Deaf wish, part II

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To the Editor:

This time, I was doing the yelling. It was the Tuesday after Hurricane Henri (more like Hurricane Ennui), a sweltering afternoon, and I was three-quarters of the way into a 20-mile bike ride. I’m cruising along at 12 mph on the Airport Road section when a woman whooshed by on an electric bike. She was going much too fast for me to catch up but, as luck would have it, she stopped ahead to chat with some young boys heading in the opposite direction.

“You know, it would have been nice for you to say, ‘On your left,’ before you blew past me.’”

“Well, you were in the right lane, and I passed on your left. What’s the problem?”

“You scared the #$%& out of me! That’s the problem.”

“Gee, I guess you didn’t hear my bell,” ringing it to punctuate her lie. “Have a nice rest of your ride,” as she zoomed off into the distance …

And in doing so, she deprived me of the chance to opine that electric bikes are a menace — they’re too quiet, too heavy, and too fast. People who ride them need to extend every possible courtesy to pedestrians, dog walkers, joggers, cyclists, skateboarders, and scooter-folk before we band together to banish their battery-powered butts from shared use paths that were never designed with them in mind.

Tom Pallas
Vineyard Haven