I'm a slightly larger than average man - imagine how much of a nut job people would see me as if I did that all that because a little old lady was slowing me down in a narrow supermarket aisle.
But somehow this behaviour is acceptable from inside a giant vehicle.
It's also not an "I'm being slowed down" issue - roads here all single lane and often used by farm tractors, I've never heard a single person go into a rage fantasy about that.
On the other hand, if I were in a grocery store and I found the aisle I wanted blocked for 60 seconds by a middle-aged man wearing a spandex uniform who had decided to barricade the entire aisle while he does a calisthenics routine - I would get quite frustrated. Especially if I eventually got past him only to find another such person doing the same thing in the next aisle over. I feel this is more analogous to the situation I regularly encounter with bicyclists.
My frustration would be oriented around the thought "Can't you do this at home instead of selfishly inconveniencing everyone else?"
The cyclist is not.
I’d reconsider who is really “selfishly inconveniencing everyone else” in this scenario.
Also bicycles are vehicles, by any definition.
This isn’t true. I think it would shock many HN nerds just how much flight and driving many athletes do. Nobody is cycling 100-3000 miles to attend a tour or enduro event. That’s not even counting the emissions from our eight-cylinder 4WDs, trucks, SUVs, vans, RVs, etc.
If you see a road cyclist athlete, chances are high that the person travels around the state/country/world, and you aren’t seeing their sport- and lifestyle- related emissions. It’s like observing someone behind a desk and claiming, “Wow! You are so climate-friendly!” even though they drove to work.
You can try to restrict the subject to the minuscule echelon of car-opposed cyclists, who nobody in our cycling communities takes seriously, but it’s a misleading look at our actual cycling culture.
No athlete is going to forgo the conveniences of flight/driving and wear themselves out before a distant meetup or race. It’s not even logistically possible. Our vehicles also carry our supplies, tools, components, and backup bikes.
Nobody is going to bikepack up 13,000 feet of elevation for 12 hours, to begin a brutal 100-mile race through the mountain passes, when they can chill in an air-conditioned SUV instead.
Is cycling instead of driving better when you can? Yes, obviously. But it’s not a complete picture.
The smug superiority that comes from message board commuter cyclists is clueless. The disdain toward drivers is a self-blow. It is hypocritical naïveté.
It just makes the reputation of cyclists unjustifiably worse.
But it is no problem when drivers go out on the road purely for a fun and/or unnecessary drive.
UPDATE: My point is that many drivers go out for 'wasteful' reasons, such as recreation or e.g. because they forgot to combine trips. Such drivers cannot easily be spotted, so they don't attract ire. But they slow us down. Such situations lead to much more inconvenience when you add it up.
And yes, many cyclists rock the spandex. And they should be, because no one wants an angry nether region.
Recumbent bikes are just so much better in every aspect, yet the market for them is so small that they often cost as much as a used car.
I'd rather zip around in a Milan(velomobile) than something that gives as much seating space as two palms of my hands put together.
The classic country lanes in the UK are 1.5 cars wide at most. Far too narrow to overtake a cyclist without their help and good visibility (which you typically do not have). I am trying to go from a village to a town to buy some groceries, and instead of doing a comfortable 40 up the hill, I'm doing 5. Because three cyclists are in the way and have no interest in allowing anyone to get past. These will not be the last set I encounter. Turns out the Saturday I have off to go food shopping etc is when all the cyclists like to go out and enjoy themselves.
Side note: Horses have a similar impact, but always ensure people are blocked for the minimal amount of time possible. Similar with walkers. Cyclists rarely do anything at all to allow people past in my experience.
Anyway, I don't get angry or aggressive. But it is frustrating especially when the cyclists using these roads are not local and act like the cars who have to use them to get around in their local area are the baddies.
The real issue is the complete lack of infrastructure available.
Yes, but you aren't alone, and most people have their limits.
It is really interesting when/why people have feelings of entitlement. What about getting in a car should create the expectation that a drive will go smoothly? That one day a year when the all the green lights align and you arrive to your destination 5 minutes faster? (And then many of us proceed to fritter away that 'saved' 5 minutes on our internationally interconnected web of decentralized tubes running a bewildering array of unnecessary computation to fuel what companies put in front of our eyeballs.)
You can't bike for transit "at home".
You can't bike for enjoyment "at home".
And biking to exercise is a different form of exercise than riding an exercise bike. Raising resistance is not the same as going uphill. Maintaining your bike in balance and steering/controlling it is not the same as sitting on a static frame. Not to mention, the overall experience is completely different, and that can also matters for reasons related to quality of exercise.
Your problem seems to be entitlement, not impatience btw. You feel entitled to feel people should use the road your way. That realization might help you fixing the issue.
Of course, using the back roads often also means taking the "long road", albeit just by a couple of kilometers. I understand the urge to take the shortest route, but I think people should think of others on the road too.