Jeff Ballweg

Anyone who rides a bike on the streets has had at least one encounter with an enraged driver, and a few of us have even suffered bodily harm as a result; but a recent story in the Capitol Times suggests that tensions can be high within our own ranks.

The story suggests that a gentleman cyclist was riding after dark when he was passed by two cyclists, one male, one female. The gentleman suggested to them that they obtain lights for their bicycles, to witch the male cyclist apparently took great offense. As a runner and cyclist, I’ve had a few near misses with invisible bikes after dark, so I can understand why the man took issue. I also know that pointing out someone’s failures doesn’t often elicit a positive response, so when the rider’s girlfriend remarked that he had so many lights, he might just hand one over, I was surprised to learn that he actually did. I guess that wasn’t enough, because the pair followed the man home, threw him to the ground by his head and kicked him in the ribs.

The Capitol Times reported today that the gentleman rider involved was none-other than 51-year old Cronometro owner Colin O’Brien. O’Brien is a fairly prominent figure in the local bike scene, and was recently quoted in the New York Times in an article about bike fitting.

The kid that beat him up was riding his Trek TT bike, and his girlfriend was riding her Orbea road bike. Both fairly high end bikes, witch O’Brien was able to identify. Because I’m not a journalist, and nobody reads my blog, (hi Mom!) I don’t feel bad speculating that these bikes were stolen. First of all, it’s a little late in the season to be training for a triathlon. Secondly, there’s snow on the ground, and I have a hard time believing that anyone who doesn’t have enough sense to have a blinky on their bike after dark is capable of riding a twitchy road bike for any distance in four inches of snow. In an effort to learn more, I google’d for “Dustin Dunlavy” and found that aside from raging on random cyclists, he also enjoys living in Madison’s worst suburb and running very slow 5k’s with his mom and dad. On second thought, maybe it was his bike.

Read more from Bike Snob NYC and The Goat.

Update: They got a picture of the guy on a local news site.