Hand Signals

                    On a warmish Sunday in early April, George and I headed out for a bike ride. Destination:The Mill Market & Deli on Dorset Street, purveyors of fresh cider donuts and maple creemees. About two miles in, I turned my bike into the K-Mart parking lot off Shelburne Road near Franny O's bar, a well-traveled shortcut from Burlington's Pine Street to points south. I put my left arm out with my hand up to indicate a right turn. Hoped the teen driver in my bike mirror had some idea of my intention. Do they still teach hand signals to new drivers? She turned left, so I didn't get my answer. 

            We crossed Route 7 at a pedestrian light out of the Lowe's/Hannaford complex, then pedaled through quiet South Burlington neighborhoods to the bike path that joined up with Dorset Street. Along the way, I found myself ruminating on hand signals.

            I conjured my mother, telling me how all drivers used hand signals when she was a girl. Mom was born on a thousand-acre wheat farm in Alberta, Canada in 1914. Like most farm kids, she learned to drive tractor at a young age. Her family’s first motorcar was a Ford roadster, with a hand-crank starter, no side windows, windshield wipers or directional signals. “Back then, you made an L with your left arm to signal a right turn,” she told us, as if it was a bedtime story. “When you blew a tire, you pulled out the patch kit and fixed it right there by the side of the road.” 

            When Mom was a teenager, her father passed away after a long illness. My grandmother had relatives in Seattle, so she leased out the farm and moved back to the states, relocating Mom and her nine year-old sister, Pat.

            Years later, Mom regaled us with stories of navigating the steep Seattle roads in their car. She loved to drive, and volunteered to teach her younger sister Pat to drive when it came her turn. My now 94 year-old Aunt Pat still remembers her terror at Mom’s self-devised driving test. “She made me put a ripe tomato between my teeth, then shift my way up and down the steepest hills in the city,” she told me recently.  “Right turns, left turns, hand signals, parallel parking – all without biting down on the tomato.”

“Did you pass?” I asked.

“Of course,” she laughed, “Margaret was a wonderful teacher!”

            In her twenties, Mom stayed connected to cycling in her job as the Northwest Director for the American Youth Hostel organization. It’s where she met Dad on his return from a six-month cycling trip through Europe. She was an early advocate of bike touring as a way for young people to get out and see the world. All her years she drilled us kids in the use of hand signals and other rules of the road for cycling safety. 

Cycling Tragedy 

            Two weeks after the cider mill ride, my husband and I loaded our bikes on the car toward Essex VT. We ambled around Essex Junction along bike paths and back roads, watching the early season golfers at The Links at Lang Farm, shivering in their cargo shorts.

            Our halfway point was a brief stop at The Essex Culinary Resort & Spa.While George was scanning his phone GPS map for a new route back to our car, I checked FaceBook on my phone. My heart sunk as I read a news item: a cyclist and driver had been killed in a crash an hour earlier in Hinesburg. 

            There are no words for such loss -- two young men involved in a tragic collision. We sent up prayers. Heavy with knowledge of the shock and grief the families would have to bear, we started riding the six miles back. Traffic was light on River Road, but we were hyper aware of the narrow shoulders. As we rolled into the village of Essex Junction, we silently agreed to ride on the sidewalks. It didn’t matter to either of us that we were breaking a rule of road cycling.

         Today, June 18, 2015 we woke up to the terrible news of a church shooting in South Carolina. Closer to home, the death of another bicyclist yesterday afternoon. This time by a drunk driver on Greenbush Road in Ferrisburgh, Vermont. Rural roads in Vermont are so beautiful - yet too often the scene of such senseless loss. Will I pray for healing for all involved? How can I not? Will I continue to ride my bike? Yes, no question. Will I ride with a heightened sense of fear and safety, for myself and my fellow cyclists? Absolutely.