Peenie Wallie

Furthermore, they seem to think that they have some Manifest Destiny to be there, riding in the lane of traffic, without the benefit of a rear-view mirror. The reason for this behaviour is difficult to comprehend. It's illegal for me to drive my ATV on the highway, but if you want to pedal a bicycle uphill on a two-lane black-top road with no shoulder and hair-pin turns, for some reason the police have ruled this is perfectly acceptable.

Think for a second about walking to the edge of the road and standing there, about a foot or two across the yellow line, in the lane of traffic. How long do you think you could stand there without getting killed? This is equivalent to what bicyclists do when they're riding uphill. They're practically stopped, in the lane of traffic, as cars go by them at highway speeds.

There was some bike race in Summit County this past weekend on Sunday July 17th, 2005. It was a silly race where they all had stuffed animals on their ridiculous little helmets (Group Think dictates that you have to wear a helmet, but the fact that it's so small that it won't do any good doesn't occur to these dimwits). They had Swan Mountain Road all jammed up with their granola-crunching bicycles, and I'm pulling an 18 foot long 8 1/2 foot wide dual-axle trailer up this narrow, twisting road over Sapphire Point, trying not to kill any more cyclists than absolutely necessary.

Then, when we get to Highway 9 and start heading South into Breck, the IDIOTS are still drving down the highway, in spite of the fact that there's a custom bike path for them that's 15 miles long and fourteen feet wide, immediately adjacent to the highway, and parallel to the scenic Blue River. These people have such a blatant disregard for their own safety that they actually prefer to ride with their backs to traffic going 3-5 miles per hour uphill, while highway traffic flies past them going 60 mph.

Suddenly, one of them lost control right in front of me, crashing into the highway, causing a chain reaction and a whole group of them crashed into the road right in front of me. Full-on yard-sales. Bikes flying. Knees, elbows, and faces grinding straight into the pavement, immediately in front of my Chevy Tahoe towing an 18 foot long 8 1/2 foot wide dual axle trailer. I don't know how I managed not to kill any of them, but I can assure you that I could have killed 3-4 and without any charges being filed.

I tried to explain their suicidal behavior to my 7 year old daughter. "What they should be saying each time a car passes them is 'Wow. Thank God I'm still alive. That car just passed me going 60 miles per hour, and I wasn't even looking.' This is the only rational thought process that would occur to someone riding in the lane of traffic that can't maintain highway speeds. They may as well be on tricycles.