The Bicycle Salmon

When I ride my bicycle, I try to do so thoughtfully. I won't suggest that I am always-perfect-all-the-time. Far from it. I make bonehead decisions like anyone. When I am riding on a city street, though, I try to be predictable.

California's vehicle code, for many of its eighteen divisions and 42,000 sections, does not differentiate between bicycles and automobiles. The Code describes "vehicles". Bicycles are recognized in the law as vehicles--and act like other vehicles on the road, I should as a cyclist.

So I go along, riding on the right side of the road. I ride in the middle of the lane unless there is a wide shoulder or a bike lane. I signal--something that only about two thirds of vehicle operators do, but there I am. I use turn lanes, I yield when others have right-of-way, and I just generally seek harmony with other travellers.

I want very much to be a positive force on the road. Sometimes I shake my fist and sometimes I swear... but never, I should hope, with less cause than my neighbor.

And then I find myself sharing the road with the Bicycle Salmon. The Bicycle Salmon travels against the flow of traffic on busy one-way streets, always upstream, relentless, unphased by cyclists riding with the flow of traffic, unconcerned with traffic laws or narrow bike lanes. Often they carry the oft-abused banners of Huffy or Murray. They do not need helmets! They must keep moving UP--OR OVER THERE!--across three lanes of oncoming traffic!

I ask myself, as I ride in the narrow bike lane on Sacramento's 12th Street, under the SP railroad tracks, "If salmon swim up a fish ladder, do bicycle salmon ride up a bike ladder?"

Perhaps 12th Street is a bike ladder.

And somewhere among the twenty cars in sight, I know some motorist is thinking, "Those guys are both on bikes--they must be together--what crazy move is the one in the bike lane going to make?"

And I sigh, signalling my right turn.