On Cyclists: A Modest Proposal

This past weekend I witnessed within a mile of my home no fewer than three accidents involving motor cars and cyclists. In one incident, which I passed on my way home from a Malbec run to the local wine merchant, I watched the unfortunate rider, chubby and old, flopping around on the ground, blood staining the pavement, as tanned ambulatory workers with crewcuts rushed to his side and fire trucks lined up along the road. A gruesome sight, but one not without a special resonance with betweeded motorists such as yours truly.

Cycling is a problem that is getting out of control. On any given morning there are packs of cyclists tearing along suburban streets in menacing helmets, scaring children, running over housecats, and offending us with their bulging gut and ridiculous shorts. Gangs of bicycle enthusiasts converge on local tea houses, cycling shoes perforating the expensive flooring, where they order cups of coffee and clog the lavatories. If those are unavailable, they just pop round the corner and piss into the foliage like common criminals. The cycling community, like white-tailed deer and koala bear populations, is clearly in need of a severe culling before the situation worsens and we suddenly wake up to find random cyclists using our backyard as a velodrome. The last thing I want to see over my morning cup of tea is old Dr. Steinberg, fat, sweaty, and bespectacled, perched upon his brand-new Cervelo like a hog on an upturned bucket among the succulents.

There is no point to cycling. It serves no useful purpose, being in most cases purely recreational and an opportunity for corpulent doctors, dentists, and software entrepreneurs to show off their latest cycling acquisitions. Cyclists are an arrogant and bullying group with a reputation for foul language that in my experience is well-deserved. More than once have I observed a cyclist curse angrily in public, the last such incident directed at my former editor, small, female, and blonde, which naturally provoked me to return the compliment in full force intending to knock the offender off his contraption and beat him about the nose. When the cyclist and his companion swung round to confront us, however, they took one look, muttered an insult or two, and kept pedaling, knowing full well that in a confrontation between cyclist and pedestrian it is usually the pedestrian who wins, especially a muscular pedestrian with shaved head, large stick, and enraged Levantine wife with the full range of Arabic insults. If you must travel in cyclist habitat, it is best to do so fully-armed.

Cyclists lead a privileged life. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to take off several hours each morning to ride a $25,000 bicycle around town as if we were on a leisurely summer tour of the French countryside. Some of us are forced every day at sunrise to drive an antique Mercedes-Benz or dilapidated Porsche to the office, sometimes even without so much as a small cup of tea. Accidents are bound to occur. Which brings me to my proposal. Since cyclists are usually out and about the streets anyway with nothing better to do, it seems a very sensible idea to assign them various errands on behalf of local residents, such as dropping off dry cleaning, buying budgerigar seed, or picking up a case of wine. Not only would this keep drivers off the road, thereby protecting the lives of bicycle enthusiasts, but it would create a certain level of goodwill and discourage motorists from claiming they never saw that cyclist in the first place.