5 Minutes an Alley Cat

So there's this guy, Lucas Brunelle, who makes these films about people who ride their bikes around New York.

These are amazing films.  Possibly some of the most irresponsible bike riding ever.  The cyclists weave in and out of traffic.  They run red lights without slowing down.  They "calculate" the response of the motorists.  Somehow these guys (according to themselves) can find the safe line in an instant. They can make impossible maneuvers and stay alive in thick, unpredictable traffic.

Even though I think it is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, these guys do have talent.  And luck.  Definitely some luck.

They even have a bike messenger race.  It involves a bunch of stupid dangerous riding through busy streets.  These are called "Alley Cat" races.

When I ride around our small little town here, I avoid any heavy traffic areas.  Even then, I obey all the traffic laws when it's convenient and safer than breaking them.

There are times when not obeying the rules of the road is better for a bike.  I'm not going to go into it or argue about it.  If you ride around for enough years and pay attention, you'll know when laws should be ignored.

But I don't run red lights unless nobody is around.

If nobody is around, you have to run red lights.  Or just wait at the light for however many minutes it takes for a car to show up.

 If all you do is drive a car, you probably don't realize that a red light at a minor street that crosses a busy one never changes unless there's a car there.

Yes - most lights have buttons you can push to get a "Walk" signal and cross.  I have a problem with this in theory, but ...

Oh wait. I'm not going into this.  Sorry.

Anyway - sometimes the laws are stupid.

When I was a teenage bike rider, I broke many traffic laws. I thought I was being safe.  I wasn't.  I shudder to think about the things I used to do.

I would blow through stop signs or red lights at full speed, but only at night when it was safe to do so.

We never had helmets or lights.  If we were approaching an intersection and didn't see the side of a pole lit up (presumably by an oncoming headlight), we didn't hesitate.

As an older man, I think "What if the headlights are off?  What if there's a bike coming from that way?"

So yeah, I ride much safer now.

Even if I wanted to ride like one of those idiots in Lucas Brunelle's videos, there's really not enough traffic here in Omaha to do a lot of that stuff.

Not normally.

To get the kind of traffic that jams up a few square miles of road in all directions, we'd have to have some kind of special event.  Maybe a sporting event.  Something like the College World Series.  Even then, with it located in South Omaha at the Blatt, there's really only one busy street.

What's that?  They moved the CWS to the downtown area?

Well, I guess I'd better avoid that area for a few days when the CWS comes to town.

What's that? It's in town right now?

So last night, I was headed back home after a brief little ride in Council Bluffs.  I came up Abbott drive to Cuming.  You know, the street where the CWS stadium is.

I ran into all the traffic deadlocked in every direction.  I would either have to obey the laws and wait a long time, or pretend I was in a Lucas Brunelle movie.

Had it been a normal night, I had just enough time to get home to take Jack to his Parkour class.  As it was, even if I played alley cat, I might not make it home on time.

So I made my decision.  I really wasn't surprised by it.  There was somewhere I had to be and I absolutely hate being late.  I had made a promise.

But - I'm not a rule breaker.  I decided to wait it out and be safe. Maybe I could call home and ask Jill to take Jack to his Parkour class.

But then I heard a voice.  Not like the sort of inner voice that goads you on to do things you might not ever dare. This was a different kind of voice altogether.  It was the voice of a cop leaning against a building.  He had on the neon green vest of a traffic cop.  I'm guessing he was assigned to direct traffic at the intersection I was at, but had given up.  The middle of the intersection was packed with cars.

He said, "Go ahead Boss, I'm not going to stop you."

I looked up at the red light.  I looked at the cop.  I said "thanks" and took off.

I figured the cop just gave me permission to do whatever I wanted until I got clear of the jam.

So I rode on the extreme right of the cars as fast as I could.  I was passing a car about every 2 seconds.  People were screaming at me and calling me terrible names. But for once, I didn't care.  I had cop endorsement.

One car must have seen my approach because the driver kind of veered right to block me.  I hopped onto the sidewalk and rode through the throng of happy/angry cws pedestrians until I got clear of the car.  I jumped back to the road and went over to the left where there was more room.

After a few blocks, I came to a traffic cop who hadn't yet given up.  I considered slowing for him, but when he saw me coming, he changed his hand signals.  He stopped the line of traffic and waved me and my newfound enemy motorist buddies through.  As soon as I was past, he switched again.  Maybe 3 cars and me got through that intersection.  I was able to pass cars until the interstate entrance at Cuming.  Then the traffic cleared up and normal speed was resumed. Everything was back to normal for me too.  I hung up my Alley Cat ways, finished my ride and took Jack to Parkour with a good 2 minutes to spare.

While I was blatantly breaking the law, I realized why the cops were cool with it.

The cops and I would like the motorists to understand something.

The bike isn't in your way.  The bike isn't slowing down traffic.  It's you and all of your big car buddies.

It made me think back to every time I used to ride through UNO during rush hour.  There was always a guard directing traffic at the entrance to the parking garage.  Whenever I rode by, he'd say "Thanks for riding a bike."

After yesterday, I understand.  Traffic cops hate cars.  If it wasn't for cars, they could do more meaningful police work.  When they see a bike, they think "Bless you, you sweet sweet gift from the precious lord above," or something like that.

Every time a bike slows you down and you get mad about the stupid bike in your stupid way, what you don't realize is that you could easily go around the bike if there weren't a bunch of stupid cars in your stupid way.

Oh yeah and you are stupid.  Just like your car.  Just ask me and the traffic cops. We're experts on the matter,