Katie Kelly

So you’re riding along on your bike with a friend at chit chat pace, and you reach a stop sign or a red light. You slow to a stop, because you don’t want a ticket or to get killed, and your friend keeps on pedaling, leaving you behind.

The first offense is minor, but when your friend ushers you to hurry up, then it becomes a gross infraction.

The above is connected to another pet peeve, and that is when cyclists run red lights and stop signs and nearly get hit by drivers, and then yell at drivers.

Which brings me to another pet peeve of mine, which is actually elevated to a higher level of annoyance, and that’s when drivers proceed to drive dangerously close to cyclists because they may have broken the law.

This is a two-parter. Yes, the cyclist was in the wrong, and had the driver still regarded that cyclist’s right to life, I would point the finger of blame strictly onto the cyclist. But then when drivers get all high and mighty and start playing God behind the wheel — “Break the law and I will kill you!” — then I have issues.

It’s all so complicated.

I am positive that I have documented some pet peeves before, but I don’t believe I ever discussed these ones, so I will now, so I can sleep better tonight.

• Braking in the middle of a turn. It’s okay on a bike, because you’re only endangering yourself, and maybe one or two people behind you, but if you do it in a car, and I’m a passenger, you do not realize the inner-turmoil it creates that burbles inside my soul. Now, I have gotten much better at adapting, and I have done that by silently gripping the arm rests or some nearby object, and pressing the invisible brake pedal on the floor. Deep breaths help. Coming to grips with my past, and letting go and accepting death has helped, too.Just so you know that I’m not making this up about why it’s such a bad thing to do, I attempted to find some on-line documentation about why you should brake mostly in a straight line, before the turn, and all I could find was this Yahoo! Answers “Resolved Question,” which asks what the “logic” is behind braking before a turn. The explanations offered go all into centripetal force, which means it doesn’t answer the question at all, so now I’m going to tell you why you should brake before the turn.

  The reason why you should brake before the turn is because if you brake in the middle of the turn, in layman’s terms, you are probably one day going to kill yourself and all your passengers.

  You probably did not know this, but most automanufactures dial in a certain amount of understeer into their cars, because they recognize that most people do not understand this one fundamental concept, and brake in turns, and they understand that an understeering car is more easy to control than a spinning out car.

  Most people I ride with, especially when they think they are driving fast, understeer into corners, and they don’t even realize it.

  So here’s more of an explanation. When you brake in a straight line, you have the rubber of two tires working for you, as all the weight of the car moves forward, over those two front tires. All the weight shifts forward, but if you do it early enough, and smoothly enough, everything will feel calm and under control.

  If you brake in a turn, now you’re putting all the load of the car, which is still traveling forward — think of physics, and what happens with objects in motion — on that one tire. So you have half the amount of rubber working for you, absorbing all the weight of the car, which is traveling in a diagonal direction.

  I need to explain even more, since I don’t have time to go back an edit. Say you’re turning left — so your front wheels are pointed to the left – and you’re braking as you’re turning left. All the weight of the car is traveling, relative to the front wheels, to the right. And because you’re braking, the weight is traveling to the right, and forward, onto that one tire.

  That one tire has to take all that load. So your car will one day roll over, and you might die.

  This is why SUVs have to have all those airbags and crap. People brake in turns, and then that one outside tire can’t take the pressure, and the SUVs rollover. It’s not because SUVs aren’t safe. It’s that SUV drivers, like most people, have not read my blog.

• Friends with benefits. Who ever invented this concept has no soul, and who ever went along with it is a gullable idiot. I’m not saying that I ever went along with it. What a bad thing to do. It is an insult to friendship, relationships, and human compassion, and therefore ranks very high on my list of pet peeves.There will those who argue that some people are just free spirits, and can’t be tied down, but I argue that there is something fundamentally wrong with them, that they are superficial and shallow and emotionally stunted.

  I only bring this up because I just can’t get over how common it is, and so many of my single friends are coming to terms with it, just like I am. On the bright side, at least it’s not only women complaining about this, which was my first thought. I’ve since met plenty of guys who have similar issues with it. I consider this good news. This discovery contradicts the messages from the literature out there, directed mostly at women, which explain to them how to handle dating men, and that this is just how men are. Not true! It works both ways. Still, what the heck is wrong with people?!

I have more pet peeves than this, but it is late, and so, in closing, I would like to quote my Grandma Cathy, who told me one afternoon, upon waking from her nap on the couch as I was folding her laundry that I was the best Catholic she had ever known. Befuddled, as I have never been baptized into any religion, and, in fact, I have many opinions about religion that I could add to my list of pet peeves but now it’s late, I raised one eyebrow to her, involuntarily, exposing my confusion.

She touched my arm and said, “Katie. If I weren’t a Catholic, I’d be a whore.”