Sorry!

I'm sorry to hear that we're apparently at war with motorists and it's all our fault. This is disturbing. Some of my bestest friends drive cars and it saddens me that they may fall victim to a bicycle blitzkrieg. Perhaps there's a chance to avoid carmageddon if only we would all step away from our vehicles, let reason prevail, and admit we've been bad boys and girls.

So in as much as it's in our interest to maintain, er, attain, cordial relations with our cagebound colleagues of the road I propose that Toronto cyclists 'fess up. We should admit how we exploit the motoring masses into paying for our selfish privileges. It's only fair. Let's hoist the white flag, acknowledge culpability, pay penance, and work toward a better tomorrow for all.

Let me be the first to say sorry.

For, among other things, the wretched state of traffic in the GTA. And it truly is a mess. We cyclists are all sorry for clogging up the DVP, 401, 400 and Gardiner everyday. Who would've thought the effects of a single Critical Mass detour on the Gardiner and an annual parade of polyunsaturated pedallers on the DVP would reverberate through the remaining 360 odd days a year in a daily tide of carnage? Please accept our profound apologies: we really are sorry for you.

And we apologize for all those parked cars clogging downtown byways, snarling traffic and fraying tempers. All that public space devoted to the storage of private property when it could be freed up to smooth flow. What a pity, we're sorry about it.

And sorry too we can't can abide your wishes and "get off the road". See, if we leave the bike at home, get in the car, and join in your misery there would be yet another cager ahead of you in the traffic jam or vying for your parking spot or sucking up your litre of prehistoric sunlight. And that would only make you more sorry. Sorry you can't seem to figure that out.

Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry. Ess. Oh. Argh. Argh. Why.

For the abysmal state of Toronto's streets as well. All those destructive 1/2 horsepower 12KG bicycles shred blacktop nothing like harmless 10 ton trucks with several hundred more ponies under the hood. That's why every spring the Martin Goodman Trail is a crater riddled Baghdad backstreet and the rest of TO's auto drags are smooth glassphalt. So apologies we're not as easy on the streets as you folks in the Escalades.

And apologies that our property taxes and the like pay for local roads -- NOT gasoline taxes (reserved for highways). You DON'T KNOW how sorry we are about that. And sorrier yet that we can't further subsidize freeloading four wheelers because two thirds of The Bankrupt Three are lining up for a several billion dollar pogie check. It's our fault not enough cars were sold to keep the assembly lines rolling. And my gridlocked friends, it's our fault too that so many were it stops you from rolling.

Désolé. Lo Siento. Saawwrrrreeee for this merciless campaign of autocide!!

For the outrageous cost of insurance and gas too! And what's gas now, a dollar a litre? Sorry, we don't pay attention, but we should because contrary to what everyone thinks it ain't those greedy Arabs that are to blame. Nor Big Oil, Peak Oil, or vegetable oil. It ain't even Mayor Miller and his left wing cabal. Pssst, can you handle the truth? It's the cyclists.

So sorry for that and all that driving amok resulting in extensive property damage, bodily injury, and abbreviated life spans -- all outcomes needing onerous bureaucracies to process. We plead guilty, it's our fault that bicycles tend to opposite, favourable, effects. So we're sorry about efforts that seek to penalize our efficiencies with automobile style overhead, ostensibly to pay for problems we don't create. We're sorry this doesn't make sense and sorry again for defending the absurdity that personal mobility can and should be cheap and accessible.

A supercalifragilisticexpialidocious sorry to ya all!

For greenhouse gasses, for nitrogen oxides, ground level ozone and for all those smog alerts. So sorry that we, with our stupid bike lanes -- all outrageous 95 KMs on 5,600 KMs worth of roads -- are keeping you all idling longer, belching all those noxious fumes. Now the polar icecaps are melting and it's all our fault. I do confess that last year a nacho propelled plume of methane escaped me while pedalling home from the Fox and the Fiddle on Danforth that is right now melting a glacier somewhere just south of Greenland. But drivers, as devastating as the aromatics of that emission were, I assure you that everyone, including yourselves, are sorrier still for your stench. You stink. Literally. And we're all sorry for it.

As we are for the morons on Jarvis and elsewhere who have the audacity to better their neighbourhoods. Dullards they are, they don't relish 27,000 cars racing by their front yards and schools daily -- sorry, no one does! Forgive them, they're not enlightened motorists that spend, what? all of 5 minutes speeding through, they actually live there. You know, pay taxes, vote, shop and sleep there.

Sorry to say these Luddites can't fathom how five lanes worth of motorized mayhem improves their quality of life, that they prefer less cars and less roadway and more trees, sidewalk, and, yeah, maybe more bicycles. We're sorry that these myopic imbeciles would like to reclaim a piece of their neighbourhood for themselves, not sacrifice it to the selfish indulgence of their CO spewing guests. And sorrier still that motorized transients should consider it the locals' obligation to sacrifice it.

Sorry...sorry...SORRY! For that and everything else. It's all our fault.

There. Can we now just all get along?

No? Sorry to hear it.

Then again, not really.