Veloquacity

The weather seems to be a-changin’, and I must say that I’m a fan. Pretty much.

The weather outside is, to me, just about perfect for cycling: cool enough that I’m not a sweaty mess, but still sunny during most of the day. As an added bonus, the leaves are starting to change, and they aren’t yet a slippery mess along the side of the road. It’s almost perfect.

What isn’t perfect, though, is the traffic.

My family has had cats since before I was born, and now I’m the proud co-owner of two wonderful felines myself. I’ve long noticed that when the weather hits that transition from warm to cool – and to a lesser extent, the opposite – the cats go crazy. They start tearing around the house, try to get into anything they possibly can, and generally freak out on a much more frequent basis than normal.

It would seem that drivers in the Boston area are not immune to the changes either. The past few mornings, I’ve seen drivers pull some really dumb moves, often coming close to hitting both other cyclists and me personally. It’s as though they’ve stopped looking where they’re headed altogether, or at least are ignoring the cyclist bearing down on them. Both at intersections and just going along the road, there seems to be a tendency of late to steer their vehicles directly towards bicycles.

At the very least, until this passes, be careful out there, Boston cyclists. No matter who’s at fault, when bike meets car, the car almost always wins.