When I go for a ride, people--usually non-cyclists--implore me to "be careful." Sometimes I think they've been inculcated, if unwittingly, with the notion that the car reigns supreme and if a driver harms a cyclist, the cyclist was careless.
That said, there are indeed dangers in cycling, as there are in almost any other activity. But there is one that almost no one ever thinks of.
An Italian fellow was riding his bike away from house on the Costa del Sol, the Spanish region that's become Europe's Florida: a warm-weather magnet for vacationers and pensioners.
But he didn't retire from the Carbineri. In fact, the Carbineri and their counterparts in a few other countries were looking for him.
Turns out, he was part of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia gang and had been on the run from his country's authorities for seven years. In addition to committing the common grifter offenses of money laundering, forging documents and tax evasion, according to said authorities, he was a point man for shipping cocaine from Colombia to Europe.
Someone should have told him to "be careful" when he went out for his ride.
