Road Rage: Rider buzzed and then confronted near North Plains
Posted by Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor) on August 27th, 2008 at 9:45 am
The following story was shared by Lynne Cuevas and posted on the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA) email list (emphasis mine):
“I was on the newly chip sealed Helvetia rd yesterday riding along in the center of the lane trying to find the smooth spots in the road as there was no traffic at the time. All of the sudden there is an older brown chevy p.u. whizzing by my left shoulder blaring his horn. My reaction was to fly the bird and keep going.
He turned left at Jackson Quarry rd. as well as I did. I came upon his truck at McCann tire and stopped in the road to see just who this jack ass was. He came running out of the business yelling at me about how illegal I was and that I was going to end up in a ditch! I trieds to explain to him that if he would have tooted his horn a couple of hundred feet behind me, I would have gladly moved over for him and that the chip seal was hard for me to ride. He heard none of it and yelled at me. Of course I told him he was wrong and I did have as much right to be there as he did.
This infuriated the man. He ran towards me and was kicking gravel on me from less than 5′ away and swung his arms wildly as he was calling me a bitch.
At that time the guy from McCann’s told him to stop. I tried to explain to the shop guy what had happened, he told me to leave. I was on the street…not on his property. I got the license number of the truck and left.
The police said they were going to go talk to him but wouldn’t give me a return call to say how it went.
I later learned that the guy that harrassed me was an employee of the tire shop. I was a customer of his a month ago. He changed over some tires for my friend. We are both cyclists and wanted to give the small business owner our business.
He won’t get my business anymore.“
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