If you're going to honk at a cyclist, make sure you can run away

Had a fun little run in with a motorist this morning in the city. It ended up with me calling him a number of rude things through his open window.

Here's the deal. Two lane road, with the left lane turning left and the right lane going straight ahead. I'm in the right lane, intending to jump into the left hand lane (which is a bus lane) as soon as the lights go green and I am across the intersection.

One small problem - about 50 metres up the road, there's a taxi stopped in the bus lane letting out a passenger. Or waiting for the passenger to pay. So I stay in the right lane and intend to stay there until I'm past the taxi - at that point, I'll hoik hard left into the bus lane and everyone will be happy.

The thing to note is that at this time of the day, traffic rarely moves more than 35km/h, and I'm doing nearly 30, so it's not like I'm going to cause people to be an hour late for work.

All is well, except for the impatient little turd behind me who decides he wants to overtake. Which he can't, because there isn't room. He does the usual impatient driver thing, which involves moving up enough so this front wheel is overlapping my back wheel. It's a horrible position to be in - the equivalent of having a gun held to your head. One false move by either party and things could end badly for me. It scares the willies out of me, but it also makes me mad as hell.

As I passed the taxi, I indicated I was moving left and then turned around and gave Mr Honker the middle finger. Honker gave me another honk, then came up along side me and returned the middle finger through his open passenger window (he was smoking).

Honker had one small problem. Although he was able to take off up the road, he was stuck behind a delivery van - and the van pulled up at the next red light.

And that's when I pulled up alongside Honker and gave him a good serve through his open window. It turned out the guy was perhaps in his 20s and quite fat - his gut was a lot larger and rounder than mine. He looked vaguely like a beach ball intersected by a seat belt. He really hadn't been expected that there would be a Round Two - that the cyclist might actually catch him and call him out on his stupidity. He thought he could be a dick and then run away from the consequences.

I definitely had the last laugh. My lane was clear. The lights changed and I took off. The van that Honker was stuck behind was not as quick as me. I made it through the next set of lights, but the van and Honker didn't. Honker was an idiot because he wanted to race ahead, but in the end, I ended up way ahead of him through lucky light changes. Being in a hurry did him no good at all.

I'll tell you what though - it gave me a super adrenaline rush. I was ready to rip his spleen out and feed it to him raw.