It's another lovely day at the beach in Santa Monica, with a light spring breeze blowing across the sun-dappled sea and cyclists pedaling stress-free along the bike path.
Paradise. Nirvana. Whatever you call it, we're lucky mugs to have a tranquil respite from the urban madness and permanent bottlenecks.
But wait. Do I see a collision in the making?
A woman is pushing a stroller, a teenager is on a skateboard, a man is walking a dog on a leash -- all of them idling along on a path that's marked BIKES ONLY -- and here comes a cyclist, closing in on this knot of nudniks. The cyclist slows, he weaves, he shoots past them and all are safe. But it doesn't always work out like that.
"It happened right here," Jon Louis Mann is telling me as he replays an accident that happened about a week ago. "I was heading south and there's a guy standing in the bike lane with a dog on a leash, and he's talking to another guy."
Mann swerved hard right, skidded and flopped down like a crash-test dummy on the sand, injuring his elbow, shoulder and back. He was so banged up, he couldn't get back on the bike. Before limping off to the doctor's office, he informed the dog walker that the bike path is for bikes and a separate pedestrian path is a mere 20 yards away.
So how'd that go over?
"He flipped me off," Mann says.
The phrase "bike path" doesn't leave much room for ambiguity. But pedestrians just can't seem to get it. Mann believes the hazards are mounting because so many people are on cellphones or using iPods, oblivious to the world around them.
But I can say from experience that people have been inconsiderate or clueless for years. I used to ride my bike on that path when I lived in Santa Monica in the late '90s, and the hazards were no less frustrating back then. You'd see a clot forming ahead and have to slow down or change lanes, which sometimes meant getting brushed by roller bladers or cyclists who thought they were in the Tour de France.
My therapeutic outings often left me in a lather, muttering about the parade of imbeciles, and I pedaled home feeling as if I'd just had a nasty commute on the 405. Weekends were so bad, I rode before the hordes descended or not at all.
"On weekends we see lots of accidents," says Matt Balke, who rents bikes and skates at Spokes 'N Stuff. Lots of tourists, he says, and they're too busy enjoying the sights to observe the rules of the road.
