling them whatever vile representation they thought would carry the day … in free America.
I was scorned heartily.

My neighbor, a lady I had known for 7 years … the same person i helped fix and repaint her house for free after it flooded … her husband and i worked side by side for more than a week and we used my tools … for free … and later when their main electric breaker burned up and they couldn’t find a new one, I went over to their house at night and re-routed lines to restore power at no charge … yep, at no charge … but during the police-sponsored scorn, this lady comes to me and tells me she would applaud in front of my house if it burned down.
This is the absolute pure hatred that car drivers feel for bike riders who refuse to ack rite and ‘sit in the back of the bus’ whenever a big shiny car want to zoom by.

… and in a final insult, they sent a guy who I thot was my friend around to tell me i woulda lost in court anyway …. but if that was true, IF THAT WAS REALLY TRUE, why not put the issue into court and hear out the case? the police never made a single charge because my demand for the full lane is an unpopular yet legitimate legal claim and they didn’t want a public case because it would make national news … and that would bring public scrutiny to the little drug-fiefdom around here being run by the county judge who lives around the corner and threw all this hate on top of me.

Just as a legal follow-up/ the whole time the police were pumping hate on me for my activist stand, the Texas legislature was passing a law that now requires motorist to slow down or move to an opposite lane when passing a police car that is stopped alongside the road … lol… in other words the police have been granted the same rights I was demanding as a bicyclist … but the difference is simple: a policeman deserves protection because he wears a silly hat, while bikers deserve no protection because they are a public nuisance … and those are the straight facts.

The real solution will come when bicyclists start filing legal claims against cars that invade their lane space …, and i may yet do that if I turn younger next year and don’t get killed first by the judge who is rabidly trying to stay in office to protect his drug pay-offs.


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