Don Hanson

Quoted from a digest reply
. As I said in my first post there is a time and a place for everything. I
am also learning a lot as I become older and ANGER will get us no where!!!
I really hope that you will think about this experience and try to
understand that flipping someone off and then trying to explain yourself to
someone generaly doesn't work out very well.

I have to agree, much as I dislike rude arrogant dangerous behavior by
motorists, that flipping one off is almost always a counterproductive move
in any situation.
If you begin your 'interaction' with someone by telling him right away,
before you've done any other communicating at all....."Go F**K Yourself!"
with a handsign, you have to expect that person to be less inclined to
listen to what else you have to say.
Drivers do not give a rat's ass about how rough a road is for the cyclists
they encounter...They see something different altogether..You're probably
aware that people can be stupid and self-centered. You're probably aware
that some motorists think that bikes don't belong on the road at all, or if
at all, they should stay out of the way..So when the drive with that
attitude encounters some "lycra-clad cycle faggot" (a label once applied to
me) riding down the middle of "Their" highway, they don't think, they honk
and 'brush you back'...crap like that. If you respond to that action with
the BIRD..you have just challenged their "Man-Hood"...Their Right to
Drive...Mom and Apple pie..NASCAR..America...everything they hold dear...and
they won't react well to you, or ever again think of a cyclist other than as
an "Ass-*ole, like that one who flipped me off back in '08"
If you really want to improve how drives share the road..Flipping them off
first is probably not the way to do it.
That being said, I have flipped off drivers myownself...and I actually had
to engage in fisticuffs with one some years back..Take off your cleats
before you start fighting..

Don Hanson