I've been enjoying my commute immensely lately. When the weather's like this, I allow myself an extra twenty or so minutes to get to work, just so I can slow down and enjoy my ride.

I have settled on a route, too. It definitely helps to go a little out of your way so you can avoid vehicular traffic as much as possible, along with multitasking pedestrians, and other bikers up your ass as well.

Otherwise the morning commute can feel a little like "Grand Theft Auto: Cambridge," or something. A violent video game where you have to dodge multitasking Massholes determined to door you and watch out for the hippie-dippy jaywalkers skipping across the street seemingly high on angel dust while at the same time trying to elude the strange, pear-shaped spandex-clad bicycle-commuters (and they are alarmingly numerous) who always want to pass you so that you have no choice but to watch their hams hocking away in front of you for the duration of your commute.

And speaking of pedestrians high on PCP, I saw on the news today that the BPD has launched some kind of "Operation Crosswalk" where a female police decoy with a stroller tries to cross Tremont Street at a crosswalk—not one with a traffic light, but the law in Massachusetts is that a pedestrian crossing at the crosswalk has the right-of-way, period—to see who'll stop for her and her baby buggy. 

In three hours 62 drivers were cited for blowing past without even the pretense of stopping, they were in such a mad rush to get to the next red light.

Even for a hardened road warrior like myself, seeing these Massholes blow past a freakin baby carriage was shocking, though I know it shouldn't surprise me in the least.

Now, I'm no friend of the SUV.  But the thing of it—the glitch if you will—is that pedestrians hardly ever actually use the crosswalks in Boston.  I think in the future "Operation Crosswalk" should take that into consideration. 

In fact, if you watch the Channel 5 video you will notice that the only actual pedestrians interviewed for the piece are shown jaywalking across the street, not utilizing the crosswalk.  The young mother they interviewed is like, "yeah, the cahs nevah stahp fah yah—yah gotter just daht across wherevah yah can." 

Forgive me for getting all chicken-or-egg on you, but maybe they nevah stahp because they have no idea where you'll be dahting out in front of them from.

One thing's for sure: there are no innocents in the war of all against all that is the daily commute.

In my travels in Cambridge, which is most of my commute in traffic now, I can count on, like, one hand the times I have encountered drivers who weren't multitasking on the road.  Same with pedestrians. 

What's worse with pedestrians is the refusal to engage in any kind of eye contact.  This is not just a traffic thing.  Bostonians are pathological about avoiding eye contact.  In traffic it's useful for the same reasons it's become a strategy in city life here: if I don't look at you, I can't see you, and if I can't see you, I am not responsible or accountable for whatever happens.  If I make eye contact, if I engage, then I bear at least some responsibility for what ensues.

This, like so many things in these parts, is taken to ridiculous extremes.  I can't count the times—on a daily basis—someone's stepped out in front of me, without looking.  The flipside of that is the countless times I have seen people step into oncoming traffic looking the other way.  I know there is a Cambridge in England, people, but this one's in America.  We drive on the other side of the road here.

One gentleman this morning walked out into oncoming traffic only to glance over midway across the street, seemingly surprised that several cars and cyclists had come to a screeching halt for him.  This resulted not in him putting a little hustle in his bustle, but in a little sneer in our direction as he actually slowed his pace to show us what was what.

I guess it's the principle of the thing for him.  But I'll tell you what—I don't do anything on my bicycle in traffic based on principle, because that's how you end up as roadkill. I mean, if I biked on principle, I would be dead now, many times over, and Mass. Ave., particularly the stretch from Central to Harvard Square would be littered with carnage.

I guess I've looked at clouds from both sides now, is what I'm trying to say. My answer is to try to avoid as many pedestrians, motorists and cyclists as I can on my commute, because I think their cellphones have zapped their brains and they might be zombies, and I frankly don't feel safe around them. 

To that end I've been coming down Cambridge St., to avoid the crowds, and crossing into Boston at the River Dam Bridge, and riding along the Charles. And it's been more or less sheer bliss.