Gainesville is a pretty bike-friendly place. Many, many routes have bike lanes; you can hardly throw a rock without hitting a bike shop; only rarely do you read about a cyclist being killed.
However. (Warning: a certain amount of self-righteous whining appears below.)
There are certain elements of the motoristic persuasion who seem to feel that everyone should just get the eff out of their way, because they are Jack Bauer or some shit and the terrorists will explode a bomb at the mall if they (the Bauers, not the terrorists) are forced to travel at a mile per hour below the speed limit for even a minute. We all know about these people, because their obnoxious and honk-y ire is not confined to bicyclists.
It’s just a little bit more annoying (not to mention scarier) when you happen to not be surrounded by a two-ton steel cage and someone edges their two-ton steel cage past you barely a foot away and then has the nerve to HONK AT YOU. I’m sorry, was I KEEPING YOU FROM GOING SOMEWHERE?
When this happened to me on my commute home today, I was more angry than frightened, and angry in a long-suffering way: people are going to be jerks, and when you’re one of the few people riding down a busy road on a bike you might as well have one of those neon vests on, but instead of ONE LESS CAR it says PLEASE BULLY ME.
Look, we all hate being stuck behind cyclists; I drive, I know this. They are slow and if you aren’t an asshole, you’re worried about hitting them. But: like Mondays and American Idol, it happens. SUCK IT UP.
That is all.
