With everything going on now, our focus is the bewildered cries of bicyclists and a federal park road. I'm amazed that the voices of the few have such an impact on the many.

Comments on the FLS website were both pro and con. Many cyclists wrote that the new park road conditions didn't alter a thing. A few wrote and said it was terrible. One person responded to an opponent that her husband was a local attorney and friend with a local judge. Wow!

The park needed an aesthetically acceptable fix. They made a good choice. But to quell the squeaky wheels, they have decided to brush off that loose gravel for those bellowing bicyclists. And who foots that bill? We do.

Ride down Massaponax Church Road, any day. A dangerous road given its design, it has been widened twice in five years.

Now try and pass cyclists who ride in the middle of the lane, two abreast, and tell me how inconvenient it is in a vehicle sitting seven cars stacked behind a cyclist doing 6 mph. Try to navigate around curves and up hills in attempts to pass those pedal pushers.

Yet you hear nothing from us, the drivers and the main funding source for the road.

This will generate a load of feedback from local, prominent, spandex-wearing, two-wheeled friends. Please don't preach to me that your taxes pay for those roads, too.

What pays for roads are the personal property taxes from my car and the high taxes paid for a gallon of fuel. How much in personal property taxes do you pay yearly on your Schwinn and those fancy silk shirts?

To those cyclists who said the road surface is no problem, I say thank you and kudos to you for your honesty. To all the others, shame on you.

Tod J. Runyon

Spotsylvania