Dear lady cyclist with a death wish:

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2012 (4797 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You or your child are going to get killed if you keep riding like that. Why you would choose to bike down construction-filled Osborne Street during rush hour, towing a child trailer behind you is beyond me, but I suppose it’s your choice to make.

I mean, I don’t like kids at the best of times, but even I wouldn’t tow a kid (anyone’s kid, let alone my own if I had one) behind me in bumper-to-bumper traffic where said child trailer was effectively my bumper, but I guess that’s just me.

Never mind the fact Osborne Street in the Village area is barely wide enough for the two lanes of traffic that it almost holds sans construction. Biking down it solo seems scary even then. Add a two-wheeled, wide trailer into the mix and it just seems suicidal. But again, your choice.

My beef with you, trendy-legging-with-skirt-wearing hipster mama, is that, after assessing that you seemed to have a death wish for you or your child (OK, to be fair I didn’t actually SEE your kid in the trailer thing, but since that is what it was designed for, and you were of child-bearing age and not a scrap metal collector — the other common use for those trailers, at least here in the North End) I treated you as I believed I should and changed lanes to pass you. I did this because it was not safe for us to try to “share the lane” in this narrow, construction-laden zone.

Then, much to my horror after I respected you and your child and I had passed you safely, you seemed to want to try and edge up next to me and pass me as we came to a stop for a light. So, this is a letter from the woman you probably thought was a “mean, aggressive, typical Winnipeg driver” who pulled herself even closer to the curb so you could not pass.

May I suggest, that perhaps next time, you get off your bike and walk yourself and your baby safely down the sidewalk in this stretch of road, because, if you don’t, you will be but a mere tragic story lining a birdcage.

 

Sincerely,

The Winnipeg Girl who tried to respect you.

 

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