No one has escaped them. They ride with fire under their saddles, shooting onward as if fed on rocket fuel. These muscular missiles dart and veer, fearless in their quest for speed and a thrill at someone else’s expense.
From a traffic light at the bottom of a hill, such a cyclist launches a ride fit only for an astronaut reaching for sempiternal skies of darkness. With a pedal’s thrust, the brazen cyclist begins his ascent. Charging up the hill, alongside cars ten times his size, he bolts to beat them to the road’s peak.
Once at the summit, he plummets down as fast as two wheels will take him. Pedaling in his biggest gear, he’s trying to reach a top speed never attained before. His lungs pump and ache with scarce air as he gasps in large gulps of slipping wind to ease the pain.
His legs grow hot with fatigue, but the speed isn’t sufficient yet. Reaching the bottom of the hill, the cyclist yanks the bike into a sharp right turn. Leaning with all his weight, his right knee almost scraping the ground, he struggles to keep the bike on track. Hanging between balance and chaos, the wheels give to the left. The rubber barely grips the slick road, still he won’t brake or sit more upright to decelerate by increasing the drag.
Ending the acute turn brings him within a hair’s breadth of a hideous crash. With brute force, the bike is righted just before colliding with a car that has caught up to him. He half hears the angry words of a motorist unable to predict the bike’s path. He shrugs it off since he is light-headed and high on adrenaline.
A crowd of cars impedes his progress. He weaves in-between them, cutting off one, slowing another – outpacing a notional opponent.
Ahead is a red light. Timing it just right, he can blow through the intersection before the cars start up. Accelerating, he takes off like the devil, flying on a metal marvel past the slackening cars on his left and in front of the pawing cars to his right.
Horns blow boisterously as he cuts off the oncoming traffic. He’s too pumped up to notice.
On to the next challenge, he swerves around a pedestrian in the crosswalk. He doesn’t have the right of way, but he won’t kill her. She’ll be scared, yet with unwavering certainty in his quickness and agility, he’s confident of avoiding her without missing a beat.
Gliding behind her onto the sidewalk, she curses him as her sandwich and files fall to the ground. Too bad, he thinks, hoping her lunch break isn’t over. She should look before crossing, he mutters to absolve himself of any responsibility for her misfortune. Along the sidewalk, pedestrians dodge frantically to get out of the way before he plunges back onto the street.
A bus pulls out in front of him. Passing on the right, he squeezes between the bus and a row of parked cars, risking getting doored and trapping an exiting motorist in his car.
Craving speed, he’s not going fast enough yet. Stop signs blur as he charges down the road, oblivious to minutiae such as traffic laws. No one can stop him. He’s invincible.
Just when he’s hit his rhythm, flashing lights catch his eye. He’ll outrun them, he tells himself as he plans his escape. Turning quickly into a parking lot to cut over to another street, he passes pedestrians, steering left and right through the human poles of a randomly created slalom course.
With a left onto a side street, he is home free. Cranking with all his might, to put distance between himself and accountability, he looks back over his shoulder to see if anyone is in pursuit. Nothing in sight.
But, when he looks up, an obstacle stands in his way. He can’t pass.
Slamming on his brakes, he plans a 180º turn to head in the other direction. Too late: he’s out of time. There isn’t enough room to maneuver. His front wheel hits the side of a cruiser parked horizontally across the road. Over the handlebars he sails onto the hood as he feels hands grabbing his jersey.
“Can I see some ID?” – uttered in a rough voice – is the last thing he hears before passing out cold.
