Can't We Share?

Man! I forgot how much joy riding my bike brings me. I had a lovely, lovely ride to work today. The sun was shining, the blossoms were fragrant and the breeze helped me forget I was sweating. But I forgot a few things since my last bike commute in the Fall.

1. Think you smell a ginormous, neighborhood-wide skunk spray? You don't. More people than you could imagine smoke the weed while driving. It's terrifying. And makes me hungry.
2. Motorists hate bicyclists. Just a fact. They don't give you enough room to ride on the road let alone to avoid getting hit by a parked car's opening door. And they honk at you for no reason startling you from your concentration. School buses are the least forgiving. City buses? Surprisingly cool.
3. All potholes are located in the exact location that's safe enough to stay out of traffic and out of the way of the parked cars. I get long-lasting, jarring headaches all the time from hitting some pretty intense, otherwise avoidable potholes.
4. Pedestrians are just as douchey as motorists. They forget that they are supposed to treat bikes like any other oncoming traffic. And in the same vein, other bicyclists who don't follow the traffic laws and ride around like their the king of the cross-walk/sidewalk are also just as douchey. I almost t-boned a dude today who didn't care I was coming at a faster speed than he and that his slowing me down put me dangerously in the way of oncoming traffic.
5. Every ride is a dance with Death. See above.

There are plenty of drivers who give me more than enough room on the road. And I wish I could thank them. But for every one of them, there are at least three who make me want to wave the finger at them because they are so close to clipping me. And if you read any local blog forums concerning making the area more bike friendly, it gets unnecessarily, incredibly heated. All because motorists don't want to share the road. It's not hard. Plenty of motorists do it with no problems.