I like to ride my bike to work (think Peewee Herman, not Easy Rider). It’s good exercise, gives me some mental quiet time, and in theory helps extend the life of my ancient piece of shit car by giving that fucker some rest. For the most part I take back roads, but the final mile and a half involves an inevitable stretch of four-lane state highway with a 50 mph speed limit. The road has a nice, wide shoulder, though, so I feel safe on it and it has only rarely been at all hairy in the five years I’ve been riding it.
I should also mention that I try to be a conscientious biker. I know I have rights as a biker, but I also know that the roads were built primarily for cars and that, in a purely practical sense, a car will fucking kill the shit out of me with no difficulty should we happen to collide. So I stay the fuck out of the way of cars, especially on the aforementioned highway. I am not one of the Critical Mass, “cyclists’ rights” shitbreathers who ignores stop signs and takes up entire lanes of traffic because “it’s my right to do so”.
Today I met my antithesis. As I turned the corner onto this highway, I see all kinds of fucked up traffic. People jamming on their brakes and swerving from the right lane to the left. I look down the road to see what the hell is happening, and I see this stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker on a bike, going about 10 mph in the middle of the right lane, despite the speed limit being 50, and despite a beautiful, well-paved, four foot wide shoulder just to his right.
I am ENRAGED. This piece of shit is making himself, and by proxy me and all other cyclists, look like fucking ASSHOLES. I know I need to say something to this fuck, so I pedal hard to get up the initial hill and catch this dickhole. Finally, at the crest of the hill I catch up to him, and while passing him on his right side (amidst continually swerving traffic behind him) I say “You should ride in the shoulder. It’s safer.” His idiotic response was, “But there’s two lanes.”
-______-
This is it. This is the culmination of two and a half decades of Critical Mass rides and cyclist “rights” movement bullshit. We’ve gotten to the point where dumbasses forego riding on a perfectly safe shoulder to instead ride in the middle of a lane on a fucking HIGHWAY, where there is absolutely NO CHANCE of reaching even half the speed limit on a bike. “There’s a lane, so I should bike in it, and everyone else be fucked,” is the thinking. I know full fucking well that if this bag of ostrich shit were driving and came up on some old ass guy doing 15 in a 50 zone (yes, I realize this is an ageist comment; suck me), he would freak out, jump out of the car, and use a tire iron to stove the guy’s fucking head in. But he’s on a bike. Bikers have rights to the road, and they should be exercised in all cases regardless of the practical merits of the action, so that one can stage the very important mini rebellion that will finally get bikers recognized as people. WE SHALL OVERCOME
As I turned left in front of him to get into my office driveway, cutting him off on purpose, I said “Well, you’re gonna get killed.” I kind of hope he does. Fuck him. Fuck bikers. I’m gonna start pogo sticking to work.