I like riding a bike. I don't technically own one anymore. But if I did. I would like it.
I don't need a really cool one, just something with ten gears that goes fast.
And it should be red. Because it makes sense since I will be going the speed of light and flames will naturally shoot from the tires as they hit the ground in my frenzy of infinite acceleration.
I would ride down hills without a helmet because I survived my youth without one, so why start now.
I also would not wear spandex pants or an Italian racing shirt because I am modest like the Amish. You can call me Ezekiel.
But what I wouldn't do is ride though red lights and stop signs as I break the sound barrier.
Not because I am the very definition of rebel or anything, because of the simple laws of physics.
One law mostly, and it might be a lesser law, or even a really strong suggestion, but it happens to be true. It surrounds collisions and how they operate when things collide.
There are two types of collisions, elastic and inelastic.
If in your infinite wisdom you blast though a red light and there is oncoming traffic that doesn't see you the chances of you getting hit aren't worth the massively cool points you get for busting through the red light.
This isn't because you have rights, or you are some demographic that is victimized in your head, this is because when that car hits you the laws of physics aren't negotiable.
You don't get to complain on Twitter or change your Facebook profile picture as a protest, nor can you demand a recount.
If that car doesn't see you, or can't stop in time and hits you, it's going to suck a lot more for you than the car. Even if the car and driver are wrong, trust me, their day won't be ruined after the collision.
You are going to absorb some version of the force generated by the movement and mass of the car and then some of that same force is going to propel you and your now broken body and bike in some opposite direction of that force.
It will also hurt a lot if you survive. And chicks don't dig guys in full body casts that have to ring a bell to have their private areas cleaned and tubes changed for your daily feeding.
One way to explain, and a very poor way is think of what happens when you play pool and you use the white ball to break up the triangular formed other balls.
The other type is when you play croquet and you hold down the wooden ball with your foot when it is adjacent to another ball and you whack the hell out of the first one with the mallet thingy and the second one goes shooting in some oblique direction.
Now picture that being you, on a bike, running a red light, when the fender of my hybrid-organic-vegan-Hyundai hits you.
In summary. I didn't spend seven years in high school for nothing.
