Bicycle Lunch Issues

Today I biked about a mile and a half away for lunch (to Chipotle. Those of you who know me personally know that this is not odd in any way). I really liked getting out of the office and getting some exercise over lunch, and getting over to Kingsdale Shopping Center wasn't really that big of a deal.

My only issue was with the guy who decided he needed to honk at me because he got stuck behind me when there was traffic in the lane next to ours.

I just take it as jealousy:

1. Because I was on a bike and he was in a car.
   
2. Because I didn't care that I was holding up traffic and he did.
   
3. Because I wasn't contributing to global warming and he was.
   

The impatience of people absolutely amazes me. I probably held him up for a whole ten seconds while I tried to shift lanes (naturally, the people in the lane next to us weren't exactly helpful).

But all this comes back to a problem in the city of Columbus of which Paul Dorn reminded me in his blog about San Francisco's traffic in the days before the 1906 earthquake: automobiles don't see their presence on the road as a privilege, but rather as a right. And that simply isn't the case. It's a privilege that you get because you fulfilled all the steps for getting a driver's license and you've not broken the traffic laws to the extent that you've had it taken away. Being a pedestrian or a cyclist is a right. There's no license necessary for a cyclist or a pedestrian.

Motorists need to get that through their heads.