You are a self-centered, myopic fool with a chip on your shoulder. How dare you display, without shame, the same pathologies as drivers who decide to discipline my bicycle riding behavior by threatening me with their "automobiles" (the bloated, gentlemanly term you rhetorically employ in your [editorial]. In fairness I demand you heretofore refer to bikes as a "blasted velocipedes").

I ride my bike cross-town to work, which keeps my SUV off the road and makes your commute by car, in the balance, easier and faster. I'm one less car making one less pothole.

But there are no thanks from jerks like you, who resent cyclists moving at different speeds than and in different styles from cars. I will not specifically recount the many times I've been doing something perfectly legal, trying to get along harmoniously with other road-users, only to have some frustrated, rage-prone a-hole car commuter decide I've committed some kind of offense. Sometimes they yell, sometimes they give me a little (or not so little) bully-swerve with their two-ton deadly weapon. They've never yet, however, gotten out of their car to talk about it when I catch them at the next light.

It is said in cycling circles that if these types of conflicts happen to you once a week the fault is yours, once a month the fault is shared, quarterly you are doing all you can to exist harmoniously. Lest you think I'm a hothead, I easily fall into the later category. I've ridden perhaps 50k miles in urban environments and have never been hit badly. But I've been lucky, particularly with screwballs like you out there underwriting irrational, disdainful attitudes that endanger my safety.

If you aren't a cyclist you don't know - getting to a wide, dedicated bike lane or path lets you breath out a little. I challenge you, for instance, to ride a bike south off the Ballard bridge without having a panic attack for lack of these infrastructures you characterize as silly security blankets. And it's not that I assume bike lanes are risk-free zones and let my guard down; it is that dangers are more easily identifiable when there is a bike lane, and I generally get an extra fraction of a second to react to them.

You know what I really think? You are motivated by greed - you don't like the idea of paying for these improvements. Grow up and learn to be a responsible citizen.

Henry Laufenberg, Ph.D.

Ballard