I’m sure that most people would recognize this…

-Robert Frost

Today I was riding my (new to me) bike that I bought Saturday. I was just going for a short shakedown ride to get used to it and to adjust things that are really only perceptible on a decent ride. I was on my way back and in a neighborhood where some efforts were made to change the behavior of drivers who use the quiet streets as a makeshift shortcut to avoid traffic lights and traffic congestion on the roads that were designed for the heavier traffic moving north to south and vice versa with the patterns of the typical working day’s commuters. I was going to cross the major thoroughfare and continue on the quiet neighborhood’s street that I had been on for about 2 miles. The car traffic was forced to stop 🛑 and then make a RIGHT ➡ turn without the ability to continue on across the road like I was going to do.
So in order to keep the short-cutters from going through the neighborhood. I saw the island and I thought I would come to a stop on the left side of it as opposed to the right side that directed cars to make the right turn. No more than 2 seconds after I came to a stop and looked for my opening in cross traffic and no more than 6 feet away a white Toyota Carola didn’t come to a stop before making the mandatory right turn and they jumped the curb of the island and the left front tire and then the cars undercarriage followed by the right rear tire impacted the cement island with a significant amount of force and the driver just accelerated onto the major thoroughfare I was attempting to cross. Fortunately no cars were coming because they were going too fast to stop in time by my estimation and had I been waiting on that side of the island I have to wonder if they would have struck me from behind and possibly caused me significant bodily harm or even worse? I had been overly cautious the entire ride because I was still getting used to the new bike. I wonder how things might’ve been different had I been on a different bike or had I been wearing earbuds or if I just chose to stop on the other side of that island? I can’t stand riding in traffic but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of putting my bike on my vehicle and then driving to a trail and then having to do all the little adjustments on the trail. Sometimes I just enjoy riding from my front door because of the simplicity of it. I hadn’t been on the trail I ended up on or the route that took me to and from it in at least 10 years. So many things have changed. I thought about stopping at my favorite coffee shop only when I got there it was gone. Turned into a fried chicken fast casual dining spot. The entire shopping center that the coffee shop was in had changed a lot too. I rode home looking at all the new homes being built on the lots of old homes that apparently were not what the new owners wanted. It’s left many neighborhoods in a strange situation where there is a mix of originally built homes mixed with these mini Mcmansions that look so out of place because they are so big that they dwarf most of the lots. And the homes are so close together that they can almost touch the neighboring house if they leaned out the window. Nothing lasts forever and I’ve always struggled with changes. Such is life…