Veinticuatro

The first two years I lived in Tucson, I alternated between being a pedestrian and a driver. Never was I a bicyclist. (Well, there was that one time I borrowed Roommate's bike to go look for a synagogue, but that's a whole different story.) As a pedestrian/driver, I found bicyclists to be rather annoying. Who did they think they were, not following the traffic laws every other vehicle has to follow? Talk about arrogant!

I definitely still think there are a lot of bicyclists who don't actually realize that what they are riding is considered a "vehicle" in our glorious state, so yes they should stop at stop signs and no they don't automatically have the right of way, but my current frustration is with pedestrians:

GET OUT OF THE BICYCLE LANE. Seriously: on campus especially, you have ten feet on either side of our six-foot, two-way path (which means, you math geniuses, that the pedestrians have 20 feet total to work with and I have three feet to myself), and you choose to walk right down the middle? Right on the double yellow lines? I know you think you aren't endangering anyone, but when you start to swerve because you're talking on your cell phone, I can't anticipate that. And if I follow suit and swerve as well, I am putting people's lives at risk who aren't even in the bike lane. And I am bigger and faster than you. And physics tells me this could lead to some problems.

In lieu of this problem, I have written a haiku:

Oh pedestrians
Please get out of the bike lane
Before I hit you