Top Gear on Bicycles.
In the Northern Virginia Horse Country, west of the cesspool of Big Government and the hellish suburbs full of liberals, the scenic country roads, all little two-lane farm roads offering few opportunities to pass, on every weekend and holiday outside the winter, will be choked with intensely annoying hordes of spandex-clad idiots with insectoid helmets peddling along on their stupid bicycles blocking traffic.
You have only to look at them, to perceive their hideous bad taste, to grasp that they are all trendy, narcissistic vegans, with a strong representation of inverts, who vote democrat. Clogging other people’s roads, forcing the locals to crawl frustratedly behind their lengthy parades of bent-over grotesquerie, they positively exude entitlement and self-gratulation as they misuse roads other people built and maintain and drink in the scenery that was home turf to Turner Ashby and John Singleton Mosby, to Confederate cavalrymen and to fox hunters, to precisely the kind of people they hate and despise.
When the mass migration of all the worst elements of modernity hits the little village shop in Orleans, they clean out the soft drinks cooler case and buy up all the prepared sandwiches, to the absolute fury of the farm workers who arrive at lunch-time finding nothing left for themselves.
Drivers everywhere hate bicyclists.
This leftie editorialist in the SF Paper has it perfectly right.
Just as those who tolerate or encourage racist, sexist and homophobic or transphobic comments on social media contribute to emboldening the people who attack and menace particular groups, people who parrot stereotypical comments about cyclists on social media subtly encourage those who would harm them — tearing down a memorial, close-passing a mother with a child on her bike or aggressively edging their car into a bike lane to menace and squeeze a bicyclist.
It was not until several years ago, when in my 70s I took up an electric bike as my primary form of transportation, that I began to realize how pervasive the hatred of bicyclists is among car drivers. At first, I thought it must be my inexperience that explained drivers cutting me off by turning directly into my path, honking impatiently and close-swerving around me when I slowed or moved out into the lane due to an obstacle ahead of me. They couldn’t know (or didn’t care) that I was being extra cautious to avoid being “doored” by someone parked alongside the bike lane in which I was riding. As I rode more, I saw drivers regularly do these things to other bicyclists, including everyone from kids to expert riders like Boyes.
The next time you are tempted to pile on to such a discussion about bicyclists, ask yourself if you are doing so because you consciously or unconsciously resent them — for taking up space on the roads, for slowing you down in your car, for seemingly being so free while you are stuck in car traffic. And if so, stop and ask yourself if you can re-envision them in a non-stereotyped way: as your own kids, grandmothers, parents or other people who are placed at risk by negative comments. Your words have the power to reinforce hurtful stereotypes or to reshape perceptions.
Ultimately, hate of bicyclists comes from the same place as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia: a desire to cling to the status quo power arrangements that favor some over others. As the bicycle becomes re-popularized as a legitimate form of transportation, there are inevitably more conflicts with those who continually and mindlessly assert that “streets are for cars.” But just as gay people are no longer willing to stay in the closet, nor women in the kitchen, bicyclists are no longer willing to settle for crumbs in terms of use of our public roadways.
We do loathe and despise you for exactly same kind of abusive and insolent self-entitlement and eagerness to claim a special privileged status that allows you to run roughshod over the normal rest of the world that is merely going about its business that characterizes all the whining minorities, the proudly perverted, and the mentally-disordered impersonators of genders not their own. Sod the lot of you!
HT: Ed Driscoll.
OneGuy
I go out of my way to be careful to bicyclists and pedestrians. Especially children. But some of the roads they choose to ride on makes me think they have a death wish. I do know that many cyclists do this intentionally because they lobbied lawmakers to get the right to drive on these roads that aren’t suitable and now they intentionally ride them to flaunt this advantage they hold over cars. It is risk taking for no good reason and stupid. There are plenty of roads with bike lanes and plenty of bike and pedestrian paths. To ride in the middle of the lane on winding country roads where no one can pass is ludicrous.
Fusil Darne
Jesus, dude, I’m just out for a ride on my bicycle. I don’t ride in the middle of the road, don’t own spandex, or, a bicycle hat, and ride an English bike, built in 1953. My old joints appreciate that I’m not jogging. If gas wasn’t so damn expensive, I’d ride my liter class sport bike, or drive my old muscle car more often.
Seattle Sam
Bicycles are racist and sexist. They are disproportionately used by white men. I’m surprised a leftist wouldn’t know that and be ashamed.
Jeff S
Just this last Saturday morning, on a busy 2lane main artery thru my suburban area, I encountered a cluster of maybe a half dozen cyclists taking up the entire lane, with a long line of cars behind them. What made it even more annoying was that, while they were riding on the road, right beside them was the newish, multimillion dollar paved bike path taxpayers built for them. I guess using the bike path doesn’t get them the victimhood attention they seek.
ruralcounsel
FYI, real Virginia horse country is between Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, not west of DC. East of the Blue Ridge, but not near DC or Richmond.
Maybe if you get far enough west, almost into the Shenandoah.
In my experience, bicyclists tend to throw good manners and common sense out the window and brandish traffic laws granting them full access to roads as if they were a motorized vehicle. Those laws are arguably poorly thought out, given the disparity in speed and weight of cars vs. bikes. Then add that bicyclists are even harder to visually detect than motorcycles. Worse, other traffic laws involving right-of-way and stopping and signaling are often ignored by cyclists.
This infuriates drivers, of course, resulting in many unfortunate bike-car interactions.
And I spent many student years biking to and from classes in more urban settings, where sometimes there was a bike path, and sometimes not. My younger brother was killed in a bike-car accident many years ago, which was mostly his fault. But my sympathies are not generally with bicyclists. I’ve seen too many instances where they deserved worse than they got.
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