Rant for the Day

For those of you who are reading this blog for the first time my name is Les and I deliver pizza for a living.

As a rule I try to perform my delivery runs as quickly as possible, this does not necessarily mean that I take the physically shortest route but instead I usually use a route that has the least amount of interruptions, such as stop signs and traffic lights. The route I like to use to reach the northeastern edge of the delivery area is the West River Road on eastern edge of South Minneapolis. This road runs alongside the Mississippi River and has only one stop sign between Lake Street and 46th Avenue.

There is one problem with this route.

It is the assholes on bicycles.

Never mind the fact that the park board has thoughtfully provided separate bicycle paths off of the automotive traffic lanes. These assholes are a bunch of superior beings who have to ride their bicycles in the auto traffic lanes. Often they will ride side by side if they ride in groups of two or more, making it more difficult for automotive traffic to safely pass them. (Another sign of their superior being status are imitations of bicycle racing team uniforms that many of them wear. (Ayn Rand had a special term for such folks...but that's another story.))

Some of these superior beings will even ride their bicycles on below-zero (on the Fahrenheit scale) days in January in order to generate that warm-fuzzy feeling that comes from not using fossil fuel propulsion systems. (Never mind the fossil fuels that had to be used in the process of creating their sacred two-wheel transportation system.)

So anyway, around 5 PM today one of these superior beings got himself killed by a component of the local mass transit system.

Of course in order for this mishap to happen several things had to first occur. The first being the construction of the Light Rail Transit system by our glorious (and unelected) Metropolitan Council. The Light Rail Transit system, being far more expensive than simply building decent roads and buying new cars for the poor, serves primarily as a monument to the power of socialist planners and the local pork barrel politicians. Its secondary function is, of course, to oppress those freethinking souls who still insist on using private automobiles instead of joining the hominid herd riding on (what I privately call) the socialist toy train set.

How does this oppression occur?

It starts in the design and construction phases when, instead of building it above or below street level, the bulk of the trackage is laid at ground level to maximize interference with ground traffic. (There are also three bridges and one underpass across local freeways, a bridge across Lake Street, and a tunnel under the airport. There apparently are some limits to allowable interference.)

At all ground level crossings outside of Downtown Minneapolis there is a standard set of railroad crossing lights and alarms, and a set of safety arms that lowers in order to block the path of oncoming traffic. The operators of the trains will also blow the standard railroad horn that is mounted on their trains in order to warn of their approach to every intersection.

It was, of course, all of this light and noise, the clamorous warnings and physical barriers created for his benefit, that the aforementioned superior being on two wheels had to willfully ignore and evade in order to get himself splattered all over the tracks.

My lack of God, what a fucking idiot.

Perhaps we should just think of it as evolution is action.
_