How Awesome I Am Part II: The Search for Humility

Yesterday I talked about how inventive I am, and as it turns out my inventiveness is so profound and far-reaching that my coverage of it must now enter a second day, for a Twitterer just alerted me to this:

Don't Salmon, Don't Shoal: Learning The Lingo Of Safe Cycling http://t.co/W7e9OrWXXu
— NPR News (@nprnews) May 15, 2014

As we already established, I singlehandedly invented the term "salmon" in the context of cycling.  Sure, some of you doubted the veracity of this claim, but I forgive you, since I know how the mind of the cyclist works.  Allow me to explain:

See, inherently, we all have a little bit of the retrogrouch in us, and therefore we refuse to acknowledge innovation.  This is why when a company starts touting its 650b mountain bike, some grizzled guy in jean shorts and sandals has to pipe up with: "New?!?  Ha!  We were riding singletrack on Dutch city bikes back in the early '60s!"  Similarly, when I assert my claim to the term "salmon," invariably someone's going to question the term's provenance and start up with the old "Bah!  You think you invented 'salmon?'  That's what we used to yell at those idiots riding Dutch city bikes on the hiking trails in the early '60s!" routine.

But yeah, the point is I invented "salmon."  I also invented "shoal:"

Got anything so say about that?  Of course you do, and I can already see the comments:

"You invented 'shoal?'  Humbug!  Back when I was riding with the Bumshtuppers Cycle Club out of Texassippi City, East Dakota, we used to say 'shoal' all the time.  We also used two-speed thread-on freewheels that you had to shift with a broomstick, and we used to have to stop and repack them every three miles or else they'd seize up and turn into fixed gears."

Be that as it may, it's abundantly clear to me that I have singlehandedly invented what no less an organization than NPR calls "the lingo of safe cycling," and it's both a blessing and a curse--and the "curse" part has nothing to do with the fact that they don't credit me anywhere in the article:

I don't mind this for three reasons:

1) True geniuses are seldom appreciated in their own time;

2) I am nothing if not benevolent, and these terms are my donation to our culture.  If you like, think of me as a literary philanthropist.  (Or, if you don't like, think of me as a giant douchebag.);

3) It makes me proud that my inventions are so popular it doesn't even occur to people to wonder about their source.  We take them for granted, as well we should.  Similarly, back in the 1500s, someone started using the latin word "scrotum" to mean "purse-like tegumentary investment of the testes and part of the spermatic cord; the cod," but we don't worry about who this person was before we say it ourselves, do we?  No we don't.  We just use the word freely, marveling in its utility, and occasionally modifying it ourselves to form new words such as "scranus," "scrote-face," and "scrotalitarian" (a superlative roughly equivalent to "epic" or "awesome," which I just now invented).  Then, as these words are used more and more frequently they too enter the lexicon, and this ever-evolving adaptability is what makes the English language so scrotalitarian.

No, the "curse" part is that I invented these words so that bike dorks like us could simultaneously chuckle over and vent about the behavior of our fellow cyclists.  I did not mean for "The Man" to use it to keep us down and excoriate us for our "bad behavior," nor am I proud to have inspired an entire genre of tight-ass journalism.  This isn't to say I find the NPR article objectionable, because it's mostly pretty good advice, though the writer clearly does not grasp the etymology of "shoal:"

Shoaling: A shoal is a school of fish. Or a collection of cyclists at a red light. That's where shoaling happens. A cyclist comes up to the light, eyeballs a cyclist already there, thinks, "I'm faster than that person," and moves ahead.

But who can truly judge a cyclist's speed potential? Maybe the person you've shoaled is faster than you and will want to pass you once the light changes. To avoid triggering such unnecessary passes (not to mention road rage), "it's safer for people to wait at the light with everybody else and make the pass in the lane," says Billing. Or if you're really in a rush, just ask the other cyclist: "Hey, I'm late, is it okay to get in front of you?"

A shoal is not a school of fish.  The correct term for a school of fish is "a school of fish."  A shoal is basically a sandbar, and it's a gradual accumulation of sand and sediment carried and dumped by a body of water.  Having basically grown up on a great big sandbar myself, I observed that cyclists deposit themselves at intersections in a similar fashion, ultimately forming long shoals that extend into the crosswalk and beyond.  I understand cyclist behavior because I'm more than just a bike blogger.  I'm a naturalist.

Actually, now that I think about it, my childhood on a giant sandbar also allowed me to watch horseshoe crabs humping, so next time you see a bunch of cyclists standing around without first getting off their bikes, go ahead and feel free to call it a "horseshoe clusterfuck:

(They're "doing it.")

They're particularly common at non-competitive group ride rest stops:

(Horseshoe clusterfuck.)

Though you'll also see groups of four or five fixie riders forming them outside of bars.

