CicLAvia II: Electric Boogaloo

Amanda's twitpic of Foursquare.

Amy and I rode down the route to MacArthur Park and played foursquare for about two hours with a huge mix of folks. Alex took pictures, so we'll probably see them up soon.

We headed through downtown, which is always the best part for me — it feels like we had a revolution and we won.

We made it all the way to the 4th St. bridge over the river, then headed back. Lots of fun.

On the way, we managed to lose Amy (she got ahead of us, but we thought we'd left her behind, so waited :( ), and Carson stopped off at home.

After all that euphoria, it was probably too much to ask that there weren't any morons — like the Parking Enforcement guy trying to tell me that I needed to read the vehicle code when I took the lane have read it, and more.

I also got a bit of vindication from the AT&T driver that rode up on us and flipped off Amanda and me last Friday.

So, I was riding back up my street, and I see his truck pulled over. The dude's got this biker 'stache and I could tell it was him, so I got him to roll down his window and said, "Hey, last Friday, you were honking at me and flipping me off. What was that about?"

He started out by denying it, saying that all the trucks looked the same, and I told him that I knew, because I wrote down the truck number. He kept denying it was him, so I started taking pictures with my cell and he put his hands on me to get me to stop him from taking the picture. Because I'm an obnoxious photographer, I know the law about that too (I can take pictures of whatever I want as long as I'm in public, pretty much). So then it turned into, "Why do you wanna get me fired, man? I bike too! In Ensenada!"

Well, I'm pissed because you lied to me and I had to keep interrogating you. Once he put his hands on me, I knew that I could call the cops and report an assault charge if I really wanted to be a dick (it's unlikely that it would stand up, but it would really fuck up his day).

It ended with him apologizing to me, and to Amanda (by proxy), though he wouldn't let me video it. He also gave me his card with his boss's number on it.

I'm trying to decide what I want out of it — on the one hand, he seemed genuinely apologetic. On the other hand, he lied to me right off the bat, so it makes it hard to trust the apology. And even after talking to him, he was still off on this idea that bikes had to ride as far as possible to the right, and never side-by-side.

What I really want is for AT&T drivers, as well as LA Parking Enforcement (if you really want to enforce traffic laws, you shoulda become a cop, not a meter maid), to learn that bikes can take lanes and have a right to LA streets. I'm not really sure what the best way to do this is, but I'd prefer that to anyone getting fired or anything.