The bicycle menace

Ten seconds later, I was hunched over in the middle of the path, fighting back the urge to scream in pain. Not only had I been run over by a bicycle, but a leering, slightly flushed face had flashed before my eyes: half embarrassed, half sadistically amused by my physical anguish. I stumbled a few steps toward a tree and sat down to think, dumbfounded. As my head swam and fantastical visions of retribution against my bemused wrongdoer dissolved in a rush of expletives, I began to feel a low and pervasive throbbing in my right foot. "Damn! The wheel!" I cursed my misfortune, gritted my teeth and limped back toward my still-distant room. This was only my first experience with the cyclists of Princeton.

My second most unfortunate run-in with bicycles came two weeks later in almost the exact same spot on campus. This time, it was a quick jab to the ribs that left me aching for nights and unable to sleep on my back. The reaction from the cyclist (a different perpetrator from the first) was nearly the same: a half-amused, half-discomfited glare that bordered on ludicrous. Nonetheless, this same cyclist restored my faith in humanity when he muttered beneath his breath a quick apology ("Uh ... sorry", I believe it was), before pedaling off in the other direction. Again, my head exploded with expletives and revenge narratives of the epic, Renaissance variety.

The most recent incident was admittedly in part my own doing. That day, the rain poured down in sheets across campus. I took refuge under the protruding roof of a nearby dorm, standing some feet away from a tangle of menacing handlebars, wheels and pedals cramped alongside the wall. As the rain began to ease off, I prepared to make my way down past the cluster of bicycles. It was then that my foot caught a chain (or possibly a lopsided pedal), and I went flying toward the ground. I remained on my stomach for a few moments, contemplating deeply on what it could all possibly mean. Why bicycles? Why was it always the bicycles?

I have nothing against cyclists or the apparatus they ride. Of the bicycle's many fine attributes, the best is that it is energy-efficient and especially useful for Princeton's various small, winding paths. But I would like to relate one last episode, which I feel epitomizes the rude and unfeeling behavior of some of the cyclists I have been so unfortunate to "run into."

I was walking one day down a rather hilly slope in Wilson College. A girl listening to her iPod was striding along just slightly ahead of me, and a cyclist was trailing close behind her. He wore a most impatient and indignant expression on his face and after a few moments had begun to twitch his mouth and commence a series of exasperated grunts. His knuckles, in fact, gripped the handlebars so tightly that they turned white, and his eyes were constantly shifting over to where I was walking. The path was quite narrow, and it would have been impossible for him to slide between us without incurring some type of injury. Just then, another student came up the same path, texting busily away on her cell phone. She looked up, saw the bicycle and the girl in front of it, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "YOU MIGHT WANT TO GET OUT OF THE FREAKING WAY!" At this, the girl looked up and moved obediently off the path, while the cyclist whizzed down the slope and out of sight.

This seemed a ridiculous scenario. Maybe I have just had the horrible luck of running into the rudest cyclists on campus. If I were either of the two cyclists mentioned in the accidents above, I would have (at the very least) stopped, directly apologized and expressed some concern as to the possibility of any serious injuries. Don't get me wrong. Would it honestly hurt so much to show a little compassion after literally running someone over and leaving them sniveling in the bushes? Would it take that much time out of your day to say, "I'm sorry," before pedaling off down the road? Think not only of your own inhumanity but of the emotional trauma of one student who is now too afraid to walk the paved roads of Princeton again. Think closely about my story the next time you are rushing to class, and think about turning the kid in front of you into road kill on the sidewalk. Pause and ask yourself in the spirit of the holiday season, "Is it worth it?"

Katherine Chen is a freshman from Wayne, N.J. She can be reached at kjchen@princeton.edu.