Winterbiking in Winterpeg: an Incredibly Angry Tirade.

It snowed two weeks ago. There's lots of snow. The roads are rarely clean. Everyone's driving about half as fast as usual.

I feel like i'm a pretty considerate cyclist; while i do bike pretty defensively and take enough space to be safe, i'm pretty good about not blocking traffic, about communicating what i'm doing, signaling, etc, and, in these conditions, if i do have to take a lane in order to bike safely, i actually stop every so often to let cars get around me.

(In summer i bike in the parking lane, despite the fact that i'm constantly dodging the doors of people who can't get it through their heads to look before opening them. But in winter that part of the road is icy and uneven, and if i try biking there i'll basically end up bailing and possibly getting run over. )

Despite my being as considerate as i possibly can be, and despite the fact that the real problem is simply that the roads are terrible, and that i'm not affecting that grand picture very much by being there, (how long do i possibly hold anyone up? thirty seconds? a minute?) people say and do rude, borderline psychopathic things to me, every day. I constantly get screamed at by poor, suffering souls who have to drive 20 instead of 30 for a block or two until they can pass me. I get screamed at by people who could easily just pass me right there but for some reason still feel like it's necessary to honk at me and then try to THREATEN me with their VEHICLE by driving up beside me at my speed and then moving over towards me. (what the fuck! who threatens a human being with, literally, a ton, of metal?!). I get screamed at by some ignorant fuck for "not following the rules", (read, running a red light when the coast was clear, to GET AWAY from the traffic, which is to their advantage as well as mine.) I catch up with them, politely ask them if they were trying to communicate something, explain this, and am graced with more childlike profanity and then the person in question speeding away. I get screamed at, god knows why, for biking IN THE BIKE LANE on a bridge with two lanes for cars available and almost no other traffic.

Cyclists don't stop having rights just because the weather changes. Dear Winnipeg drivers: Fuck You. I hope you all die in a cancerous cloud of exhaust.

You are making me not want to leave my house. You are contributing to my winter depression. Although i've managed to be calm when i get the chance to actually have a talk with one of you self-centered fucks, you are making me incredibly angry. There are times when i feel like by the end of the winter i will either murder or be murdered by one of these people in a fit of rage which could come from either side, and the odds are not looking up for me, as i travel on a much smaller weapon.

p.s.: i know that some drivers are not assholes. for the love of god, please show yourselves before i lose all faith in humanity.