Why?

Today, as I was enjoying my nice cool ride home from work in the driving, soaking rain, some d-bag in a black Subaru Imprezza decided it would take too long to wait for the oncoming car to go by before he passed me and basically forced me off the road. And then he confirmed that he truly was an asshole by laying on his horn. I replied with only one finger. I might add that I was on a road that my gracious city has designted as a "bicycle route." Anyway this incident got me thinking about two things 1) this was odd behavior from a Subaru driver; it's generally American label car drivers that threaten my life and 2) what would be the best type of firearm to carry on my bicycle.

As for the latter, well, normally I would say bigger is better, but in the case of shooting from a loaded touring cycle I'm not sure. There is the recoil to think about and the effect that recoil would have on one's balance. I'm not at all certain, for instance, that I would be able to safely fire, say, a .44 magnum into a moving pickup full of fat rednecks without losing my balance and falling off of my bike. That just wouldn't do. So a slightly smaller caliber would probably be better, and definitely a semi-auto because of the recoil mitigation that those mechanisms have. Plus being able to fire quickly might help. I have always wanted to try riding around with a sawed off shotgun protruding from my camelback, Mad Max style, mostly as a deterrent. Possibly while wearing a leather vest and chaps. I think people would think twice about hurling obscenities and loose change at me from inside their little metal boxes.

You may be thinking "wow, what militant crazy bastard that guy is." And you would be partly right. But here's the thing a lot of non cyclists don't realize. Just because you don't like someone or don't like what someone is doing, you can't go around threatening that person's life. I know I dress funny and because I wear really tight shorts someone might think I'm gay (although I've never really understood the connection between tight shorts and sexual orientation myself) and that someone might be a closed minded adherent to the teachings of Jesus Christ (although, again, it's news to me that those teachings said anything about killing people you disagree with) but, unfortunately for some, it's still illegal to kill me. As of right now it's illegal anyway; that could all change depending on which party controls the various branches of our government. I also know that I sometimes take up space on our roads and highways that God himself (or herself) gave to the owners of automobiles. And I know that everyone is pressed for time these days and, you know, can't spare any extra seconds on the road, what with soccer practice and oboe lessons and play dates (wtf?) and social networking and reality TV and thank God for the serenity of my naked fitness/fasting-colon cleansing yoga-pilates hybrid class to reduce stress. Otherwise I might kill someone. Or I might kill someone anyway if they act differently than I do or get in my way. See what I'm saying?

I'll admit that I probably wouldn't really like the guy that almost ran over me today. And I probably won't like the guy that will almost run over me tomorrow or, worst case, actually run over me tomorrow. But I still don't want to kill the fat sweaty bastards. Can't we just agree to disagree?

Don't they see, I'm doing it for them. I'm deliberately not using my allotment of fossil fuel so that others who need it more can run their ski boats and quad runners and stock cars and 5oo,ooo megawatt honda generators all night at the campground. I'm a team player. I'm even paying an incredible sum of money every month to some insurance company so that we can all (ignorant sedentary clowns and athletes alike) have our diabetes and obesity and cardiovascular disease covered, which we will all most assuredly suffer from if we don't get killed in some type of violent accident beforehand. What the hell is not to like.