Fort Worth Police

Westport Parkway, where the encounter occurred,
Near Fort Worth Alliance Airport

This week, the commute was seeming a little too ordinary. Other than a potential near-death experience yesterday, nothing much had happened. As I left work this afternoon, I was considering talking about the down side of sloppy turn signals (it's called setting a good example) or "the Motorcycle Meter," but instead something unprecedented happened. I encountered Fort Worth Police on Westport - again. I wrote about the first episode here. To put it briefly, back in May, I got pulled over, lectured, and told about imaginary laws by a Fort Worth Policeman. I'm still waiting to get my phone complaint returned. Well, today I had another encounter. Maybe. I'll come back to that.

After the encounter, I had another interesting encounter. Possibly with a Yeti (an affectionate nickname for another possibly imaginary species, the vehicular cyclist), though it was impossible to know for sure. However, the guy was stopped in a good lane position, at a stoplight, and ON AN XTRACYCLE. This was in Keller. I didn't know Xtracycles were even LEGAL in Keller. It was the first Xtracycle I've ever seen outside of photographs. THIS was such a big surprise that the rest of the ride home more or less passed as an anticlimax. Crimeny, an Xtracycle. Some days, the whole commute passes without seeing a single bike, much less an XTRACYCLE.

Oh, yes. It was a nice day, too. Sunny and warm, with nice tail winds on the way home. Since I didn't get any shots of the really interesting stuff, here's a shot of one of the roads I went down, since the obligatory sunset shot looked pretty dorky.

One of the quieter roads on the way home, at sunset

Oh, almost forgot about the Police encounter. Well, to get back to that story, I was innocently riding up Westport Parkway in the "line of sweetness," which on that road could just as well be called "the line of survival," when coming towards me, along with all the busses and trucks, was a cyclist. Actually, the first westbound cyclist I've ever seen on that road. I always get a little nervous whenever I see a cyclist coming towards me on a two-lane road, and even more so if that cyclist is riding close to the edge of the road (a straddle pass of him could easily hit me head-on). However, none of the cars behind him seemed inclined to pass. When I got up close, I saw why. It appeared that the cyclist was a Bike Policeman, complete with full uniform. Look at the picture on top and it's representative of the population density where I saw him and he was just about where the "X" is placed. There's a buffalo pasture off to the right of the picture. Anyway, he didn't seem perturbed at seeing me control my lane and we both waved as we passed. It seemed a bizarre place for Bike Police, out in the fields. I suppose he might have been a security guard going to work or back home, but it sure LOOKED like a FW Police Uniform. Traffic was heavy enough that I wasn't going to chase him down and demand his credentials. Anyway, he rode nothing like the policeman in the CommuteOrlando video. If someone had honked at him, I would have pulled off the road just to see what happened. Maybe I could have gotten a video of my very own!