No Break with a Bike

I took my car in for an oil change this morning. I knew it would be a long wait so brought my bike to bike to my office a mile and a half away. I had to drive to my office first to drop off some stuff so I took my usual route. Foolishly, I thought that having a bike on the back of my car would signal people to back off. It wasn't so. Three separate people rode my bike-laden tail. The last was as close as any tailgater ever is.

Tag-Team Tailgating

This morning, about half-way to work, a woman in a white Toyota minivan came speeding up behind me and glued herself to my tail. After about 5 minutes of this, she whizzed past me, crossing the double-yellow line. This is actually one spot where a dashed line might have worked because visibility was pretty good. As soon as she got by, an exasperated many in a gray Nissan sedan took up the cause and glued himself to my tail. He displayed the typical tailgating behavior with the exasperated expression, the hands in the air with the "Come on and speed up!" gesture, etc. He followed me most of the rest of the way to work. I felt like the woman in the minivan passed me and said to him, "Tag, you're it."

Tailgated by Propane

This morning, I was tailgated by a propane truck. At first, it doesn't seem scarier than most tailgating, but the likelihood of a worst case scenario seemed so incredibly high. Is there such as thing as a minor accident with a propane truck?

Don't Talk with Your Hands

I was driving home this afternoon followed by another yo-yo tailgater. This time I could tell why she was a yo-yo: she had a cell phone in one hand, and she was talking with her other hand. Every couple of seconds, she took her free hand off the steering wheel to gesture to the person on the phone. She was so distracted that I watched as she nearly missed her exit and had to cut across the wide area between the highway and the exit area to get to the exit at the last second.