Yesterday morning, I sent a very polite note to our mayor and city council members asking that the bike lanes on SE Blvd be swept, as they were full of rocks and pine needles. A few hours later while I was riding home, I saw they were being cleaned, so I quickly wrote them again to thank them. I assumed the issue was done until late last night when I received the following from Bob Apple:
Try and talk to your bicycling friends to always be safety conscious and courteous because I'm receiving far to many complaints about arrogant and rude bicyclists who use hand language and literally cut in front of traffic. Knowing that about 2% of our residents ride bicycle casually or more and receiving so many complaints means a very few are creating a disservice to all riders. It is also a disservice to have public battles, regarding the placement of bike lanes on major arterials and truck routes wher they do not belong like 2nd and 3rd Avenues downtown and though that will not be happening, many on either side of the argument are still unhappy.
Betsy again--while cyclists' worst enemies might be other cyclists who don't follow rules and give us all a bad name, in my email I presented myself as a law-abiding adult and didn't warrant this response. I realize there are a few angry drivers out there, but am sorry to hear from an angry councilman. What do you think??
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In many of my dealings with Bob Apple I believe he read another email, responded to it but sent it to me. He never addressed my question and blathered on semi-coherently with numerous typos and grammatical inconsistencies that it was hard to follow his (preumably) train of though. Most of which had to do with a complaint about a cyclist that he heard once.
ReplyDeleteBob Apple is mad about a lot of things, and a bit of an asshole too, from what I've seen. He is pretty disgruntled about bikes and thinks they belong on the sidewalks and never the roads.
ReplyDeleteA lot of drivers use rude gestures, even at each other ... maybe people don't see it as often because they're inside of their cars, but I think it's more that drivers are us vs. us, not us vs. them, so people don't hold the grudges.
Maybe we should start sending Bob Apple complaints about all of the people who pass too close, honk their horns, swear at us, tell us to get off the road, etc.
Oh wait, I bet Bob Apple is one of them!