On yer bike!

Just a colloquial street phrase from Scotland which is sarcastically meant to mean 'buzz off!'  However, I am wishing that more people over here in Pinellas County would get OFF their bikes. Seriously?  Are they looking for a free ride to the ER?  I am now convinced that they must come from the planet Krypton, and are empowered with super strength, miracle vision, and able to stop speeding cars with an intense gaze.    For a start, I don't care if you consider yourself a '10' in body form, but those padded skin tight shorts do NOTHING  but make the bike seat more comfortable.  They certainly do not make me want to rush out and buy myself a pair or three.  Then the occasional helmet wearer.....unless they are competing in some form of speed trial, is it a requirement to have a pointy head helmet?  However, leave us not poke fun at these knights of the road, because they are at least out there, burning up a calorie or two, and defying every traffic law in the book.   Red lights?  Must only be for cars, because these cyclists just breeze through them - give them their due, they do glower at cross traffic though.  Now let us briefly touch on bike lanes.  What are they for? Certainly not for bikes (cyclists - sorry) - maybe they're for parents teaching their offspring how to handle their new bikes, now that the training wheels are off.  I have a theory that cyclists like to travel in packs, and they like to chat amongst themselves, therefore these bike lanes are too narrow for 3 riders side by side - so let us all pretend we are a car and fill up the usual traffic lanes so that car drivers behind them can slowly weave back and forth in the vain hope that an opportunity to overtake these wobbling two wheelers occurs before senility sets in.  My all time favorite incident occurred when a cyclist of medium age with the pointy helmet was cycling for once all by his lonesome in the bike lane.  Give him his due, he did stop at the red light, then remembered it wasn't for cyclists so sailed blissfully across causing cross traffic to say very rude words.  Just to add insult to injury, after the light turned to green, I drove off watching this cyclist ahead of me (still in his bike lane you understand) and just as I almost got level with him, he turned, stared at me from under his little pointy hat, pedaled across my lane and made a left turn!  Silly me, I was looking at least for some indication that he might be turning...even getting a rude finger would have been better than nothing, but Mr Oblivious lives to cycle another day!  I am in therapy!