CALL THEM ISHMAEL. 

Let me say this right off the bat, just in case any noncyclists—or the not-so-elusive active bike hater—happen to read this. I certainly don’t want to send anyone screaming into the night, frothing at the mouth and demanding the public execution of everyone who owns padded shorts:

No one hates the cyclists in the picture above more than I do.

Their attitude is arrogant, self-righteous, and—in my less-than-humble opinion—makes the rest of us look like entitled assholes who believe the Tour de France is coming through town and we’re all tied for the yellow jersey.

In today’s society, it has become fashionable to demean, degrade, and abuse our fellow humans. Altruism—and especially sympathy—has been replaced by deep-seated apathy, open hostility, and the belief that anyone standing between us and the drive-thru window deserves to die.

The unwarranted, hyperbolic hatred of cyclists has gotten dangerously out of control. Worse, it is frequently applauded.

As I said at the beginning of this rant, I hate cyclists who take up an entire traffic lane for no reason. I hate people who ride outside an empty bike lane, apparently because the painted bicycle symbol inside it clashes with their outfit. I hate cyclists who haul ass through groups of pedestrians without so much as a “Passing on your left,” a bell ring, a by-your-leave, or even a heartfelt “Get the hell out of my way!”

I also hate cyclists who blast through stop signs without looking because they apparently believe the laws of physics were written exclusively for cars.

When I was an air traffic controller, we had one guy who was the absolute worst controller I—or anyone else—had ever seen. We’ll call him Ishmael, mostly because I don’t know anyone named Ishmael, while Ismael was actually a friend of mine and doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this.

Anytime a pilot did something spectacularly stupid, we would say, “Every profession has its Ishmael, and this one happens to be flying for a major air carrier.”

Well, cyclists have their Ishmaels.

They are not the rest of us.

I have personally been on the receiving end of:

“Get the hell off the road!”

“Get the hell off the sidewalk!”

“You’re moving too slow!”

“You’re moving way too fast!”

Apparently, the correct speed for a bicycle is whatever speed allows the other person to remain completely unaware of its existence.

After saying, “Passing on your left,” I have been told to fuck off, nearly clotheslined, given the finger, and treated as though I had just burst into someone’s home during Christmas dinner and taken a dump in the gravy boat.

Watch a video of a cyclist being knocked down by a car, and the comments will—or at least should—make you weep for humanity. People will examine twelve seconds of grainy footage and determine that the cyclist deserved fractured ribs, a concussion, and possibly death because he once failed to come to a complete stop in Boise.

Here’s an experiment for those people:

Stand on a picnic table. Get that table moving between fifteen and twenty-five miles per hour across asphalt. Then jump off.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Damn, that hurt, didn’t it?

Did you break anything?

Did your opinions concerning bicycle safety undergo a sudden and dramatic revision?

Cyclists can rarely defend themselves online because the moment one enters a social-media discussion, they are shouted down, threatened, and informed that roads were built exclusively for Ford F-150s, Dodge Rams, and whatever armored personnel carrier the commenter uses to pick up milk.

People in this country are fed up with sharing anything. Roads. Sidewalks. Public spaces. Oxygen. There is also widespread resentment over the discovery that Earth does not revolve around them personally, despite what their mothers and preferred cable-news channel have been telling them.

Well, this is my platform, so I would now like to tell the driving public what I hate about them.

I’m fed up with people in my neighborhood—where the speed limit is twenty-five—blasting past me while I’m already rolling along at or above the speed limit. Then, immediately after passing, they slam on their brakes for no reason other than to show their disgust with someone doing something they can’t.

Congratulations. You endangered both of us so you could arrive at the stop sign three seconds before I did.

Spend them wisely.

I’m tired of drivers who see a cyclist in a bike lane and deliberately drift toward it. I’m tired of hillbillies “rolling coal” on cyclists and runners. I’ve had it with drivers who wait until they are directly beside you before laying on the horn.

I used to own horses, and clowns did the same thing to them. Apparently, frightening a twelve-hundred-pound prey animal—or a seventy-year-old man balanced on two skinny tires—is comedy gold in certain households.

I’m beyond fed up with idiots who think it’s hilarious to reach out of a moving vehicle and try to knock a cyclist off his bike. If your idea of humor requires an ambulance and a trauma surgeon, you may not be the undiscovered comedic genius your friends at the bait shop have led you to believe.

I’m tired of being screamed at to get off the road and equally tired of being told to get off the sidewalk.

As one person explained to me, “That’s why it’s called a side-WALK.”

Fine.

It is also called a BIKE lane, so stop walking, running, holding family reunions, conducting business meetings, or pushing your ratty little dog around in a baby carriage in it.

I’m looking at you, residents of St. Petersburg.

I ride long distances and do considerable research before leaving on a route. If a road has no bike lane, breakdown lane, or adequate shoulder, I stay off it. That becomes something of a challenge in Central Florida, where the word infrastructure is apparently considered profane and must not be spoken in front of children.

I avoid those roads partly because I enjoy living, but also because blocking traffic isn’t fair to motorists. If I’m riding on a narrow two-lane road with a solid line of traffic approaching from the opposite direction, where the hell is the line behind me supposed to go?

Into a drainage ditch?

Through somebody’s living room?

Wait patiently for fourteen seconds?

And yes, if you’re wondering, something supremely set me off today.

In a country desperately in need of safe, dedicated bicycle infrastructure, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has urged Congress to restrict federal funding for bicycle lanes and other bicycle infrastructure that he says reduces motor-vehicle throughput—and to support removing existing lanes deemed to contribute to congestion.

Why?

Well, among other things, bike lanes have now somehow become DEI.

For the “fake news” folks, Duffy’s own post said:

“Remember when Biden and Boot-edge-edge used YOUR MONEY for DEI bike lanes and climate change? THAT’S OVER.”

I will now explain this in my normal language so there can be no misunderstanding:

It’s a fucking bicycle.

It has two wheels, a chain, pedals, brakes, and a seat designed by someone with a personal grudge against the human taint.

It is not a political agenda.

It does not know your race, religion, sexual orientation, or party affiliation. It cannot distinguish between a MAGA Republican and a Bernie Sanders progressive. Leave either one unattended long enough, and the same bicycle will fall over on both of them.

A bike lane is not an assault on freedom. It is a strip of pavement intended to keep a human being on a twenty-pound bicycle from occupying the same physical space as a three-ton Chevrolet Suburban.

This should not be controversial.

It’s going to take a long time to walk back the idiotic political posturing currently poisoning this country. Shit rolls downhill, and at the bottom it drowns everybody—from MAGA Trumpers to Bernie Sanders radicals, along with the vast majority of us standing between them wondering how a painted stripe beside the road became part of the culture war.

Politicians keep convincing us that our greatest enemy is the stranger beside us: the cyclist, the driver, the pedestrian, the immigrant, the conservative, the liberal, or the woman pushing a trembling rat-dog through the bike lane in a stroller.

Meanwhile, the people doing the convincing climb into government-issued SUVs and leave us screaming at one another beside the road.

Maybe things will begin to change when we finally accept that no political party has exclusive rights to our best interests—and that most ordinary people are merely trying to get where they’re going without being killed, insulted, or forced into a drainage ditch.

Cyclists, stop riding like you own the road.

Drivers, stop behaving as though touching a brake pedal for ten seconds constitutes government oppression.

Pedestrians, please remove yourselves, your extended families, and your emotionally unstable stroller dogs from the bike lane.

We can all share the road.

We just have to stop acting like Ishmael.