Back in the saddle!

(photo of Critical Mass Hungary 09 from Time magazine of all places!)

I am back riding my bike to and fro, commuting as a biped to work each day just in time for Earth Day! This, thanks to a generous and very pregnant friend who is lending me her bike.

It's such a cliche, but I feel a renewed sense of freedom and liberation. The downside is that Budapest remains a decidedly unfriendly city for bikes. Despite the biggest Critical Mass rides, the roads are too narrow, drivers too aggressive, and paths too nonexistent. I have already had two minor mishaps and the problem for me isn't so much the sense of eminent danger as it is the growing feeling of righteousness within.

I am a Libra's Libra, and my sense of fairness, of balance, and clearly of wreaking justice and judgement are in my nature. So when a middle aged father stopped his car to yell at me for blocking his passage on a super narrow bit of road behind the Mammut mall where I was riding as close to the parked cars as I could without rubbing against them for a cuddle, I was outraged. Of course, I felt obliged to let him know how I felt with my instinctive middle finger making its obligatory salute. Then something happened. We were stuck at a light together and thus began the battle of the self-righteous expletives, concluding, or so he thought, in an almost trance like utterance on his behalf of "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck YOU." I mean, how could I top a quad? Well, after reaching into the darkest corner of my insult bag, I grab the most obvious, but perhaps most deadly insult to throw at him. So with all the haughtiness and tut-tutting I could muster, I yell back at the man who has been screaming the f word at me while leaning across his 9 year old expressionless daughter: "you are a horrible driver and a terrible father."

Bamb! Gotcha!

Of course I couldn't quite leave it at that and followed up with some blah blah how dare you yell at me in front of your daughter blah blah to someone on a BICYCLE (like he had afronted the gods of lance). But somehow, it didn't make me feel any better. I felt little high calling him on his bad parental role modeling, but I didn't get the satisfaction I thought the trump card would have gotten me. But more to the point, what strikes me about me in this regard, is my obsession with thinking, nee knowing, I am right. But not just that I am right, actually, but that I must right the world of its unfair ways and behaviors. Sadly, this doesn't manifest itself in organizing productive responses to the evils of the world. Instead, I am like the Fairness Police, conducting verbal citizen arrests to right the petty wrongs of the world. Last week, I Let The Manager of the Pizza Stand at the Budapest Airport Know that they were ripping people off with the lack of difference in size but double the price salad bar bowls. She hardly spoke English but I just Had To Let Her Know. Politely of course. Just like how I can't help myself from letting people know their cutting in line Did Not Go Unnoticed.

Righting the petty wrongs of the world. I am indeed a crank old lady before my time.