Road Rage, California Style

I thought Nowheresville and Oxford were bad when it came to raging, angry cyclists but walking along Market Street ce soir, I saw a cyclist so militant, he put my countrymen to shame. He was cycling along the middle of a cycle lane (although without reading the road markings, I assumed it was a bus lane as it was so wide) and a taxi comes powering along behind him, blasting its horn. Militant Cyclist starts effing and blinding, "It's a fucking cycle lane, you moron!" before turning around to spit onto the taxi's windscreen several times, causing the taxi to blast his horn some more. They eventually reached a traffic light and the taxi driver got out and started screaming at the cyclist. At this point another cyclist came along and started pointing out the road markings to the driver before jumping on their bikes and cycling off. The taxi driver then got back in the car and drove off after them, through the red light, with a glint in his eye that suggested that he would have no problem with running them down if he caught up with them.

So much for California being filled with easy-going, chilled out folks! None of this fills me with confidence for my planned early-morning run along the Embarcadero tomorrow. Then again, I'm having problems with the time calculations. Sunrise is at 7.10 and I need to be in a meeting at 8, which means running in the dark for about 30 minutes if I am going to run for as long as I usually like. I could wait until Wednesday but my legs are starting to grow itchy (also, I bought loads of cool new running gear at Lululemon last night and I want to try it out and I have a load of podcasts backed up on the Shuffle). Maybe I'll need to buy some chic fluorescent gear from Lululemon--if such oxymoronic kit exists, they will have it.