Good vs Evil

What keeps me going is that every time I get convinced that there's more evil in the world, so far someone nice shows up and reminds me that it ain't all bad. The actions of strangers speak louder than most. 

I'm riding down Lincoln and some fool coming off a cross street decides he wants to block one and a half lanes and just sit there. I obviously slow down enough to be cautious, but not enough so that if he sees me, he thinks I'm giving him way. It's a bit of a gamble, so I keep my fingers on both brake levers. 

I manage to continue in my lane with the right of way. Just before I pass, he throws his hands up as if I did something wrong. Was I really supposed to stop on a main road with him already impeding on his stop sign? Idiot. 

On the flip side yesterday afternoon after I got gas and was entering traffic, I'm waiting for traffic to go through so I can get on the main stretch. A fellow's already stopped at a red light half way down the block as the light turns green, he waves me to go on by.....with a smile I might add! 

In the past 5-7 years, I've noticed a dramatic decrease in drivers whom you let cut in front of you give a thank you wave. This thank-you wave shows you acknowledge that the other person didn't have to let you go, but chose to out of pure courtesy. Don't see that anymore. It's no longer 1:7 cars that do it. It's now 1:50! Huge stretch. Big changes for the worse in the past half decade. So sad. 

On another non scooter related incident: 

I'm sitting a cafe pretty much by myself and notice a guy come in with a pretty cool laptop. It's one of the new Asus brands. The model looks like an attempt to be a Macbook air. I say in a loud enough voice so he can hear me a few feet away, "How do you like your laptop?" 

He hesitates and doesn't look at me at first. I knew I spoke loud enough for him to hear me and the volume was such that it was obvious I wasn't talking to anyone closer to me. As if reluctant, he looks over at me and murmurs, "Fine" and looks away. No smiles. No nothing. Just a jerk attitude and that's it. 

Maybe my standards for people are just too high. Or their performance is just too low. Luckily I met a guy earlier in the cafe that was much more decent of a guy. 

I'll still continue to talk to random people on the offchance that they might be nice people. I refuse to let one guy ruin it for the rest.

Back to scooter talk.

I'm stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn left. It's a four lane road with two lanes coming towards me. Motorists coming my way have right of way and should continue. One guy stops and pretty much encourages me to go. I'm not dumb enough to fall for it knowing that cars coming up behind in the adjacent lane could (and probably would) easily speed by and not stop as the other guy did and totally run me over.

So to the fellow motorists out there, go when you're supposed to go. Don't go when you're not. If you stop when you're not supposed to, it confuses people and bad things can happen. I've seen it before where motorists try to be the good buy and stop for pedestrians who should be waiting for a gap. They encourage the pedestrian to walk and the drivers coming up behind in the lane alongside the stopped driver has no clue there's a pedestrian, doesn't hesitate to wonder why a car is stopped and just speeds pass through. I've seen a couple occasions where a pedestrian almost gets hit. 

Even nice people cause trouble.

I always insist that people go when they have right of way. If they go first, they can't run me over.