Share the Road…Not Everyone Concurs

On Saturday a group of my cycling friends decided to stay flat and local with a 50+ mile loop from Lodi to Thornton and Galt. The weather was perfect, cool but not frigid, and sunny with almost no wind. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying the day and the company instead of hammering up some hills on the official Club ride.

We don’t normally ride on Harney Lane east of Lodi. It is narrow, with a fair amount of high speed traffic. There are better east/west roads, such as Armstrong Road, Live Oak Road, and even Eight Mile Road which has traffic but also has a shoulder. But there is one short stretch of Harney Lane that we do ride. Curry Road is a delightful and very quiet road that runs north/south, but at Harney Lane it makes a little jog, so we have to ride on Harney for about 100 yards or so. It is normally pretty safe. We just wait to let any traffic clear, then use the gap to continue on Curry.

We were doing just that on Saturday. There were 11 of us at the intersection of Harney and Curry, pointing our bikes north. We were waiting to turn left on Harney and then make a quick right back on to Curry. Rider #1 saw what he/she thought was a big gap and turned onto Harney. Rider #1 had not reckoned on an SUV barreling along at 70+ mph in a 55 mph zone. Rider #1 also did not expect this speeding vehicle to give him about 14 inches of clearance instead of the legally mandated 3 feet.

Dear Reader, you may notice that I am not naming names or genders here. That is because I wasn’t an eye witness to everything, and even what I saw may be mis-remembered.

Rider #1 took umbrage at the dangerous vehicular behavior and made his/her feelings known with a gesture. None of the rest of us saw this because we were still waiting back at the intersection. Then Rider #1 turned onto Curry and soon the rest of us followed.

As we rode north on Curry I was the last rider, and suddenly I see an SUV in my mirror roaring towards me and I hear yelling and screaming. I’m as far to the right as I can be, and the SUV leaves the pavement onto the dirt vineyard headland and pulls next to me ON MY RIGHT! The driver’s window is down and he is screaming at me to “Get the F… off the road!”

I moved to the left side of the road and stopped off the pavement. The driver got out and continued yelling and screaming the same message. He didn’t approach me although he looked ready to beat me up. I tried to keep calm and quiet.

Riders #1, 2, 3 and 4 stopped just ahead and came back. The SUV driver was obviously angry at all of us but especially with Rider #1. There was a confrontation. Riders pulled out cell phones. I tried to take a video but my winter gloves let me down. I’m still standing relatively out of harm’s way and I didn’t get any closer to the potential fistfight, or worse. Call me prudent for trying not to escalate things. Call me a coward for not jumping to the defense of my friends. I’m not sure myself.

Rider #2 put his cell phone a bit too close for the driver’s liking, so he knocked it to the ground. Rider #2, normally a very calm individual, kind of threw what looked like a punch, or maybe a slap. Rider #3, showed the pepper spray that he/she keeps to deal with dogs, and the driver returned to the cab and pulled out a much bigger pepper spray. The SUV passenger got out and joined the proceedings. Rider #4, the smallest of us, got right in there close.

No actual blows were thrown, no one got pepper sprayed, or shot, which seemed a possibility for a time. Eventually the SUV sped off with the driver cursing at us the entire time. One thing the driver kept saying is that we were too f…ing old to be f,,,ing riding bikes on the f…ing road, you mf…ers. His vocabulary was limited so he had to use the same word quite a lot.

Rider #3 called the CHP, and after a short wait a very nice officer arrived. He told us that since no one was hurt, and since he didn’t observe any moving violations, he could not issue any citations. He said we could file a report, but that it would land at the DA’s office and again, since no one was hurt, they would sit on it for a year and then purge it from their system. He seemed reluctant to go through all the paperwork.

We did take down the license number, and the CHP officer ran the plates. Guess what? The vehicle was registered to an address in Valley Springs! Why am I not surprised?

Between my blood thinners making any fall potentially more serious, and the possibility of being a target for foothill rednecks who detest my mere presence on ‘their’ pavement, I’m wondering whether road cycling is worth the risk. I love riding my bike but I don’t like bleeding or bar fights in cycling shoes. Time to Zwift? Got to keep in shape for France next May where I cannot imagine anything like this happening.