What do Lance Armstrong and Al Gore have in common? Nope, it’s not a testicle joke, although it probably could be. They’ve both helped to popularize a means of transportation that I can’t fucking stand. To be fair, it’s not really the vehicles themselves, so much as the jack-offs that ride them. In our image driven society, how you get around says a lot about who you are. So let’s dig a little deeper and find out what it means to Live Strong on a bicycle, or coast in a Prius like Mother Nature’s butt boy, Al Gore.
Let me clear up something straightaway before I launch into my tirade about bicycles and the egomaniacs that ride them. I was a kid, I had a bike. Heck, I can’t wait to get one now so I can attach my son to one of those wagon deals and haul him around town like the Prince of Siam. It’s when riding a bike mutates into cycling, that the inner douche nozzle emerges, like a hot pink spandex caterpillar. The observant reader might have picked up on something in the language I’m using here, specifically the bicycle versus bike references. Naturally, if you’re reading my blog, it’s safe to assume you’re not an observant reader. In fact, I’d say it’s safe to assume you need to walk up from the basement apartment in your parents house and ask your mom what a douche nozzle is. Back on point, bikes are okay. Bikes are the BMXs and Diamondbacks that you spent your childhood afternoons crisscrossing back and forth up steep hills on, like some kind of idiot savant. Bicycles are what I have in my cross-hairs right now. So what makes a bike a bicycle? Well, it’s simple really, just take a gander at the jerk weed riding on top of it and you should know right away. Is said cockwad wearing brightly colored, form fitting, race ready spandex? It’s important to wear spandex to prevent drag. No need to lose a few pounds to pickup speed when you can just wrap it all up in with Lycra. No doubt the bright colors help keep you safe by increasing your visibility. That might not be such a problem if you ballbags would get the fuck out of the middle of the road. Beep-beep asshat, you’re not a car. On the topic of drag and wind resistance, the helmet is another sure giveaway of a bicyclist. Are you out for a ride or are you manning a weapons station on the Death Star? Holy Shit, some of those helmets are giving Rick Moranis a hard-on. I’m not sure where this quote originated from, but I agree with the sentiment, “As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists”. The prosecution rests.
So what do you drive when you’re not busy training for the Tour de France? You head to the Toyota dealership and buy what all the other carbon offsets are buying. Just like the cyclist, it’s not so much the car I have a problem with, it’s the personality that drives it. Hey, when you buy a Prius, do they come with the Obama bumper sticker already on them or is that just the most common after market accessory available? Here’s the scenario, I’m sure you can relate. You’re 10 minutes late for this weeks check-in with your parole officer. You hop into your gas guzzling, carbon spewing, American made guilt-mobile and as soon as you turn onto Main Street, you’re staring at the back end of that glorious eco-machine, the Toyota Prius. Twenty-five miles per hour of sea foam green fury tearing down the street, with a line of cars stuck behind it, looking for all the world like the hearse in a funeral procession for General Motors. Fortunately for you, you landed in perfect position to pull a little Days of Thunder and draft that bad boy, time to do some reading,. “Make Love Not War”, ‘Give Peas A Chance”, “Change You Can Believe In”, “Impeach Bush”, “You Can’t Hug With Nuclear Arms” and on and on they go. When they bill the Prius as a hybrid, I wonder if they are inferring that it’s part car and part billboard. Or maybe it’s part car, part pussy magnet? When you roll up to the Red Lobster for the early bird special in your Prius, just go ahead and pop some Cialis ahead of time cause you’re getting lucky my friend. I blame Al Gore and Hollywood for this automotive clusterfuck. When are we going to wake up and stop listening to movie stars and politicians? You know what the worst part of being stuck behind that Prius is? Getting passed by some fat white guy in bright yellow spandex, riding a god damn Schwinn.
I guess I'll be the guy who weighs in first and most likely last to this post. Unless of course, Al Gore, Rick Moranis, or a Prius driver care to comment.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I am a “cyclist” (and an observant reader) and I ride on the very same roads that my tax dollars helped pay for. I hate when other cyclists think they’re cars and don’t obey traffic laws. Sure, people are mad at cyclists because they get in their way when they are driving. My two-wheeled perspective is that there is a lack of proper infrastructure in the US, with bike lanes and bike traffic lights. Sometimes we're also forced to the left to avoid potholes, broken bottles on the side of the road, road kill, etc. It is however, absolutely legal to ride “bicycles” on the roads. It is absolutely not legal, to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk.
So I brought up legal stuff. Yes, I know you’ve all seen the cyclist that blew through the red light, or didn't stop at the stop sign. These cyclists are “jerk weeds”, for sure. And since drivers never speed or do a rolling stop through a stop sign, I'm sure they’re justified in getting huffy, right?
I ride 20 mph in a 30 mph zone that drivers want to go 45 mph in. It's tragic, I know. Why be so impatient not to wait to pass when it's safe though? If they slow their V-8, 4x4, dual-hemi, 650 pound feet of torque, gas guzzler down and give me a little room, then they can simply speed back up when they get around me safely. Is it that hard to press back down on the accelerator? Why is 5-10 seconds so precious out of their life that they’re willing to sacrifice someone else’s life for it? Why so impatient?
I am a cyclist. I wear a helmet because I don’t have a couple of thousand pounds of a metal shell protecting me. I wear tight shorts with padding in the seat because it makes the activity more comfortable and it’s hard enough to fight through the wind without baggy shorts flapping around. I wear sunglasses just like most drivers, but I wear them to keep the sun and debris out of my eyes and not to look cool. I get on my bike and go for a ride because it is what I do for exercise and recreation. I like the freedom and the rhythm. I love everything about it, except one thing: smug, self-righteous “douche nozzles” driving by.