I’ve not had the opportunity to meet Mr. Josh Robinson, author of the Daily Egyptian’s Cancel My Subscription column.

I’ve not met him, and yet I feel some sort of kinship with him. He made a statement in his Sept. 24 column with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Bicyclists do not like to stop.

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As a member of the two-wheeled community in Carbondale, I freely admit I chafe at the thought of having to stop or even slowing down. Especially for those poor, unfortunate souls trapped inside two tons of steel.

To me, riding a bike is fun. Wait, let me rephrase that. Riding a bike at top speed is fun. When someone is in the throes of great fun, that someone doesn’t like having his fun interrupted against his will by someone else.

Pretend you are back in seventh grade. Perhaps you enjoyed playing your Super Mario Brothers 2 game immensely. But when Mom came in and told you to take out the garbage, chances are you answered her with a tortured Aw, Mommmm!

Do you four-wheeled thugs honestly expect a cyclist to actually reduce his speed to the point where his forward motion ceases just because there is a stop sign on the corner? Those signs and those pretty red, yellow and green lights are for you lesser humans.

You see, we cyclists are better than you. It’s as simple as that.

Too many times I’ve been forced to reduce my speed on my way to class (or more likely, on my way to one of Carbondale’s fine drinking establishments) just because a vehicularly challenged cretin decides to suddenly remove his head from his ass and check out his surroundings. When this happens, pedestrians are temporarily blinded by the halo above my helmet (yes, I wear a helmet) because they immediately stop dead in their tracks.

The surest way to get run over by a speeding cyclist is to stop moving. You see, a cyclist actually is aware of his or her surroundings. Cyclists plan ways through a crowd at least two turns in advance and in the case of heavy idiot (oops, pedestrian) traffic, at least three turns in advance.

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So by the time a pedestrian sees a cyclist, that cyclist has long since decided how he will get around the two-legged obstruction. When that pedestrian stops, it throws the cyclist’s plan completely out of whack. Thus, without the proper amount of whack, the cyclist is forced to 1.) slow down, which is unlikely to happen, or 2.) take a deep breath and knock that silly pedestrian horizontal, which doesn’t happen often enough. Usually the cyclist, being a quick thinker, simply comes up with an escape route without losing much speed, and all is forgotten.