Lake Pend Oreille
June 21 to Clark Fork, ID
We pushed on out of Sandpoint with a replenished supply of locally roasted coffee (something we’ve very much enjoyed about the Pacific Northwest).
Unfortunately, we had a very unpleasant event take place just outside of Kootenai. We were riding on SR 200, a fairly busy road with a decent shoulder about 4 feet wide when a medium size truck came by us towing a flatbed trailer with a piece of heavy equipment on it. The truck came dangerously close to us. The trailer’s wheels and fenders, which exceeded the truck’s width missed us by bare inches.
We were both in the center of the shoulder and we’ve experienced thousands of vehicles passing us. We have a finely tuned sense of what is “normal” passing and a trailer coming this close is a frightening experience.
There have been times when drivers have done this and I refer to this action as a “brush-back pass” similar to a baseball pitcher throwing way inside to “brush-back” a batter that is crowding the plate. Usually it leaves me assuming the action was intentional, but maybe just carelessness.
The truck took a left-hand turn at an approaching road and was followed by a small pick-up, both of them stopping after the turn. I was pretty angry with the driver for this reckless act and I swung left as well to see if I could get a company name from the pick-up. As I did the driver of the heavier truck immediately got out of the larger truck and headed back to me. For a brief moment I thought maybe he wanted to offer an apology or a reason for his error.
Silly me.
That very brief moment was shattered by his full-blown rage. He was completely out of control, in a spittle spitting, red-faced, screaming way that left me with no other option than to straddle my bike and listen to his unhinged rant. Here were his main points (laced with F-bombs) as best I can remember:
-He sees these damn bikes on the road all the time and they have no business being out there.
-He accused us of riding on the white line like all the other bikes and he’s sick and tired of this.
-Cyclist don’t pay any taxes like the rest of us and therefore they need to get off the road.
Repeat several times in random order for emphasis.
After a little while he seemed to exhaust himself in his rant and he went stomping back to his truck. I rolled forward to get a look at the side of the pick-up to get the company name and saw that it was Scott Neer Tree Service. The driver of the pick-up looked at me and I said to him, “Nice company. They’ll be hearing from me.”
He gave me a big thumbs up.
Later I looked up the company and found them to be out of Sagle, ID. They don’t have a web site, they have one power unit registered with the DOT (U.S. DOT #2492796) for non-hazardous intrastate commercial travel and they claim 5,000 miles per year on the power unit.
On that mileage alone, I’m guessing Scott Neer Tree Service is not paying their proper share of road use taxes. Go figure.
I called the company and left a voice mail for the owner to contact me. However with only one power unit registered, I am guessing that the road-rage maniac that got out of the truck was Mr. Scott Neer himself as he never had the courage to call me back.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of all this was his willingness to openly admit his intention was to endanger us.
Beauty Break
In Memory of Warmer Summers 