Airing of Grievances: Sinister Cyclists

Dear Sinister Cyclists,

I find myself writing a second letter to you, because not only did you fail to take my previous message to heart, you’ve managed to get worse. That, and I have a car now.

Before, you held the power in this relationship. Your 15-mph pace was a real doozy when it was just us on McAlister, but now the tables have turned, and I have about 3,000 pounds on you and an engine.

Now I’m not saying I’ll use this newfound leverage to run you off roads and sidewalks like you did to me. To honor Michelle Obama, I’ll go high. I’ll be the bigger vehicle here (yes literally, but here, I mean it figuratively.) That being said, the high road, which should be void of your dumb hippy wagons, has a few bumps. I’m talking, of course, about your bodies.

Your insistence that stop signs, one-way streets, red lights, traffic laws or basic human decency don’t apply to you doesn’t sit right with me, or my heated pleather seats. I get it, you think you’re saving the environment, so you think you deserve something. Wrong, you barely deserve the right to call yourself an adult when your preferred way of getting around is the same as a six-year-old’s. At a red light, you don’t get to skip ahead of everyone, then pretend you’re a car when you bring traffic to a painful crawl.

I managed to pretend this kind of behavior was okay in the backwater northern European “city” I stuck it out in for five months, but this is America. We’re a real country, and it’s shameful that you’d do something as flamboyantly Eurotrash as ride a bicycle.

This idea that drivers should just roll with the idea that bikers just get to skip over some of the rule book and heap on the added responsibility of watching out for you is laughable. You’re in my blindspot. Only one of us can see that, and it’s the one who won’t see or care if you get sideswiped.

More importantly, the indignation on your faces when I don’t yield to you in traffic, or—God forbid—pass you on a street where the speed limit is 40 makes me want to open my passenger side door and slam on my breaks just to see how far I can catapult you.

We both know I’m not going to do it. Not because I respect you, but because I don’t want to get a ticket. I am asking you, yet again, to just stay out of my way. Imagine how much better you’ll look without helmet hair or a weirdly-shaped seat wedged halfway into your colon.

Better yet, get a car. Save me the violent intrusive thoughts, and get to your destination without needing to explain the sweat. Either way, just ditch the bikes. It’s 2017, get a hover board or something, and I’m totally not just saying that because those things blow up while people ride them.

Yours forever,

Formerly Petrified Pedestrian, now Miffed Motorist.

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