Serenity: Dispensing Sanctimony (pun intended?)

Being an unsightly clod, who suffers from nervous gas and a debilitating need to constantly know my wattage output for any given task, I've grown accustomed to ridicule and rejection.  However, I was recently informed that my presence on Toronto's cycling forums is a bit of a downer.  Apparently, I'm too cynical and negative.

Thankfully, however, scientific analysis has proven that my blog is actually enfused with positivity:

"iclogto.blogspot.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time."

This appraisal is correct.  I am happy, often even serene, but I have achieved this sense of happiness through great struggle and rejection.  Being a misshapen fool with a compulsive need to lick used deodorant sticks during my youth, I was subject to constant ridicule and rejection.  However, I achieved a transcendence beyond my betters the day I watched a hipster on a de rigeur brakeless fixie pedal very slowly down Queen St, execute a de rigeur little skid, track-stand uncertainly, then weave into traffic and nearly get struck by a car, then mount the opposite sidewalk and collide with a pedestrian.  Watching the hispter's foray into the hardship known as Reality, a flowering of self-esteem blossomed within my bosom.

"I may be a misshapen fool," I thought, "but you ride a bicycle like an idiot."

Thinking that you're better than someone else is a heartening discovery, and there's no shame in it.  We all do it.  Sometimes it's even actually true, but it comes with a great deal of responsibility.  Like any sensible person with the usual urge to remain alive, I affix appropriate and visible lights to my bicycle, and use them.  Users of Urban Repair Squad's pharrow infrastructure do this:

Compact disc reflector seen on the Pathway to Enlightenment.

This type of nonsense is just not acceptable, but it's pretty much the standard sort of garbage one encounters when cycling in Toronto.  I'd like to be positive about progressive infrastructure and attitudes being fostered in Toronto, but when cars seem more capable of using Toronto's new bike boxes correctly than Toronto's cyclists, I cannot.

Toronto's cycling community needs encouragement.  Certainly, it does.  However, it also needs a bit more perspective than its smug, self-righteous, snobby cheerleaders are willing or capable of providing.

Unfortunately, I'm not the one to provide it ...but since no one else has as of yet volunteered to do it, I intend to do my best until they arrive.