Spotlight: ED Sufferer of the Week

Two days a week, I commute to my job in the northwest suburbs; Northbrook to be exact. It’s a great route, a safe route, and a very convenient way to get my base endurance training in during the week, instead of sacrificing 2 extra hours of the day to devote to a separate ride; or losing quality riding by commuting on stop and go urban streets…as much as I miss that…

The route generally takes me up Kimball from Logan Square where I take Elston to the North Branch Trail head, at the intersection of Milwaukee and Devon. The world-famous Superdawg is here, a 1940’s era drive-in that serves a very unique dog, with friendly car-hop service. There are outdoor order intercoms you can use without a car so it makes a great pit stop on the way home from work…




From there I ride the North Branch Trail (empty and quiet at 6:30 am with the sunrise peeking through the trees) to Dempster. From here, it’s back to street-level, and I ride Leheigh north to Beckwith and go west (this is where the Chicago Cycling Club comes through on their weeknight training rides). A few blocks, and then north on Shermer, and I head past Golf, Central, and Glenview and then head west on Lake.

So far, so good…just a couple miles more…when…

I hear the shrieking of tires to the left me, and then honking cars. I of course completely freak out thinking I’m about to be the innocent victim of a 3 car pile-up. Then it becomes apparent no crash is imminent when I realize that the driver next to me, of the screeching tires, is yelling at me.

The passenger window of his blue minivan is down and he’s looking over his shoulder, calling out to me, over the irritated horns behind him:

“Yew must not lahk livin’, huh?!”

Having made his “point,” he then hit the gas and drove off.

I’ve been taking this route since March. I stay to the right, averaging about 23mph on this stretch, and every single car passing me up to this morning has given me at least a token of the required three feet. In short, we all just get along.

Until this guy, with his sense of self-worth(lessness) masked by self-entitlement, brought on by an obvious case of being unable to satisfy his wife’s even modest sexual needs, comes along and feels the need to create a traffic situation far more dangerous than the present one in order to inadvertently show just how innocuous can be one solitary bicyclist.