Reading stories like this one just makes me insane. OK, I was insane before reading it, but I’m even crazier now.

It’s sad enough that a cyclist riding legally on a New Mexico road is dead. And lacking details of the accident, one has to feel some compassion for the motorist, who will have to live with the knowledge that he killed another human being while his teen-age kid rode shotgun.

But Judas Priest. Who the fuck does state-police mouthpiece Eric Garcia think he is? To loftily opine that law-abiding cyclists “visit their local bike stores for brochures and information on recommended routes of travel, instead of riding on open roadways,” is one of the meanest, dumbest things I’ve heard to come out of a cop’s mouth in quite a while, and as a former police reporter and occasional miscreant I do not lack for experience in this matter.

“The bicyclist was riding in the roadway and the motorist didn’t see him,” this apparatchik, a self-avowed “avid bicyclist,” told the Las Cruces Sun-News. “State police currently have no intention of citing the driver.”

Let’s reword this a bit, see how it works. “The motorcyclist was riding in the roadway and the motorist didn’t see him.” Or, “The motorist was standing in the roadway fixing a flat and the motorist didn’t see him.” How about, “The sports car was driving in the roadway and the trucker didn’t see him.”

Make any sense to you? Nor to me. In my twisted little world, the operator of a motor vehicle is supposed to be aware of his surroundings; where he is, what he’s doing, and even more important, what those who share the road with him are doing.

This motorist was said to have been driving “a small pickup truck,” so maybe his vehicle doesn’t climb much better than a 63-year-old man on a bicycle, and that’s why he was in the far right lane of the three available to him. Or maybe he’s one of the assclowns I’ve seen punch it up to 85 and use a stretch of highway off-ramp to pass two lanes of traffic on the right before veering from the shoulder into the left lane. Perhaps he hasn’t washed his windshield in a month of Sundays, or it’s so spider-webbed with cracks and pitted by Sonoran sand that you can’t see much through it when the sun hangs low in the March sky. His kid lipped off, maybe, and our driver turned to give him the stink-eye.

We don’t know, and we may never know, because the New Mexico State Police “currently have no intention of citing the driver.” Lovely.

Here’s another hypothetical. Let’s say the cyclist was — oh, I don’t know — let’s make him a New Mexico State Police lieutenant who serves as a public information officer. Think we might see some law enforcement then?

The weatherpersons must be having fun around here lately. Snow! No, rain! No, rain mixed with snow! While the sun shines! Or not! And wind! Sometimes from the north, east, south or west, but mostly right into your teeth, especially if you’re trying to clip into a rarely used pedal system and get up to speed at a busy intersection with a six-pack of growling Escalades drafting you.

How God must laugh, watching me get ready for a bike ride in March. I did a smidgen of work, dithered a while, then saw a weather window open and started running around the house chasing bits of kit. With two of us collaborating on laundry my kit is always scattered between two places, the right one and the wrong one, but this time I found everything in short order and started suiting up: wool socks, neoprene tights and bibs, two long-sleeved jerseys, winter gloves, tuque and cap, shoe covers and rain jacket, to be folded and stuffed into a pocket.

Or not. As I stood to grab helmet and glasses I peeked out the window. Snowing. Shit.

“It’s snowing,” I told Herself, who was getting ready for her shift as a volunteer at the Humane Society.

“Looks like you’ll have to ride in the snow, then, you great, fat bastard,” she replied, or words very much to that effect.

So I did. And it was fun, much more so than riding the office trainer, especially since the snow stopped more or less immediately, leaving me with not much more than puddles and a brisk wind to bitch about.

I rode the Soma Double Cross, stripped of racks but not fenders, and with 36-spoke touring wheels and 700×35 wire-bead Vittorias on it was the perfect match for me in March — heavy and slow.