Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Mayor of Hypocrite-ville?

I realize I'm a little late to the party, but Joe Soucheray's column about Lance Armstrong really stuck in my craw. But I couldn't figure out what was bugging me about it (besides the obvious) until tonight.

Joe's a motorcycle head. And I remember him writing about the woes of riding a motorcycle that's not heavy enough to trigger the traffic light sensors. It may have been last summer, as he's been talking about nothing but scooters this summer. But my (increasingly faulty) memory said that he was having a problem with a left turn light on Highway 36 somewhere out in the Oakdale area. So, I wrote the following letter to the editor. Hopefully I was vague enough, yet specific enough to make somebody go look in the archives.

I read Joe Soucheray's July 27th column about Lance Armstrong where Joe refers to the "hordes of uniformed bicycle riders who ignore the traffic laws because they are in training to become the next Lance Armstrong and cannot be bothered with trivial matters such as red lights."

I distinctly recall reading in one of Joe's not so recent columns that he had taken it upon himself to go through the red lights while riding his motorcycle. The reason behind this is that his bike does not have enough weight to trigger the traffic sensor and cause the light to change. Perhaps in his next column Joe can outline exactly which situations it's OK to disregard traffic laws in, because this honest bicycle rider is honestly confused.

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