Roads scholar gets edukated

Everyone talks about who owns the road. Now I’ve met the Guy Who Owns the Road.

The driver was 85 going on 185, and I’m not talking about miles per hour. I’m talking age. I have learned through past experience to show extra compassion for the elderly. After all, every day that goes by we all get closer to being elderly. And it’s all relative — when we’re 80, we think we’ll be elderly when we’re 81.

The AARP, or American Association of People Who Someday Hope to Retire if Social Security Doesn’t Go Bankrupt, has a more liberal definition of old age than the average person. In fact, according to the AARP, I am, at age 51, in the youth of old age.

Maybe I should have training wheels on my bicycle.

A mid-life crisis at age 40 may explain why I gained 30 pounds. I had it in mind to get the red convertible, the bomber jacket and the aviator shades.

But the more fast food I ate, the slower I became.

The late-life crisis that started at age 50 sees me back to bicycling again. I rode 36 miles roundtrip each school day while attending the University of Oregon and living at home with my parents — motto: we live a long way from civilization for a reason.

No, I was not raised by wolves.

But my parents were frugal. And they were big fans of paying cash for everything, and making sure the kids paid their own tuition, books and clothing — and other must-haves such as jogger sneakers, Bee Gees records, record players, Charlie’s Angels posters, pet rocks, mood rings and waterbeds.

Riding bicycle was a natural for me.

Back then, I thought I owned the road. I thought all drivers could see as well as I could with my 20-year-old laser eyes.

Now I know better. So I wasn’t totally surprised when the land yacht cruised by on the road between Cove and Union nearly singeing the hairs off my left leg.

The exercise is in preparation for a possible ride across Iowa. Me and my even older bicycling partner are not trying to find the Fountain of Youth somewhere near Oskaloosa. But I would like to be able to get off the floor in less time than it takes the average 9-year-old to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the Second Amendment and the Bill of Ice Cream Eaters Rights.

The Guy Who Owns the Road looked determined. In fact, he probably wouldn’t have deviated from his lane had a load of watermelon spilled right in front of him. He would have plowed right through them like the comic Gallagher wielding his trusty sledgehammer.

More kids and kids at heart attack age are plying the highways on bicycles these days.

Of course, with energy bills rising and the economy in a recession, local drivers are carefully eyeing how efficiently they can roll down the road in supersized diesels, rambo rigs, bimbo magnets and all other manner of macho wheels.

The Guy Who Owns the Road was no exception. His full-sized-and-then-some car would have made Hank Stamper of “Sometimes a Great Notion” fame proud. Ken Kesey’s character had a notion never to give an inch. Makes you wonder how Kesey would have navigated in the Pranksters’ bus, Furthur2, in the vicinity of slightly paunchy bicyclists — and why there would be smoke pouring out of the back of the bus.

The comedian George Carlin was a road scholar. He said that everyone who drives slower than us is an idiot and everyone who drives faster is a moron.

From a bicyclist’s perspective, then, every car driver would be a moron.

I beg to differ with Carlin. On a bicycle, everyone who passes in the other lane is a genius. Everyone who gives you half a lane is very intelligent. And everyone who lets you survive is smart.

The Guy Who Owns the Road is very smart indeed.

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