Once again we take our sermon from the Book of Comments, chapter 36, verse 49, “Yea, though we ride through the Valley of Death, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.”

The discussion about Reed Bates and his two-wheeled run-in with Texas law enforcement touches on a topic that affects me since I caught the bug of bicycle touring.

My recent reconnaissance of south-central Colorado highways gave me a bad case of The Fear — getting to some of the places I’d like to visit via bicycle would require me to share long stretches of skinny highway with wide vehicles, many of them traveling well above the posted speed limit of (usually) 65 mph.

I can ride these roads — I’m just not certain it’s smart. And while I’m trying to find suitable workarounds, they’re few and far between, our roads having been designed and constructed with infernal combustion in mind.

As a teen-ager I could and did cycle on Academy Boulevard here in Bibleburg. Today, better you should stay at home and shoot yourself in the head; it’s a cleaner, less agonizing death. And there are other roads I once cycled but now avoid because the auto traffic is too heavy, or there’s no shoulder, or what shoulder there is looks like Fort Cartoon has been using it for artillery practice.

This kind of self-segregation irks me, but I want to enjoy my rides, and finish them upright instead of in the back of an ambulance (or a hearse).

“What is to be done?” asked Lenin. I don’t care to battle The Man for my two-wheeled share of Academy, Marksheffel, Union, Circle, Powers or any of the other major thoroughfares in Bibleburg. But I would like a nice, wide slice of westbound Highways 24 and 50, both of which are gateways to some pretty attractive country.

Seems to me, then, that in the absence of an endless supply of ammo, we need sharpshooters who pick their targets carefully and nail them with the first round.