[Fun Fact: Horseshoe clustefucks are a leading cause of "chainring tattoos."]

What's particularly vexing about the immense popularity of my terminology is that there's not a similar taxonomy for drivers.  All bike month long it's salmon this and shoal that, but I have yet to see the mainstream media come out with an article imploring drivers not to be scrote-faces.

Then again, I suppose we don't really need to discuss drivers in terms of subtle gradation, since we can paint pretty much all of them with the same roller:

"Assholes."

In fact, I had something of a revelation this morning, when it occurred to me that, when you look at the vast transportation landscape, the one common denominator is this:

Drivers are assholes.*

*[In this case I'm defining "asshole" as a profoundly selfish and/or unaware person who thinks nothing of engaging in behavior that is highly likely to kill somebody else.]

I know this because I'm a naturalist and an observer, and I use various means of conveyance in my native environment, during which I carefully study the behavior of other road users.  Basically, across all transit modes, the only road users who are consistently assholes are drivers.  Here's how it breaks down:

Cycling

Who I encounter while cycling:

Pedestrians

Other Cyclists

Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes salmon and shoal and form horseshoe clusterfucks outside of porta-pottys.

Drivers: They use their metal shitboxes like a coked-up porn star uses his dick, they fling their doors open into you, they harass you, they yell obscenities and slurs at you, and sometimes they run into you, lie about what happened, and don't get in trouble for it, and if you're lucky you don't die.

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes I have to slow down, change direction, or yell out, "Heads up, scrote-face!"

Drivers: If I survive, it makes me feel like a coked-up porn star tried to rape me.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Annoying

Other Cyclists: Annoying

Drivers: Assholes

Walking

Who I encounter while walking:

Other Pedestrians

Cyclists

Drivers

How they behave:

Other Pedestrians: Stop short, walk slowly, fan out three or more abreast, blow smoke in my face, spit, jiggle with each footfall, stand there drooling on their cellphones, ask me for directions when the thing they're looking for is right in front of their goddamn faces!

Cyclists: Whiz by you when you're crossing the street, and occasionally when you're on the sidewalk.

Drivers: Run red lights while you're crossing, bear down on you when you're in the intersection with the right of way crossing with the light, roll stop signs while you're in the crosswalk, "salmon" (damn right drivers salmon!), reverse down the entire street at 40mph for a parking space (a form of salmoning), park wherever the hell they want, hit you and leave you to die, and if they're caught they lie about it, which absolves them completely.

How this behavior affects me: 

Other Pedestrians: Not that much.  Sometimes I have to walk around the jiggly people and the three-abreasters (usually the same people actually).  The worst is the the asking-for-directions thing, in which case they're robbing me of my valuable time, which is why instead of giving directions I usually hand over a dollar and ask them to fuck off.

Cyclists: It makes me want to take pictures of them and ridicule them on the Internet.

Drivers: It makes me feel like I'm getting face-fucked by a horseshoe crab.

What this makes them:

Other Pedestrians: Annoying

Cyclists: Annoying

Drivers: Complete Assholes

Driving

Who I encounter while driving:

Pedestrians

Cyclists

Other Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Cyclists: Sometimes salmon or run red lights.  (You don't really notice the other stuff when you're driving.)  They can also be kinda hard to see at night if they don't have lights.

Other Drivers: Don't stop at stop signs, drive drunk, run red lights, cut you off on the Deegan at 95mph, don't go when the light turns green because they're drooling on their phones, make U-turns in the middle of intersections, honk at you the second the light turns green, honk in traffic even if the reason for the traffic is that someone's lying in a pool of their own blood, honk at everything, take forever to park, double-park wherever and bring traffic to a halt...

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Very little.  Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction slightly, which is effortless in a motor vehicle.

Cyclists: Very little, because if anything bike salmon are only annoying if you're also on a bike, and as often as cyclists run red lights I really don't notice it while I'm driving.  (Probably, you know, because they run the red lights when there are no cars coming.)  They should use lights though.

Other Drivers: I pull over in front of a church or house of worship (ironically one of the few places you're not allowed to park), drop to my knees, and pray for them all to die.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Mildly annoying at times.

Cyclists: Mildly annoying at times.

Other Drivers: Fucking assholes.

In conclusion, while we're all annoying at various times, it's only the drivers who are full-on assholes no matter how you're getting around--even if you too are driving.  In fact, they're even annoying if you're on the subway, where you think you'd be safe from their molestation, but you'd be wrong.  (And yes, I left out other road users such as motorcyclists, longboarders, Rollerbladers, Segway riders, ElliptiGO users, equestrians, and so forth, but I don't have all day, so here's a dollar and you know what you can do.)

Lastly, this Wall Street Journal report made me want to cry:

It's official, we have reached Peak Fred.