Honk On Bobo

Please people, try to understand...I am balancing precariously on two slender tires, moving at variable and often intense speeds...racing through confined spaces, competing for room with the immovable force that is a tonne of metal in various shapes, sizes and velocity's...sometimes zooming under poor lit and deafening overpasses.  I am trying not to lose my cool let alone my life when vying for a fraction of the space these gas guzzlers insist on utilizing, so I plead and ask ever so nicely...DO NOT FUCKING HONK YOUR IMMENSELY DISTRACTING AND OVERBEARING HORNS AT ME WHILE ATTEMPTING TO CUT ME OFF AT SPEEDS THAT WOULD ELEVATE MY PANCAKE-ED-NESS(?) TO FULL.  I do not believe I ask for much.  I am not a selfish person (most days).  All I long for is a tiny piece of the road to get from A to B without having the living shit scared from my bowels because you can't bear the thought of waiting 30 seconds for me to move past or fall behind.  Why is the western world in such a hurry?  We eat without savoring, we love without patience, we wish our days away-demanding something ever better, and we drive like the destination is chasing us with fire and brimstone.  I crossed a MARKED crosswalk yesterday.  I was even courteous enough to remove myself from my mode of transport, making my intentions unmistakably clear.  As I crossed the pavement, my ipod came undone from its holster and clamored to the ground.  Instead of waiting the 3.3 seconds it would have taken me to bend down and retrieve it, an SUV demanded it's right to speed on, refused to slow down, narrowly missing me. I jumped to the sidewalk for safety and the cocksucker, self important, environment destroying, oblivious manipulator of metal and fiberglass that outweighed me and my rockin cycle by, oh I don't know, several thousand pounds...proceeded to drive over my device without blinking an eye all the while exclaiming to it's passenger how I shouldn't be on the road.  Where should I be?  Riding the sidewalks gets you a ticket and pedestrians screaming at you to get on the provided bike trails, though exceptional in Calgary, do not get you to the shopping mart or liquor store.  Riding the bustling mean streets could get you killed because cars do not give you the respect nor the space required to safely maneuver the jungle of our "git er done" obsessed existence.  So where does that leave those who refuse to rely on gas operated death machines?  I choose cycling cuz it's great exercise, it's cheap, and I think living in a metropolis with everything in such close proximity negates the apparent necessity of a vehicle...and it's environmental implications, blahblahblah.  Why such little tolerance for those who choose better, smarter?  Does a vehicle give those a sense of value that using your own physical means cannot?  Are we so lazy and swaddled in our demand for efficiency and immediacy that we've forgotten that taking a little longer to get somewhere may serve us in the long run?  Serve us in a capacity that sustains a heart and soul with pride and patience?  We will never be happy if the speed in which we accomplish a task is the only goal set.  Our contentment levels will continue to plunge if beating our last time is the only place where our priorities reside.  Oh, and my ipod did indeed survive the haste of the SUV...this time.