What if I Don’t Want to Ride the Mother F'ing Drive?

The City of Madison had this “brilliant idea”. Why not close down a bunch of roads and seem mega progressive to our towns’ people? We will let them take their adorably progressive children and ride their bikes down the roads we won’t let people drive on. A great plan! Let’s do it on a Sunday because that is a day of rest (and riding a bike is more restful than driving a car…kind of).

Even better yet—let’s just not tell anyone who lives on the streets that we are closing them. Most people that live downtown are progressive too, progressively hung-over on Sundays that is. They probably won’t even notice.

This is the thought process I am assuming led to my stressful morning on Sunday. I woke up to find that there were dozens of annoying bikers clogging up my one way street and that there were barricades on both ends of it. I had heard they were shutting down the main road near my apartment and had planned an alternate route—but driving the route of course required leaving my driveway (onto a closed street). Annoyed, and now late for a family gathering an hour away, I called the Madison Police Department. This was after I checked the website for the event and found no contact information or information for people living on the closed streets. I was then transferred, twice, both times by people that said “I don’t think you can leave” when I asked. To this I replied “just watch me”. They then let me leave a message for an officer that was conveniently not there and didn’t call me back.

I will never let someone trap me in my own apartment and walking fifty miles didn’t seem very doable at the time. Finally I donned a serious face and marched down to the barricade that was blocking my way. There was a woman there who said she’d move it for me. (Couldn’t someone have just told me that from the beginning?) At that a cop pulled up and asked if I was “The woman from [my address]” when I said yes he told me I could leave. Well, thank you. I have now been granted a basic freedom by a police department that doesn’t even solve crimes. Now I know what they have been busy doing—closing down streets to let bikers ride. Murders can wait—Madison now is your time to RIDE THE DRIVE.