Blechh, spring!

Robin crap, potholes, belly flab, pond slush, park slime, pasty skin, allergies, crabgrass, and worst of all... cyclists.

They are everywhere, like earwigs in your garden. They monopolize streets, sneer and curse at drivers, career down sidewalks. It’s like they own the place. They are a radical sect.

Damn the bicycult.

And now City Hall wants to build them a $1.2-million shower, a sort of spa at Nathan Phillips Square, where they can lounge and plot their insurgency.

If council approves this, we might as well surrender and make the 401 one big bike lane.

Didn’t Lance Armstrong teach us anything?

Beware bicyclists. They will do anything to further their cult. They will not be happy until our roads are theirs and our cars are on blocks.

The only remedy, as it was for Armstrong, is a ban. I’d be willing to negotiate. A total street ban? Only on major thoroughfares? Just weekdays? Except roads that end at cliffs?

The nitty-gritty: Streets are designed for cars, not bikes. Especially in winter, which is most of the time.

The cyclist spa, of course, is but the latest outrage perpetrated by the bicycult.

I am reminded every time I venture on Eastern Ave., and hit that bottleneck where the Bike Lane To Nowhere suddenly pops up.

I live a block from Jarvis St., which has become a five-lane lightning rod in the Toronto bicycle debate.

Cyclists crowed when their mayor, David Miller, put in bike lanes, and cried when his successor, Rob Ford, took them out.

I bet if an Adam Vaughan type is next in the mayor’s chair, bikes will again rule Jarvis.

The City Hall cell of the bicycult will crib a mantra from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: Four wheels bad, two wheels good.

It won’t stop at Jarvis. I shudder to think if the next mayor is Glenn De Baeremaeker, who pedals in from Scarborough every day, though he must have switched to limo, since his expense account is often council’s heftiest.

Naturally, it would be sweet if this were a bicycle world, a utopia without noisy engines, jobs to get to, rain, snow, sleet, little kids, heavy things or car salesmen.

But it’s not and never will be, barring the Apocalypse.

Cars are common sense. They are our era’s horses. They’re also vastly greener and safer than your dad’s Buick. They will never go dinosaur, despite the bike cult’s best efforts.

Unless the rest of us drop our guard. Too bad we can’t borrow one of the boring machines from the Eglinton LRT and give cycles a network of tunnels and rabbit holes. They’d pop up like whack-a-moles.

But a simple ban is way cheaper.

Elsewhere, meanwhile, the bicycult is making inroads.

Just the other day, Saudi Arabia lifted its ban on female cyclists. Has the usually sensible House of Saud lost its marbles? True, these daring women on two wheels must dress head to toe, be in the company of a male and avoid areas prone to leering.

But I bet the incidence of bicycle accidents in Saudi Araba soars.

The Toronto bicycult says it is the answer to gridlock. I suppose that might be true, if we all rode bikes — see utopia reference above — but we’d also all have callouses, stopped backs and we’d take days to get anywhere.

On the other hand, I guarantee if we ban bicycles except on paths and erase all bike lanes, driving will get much easier.

The bicycult will suddenly need transport — which will help the TTC.

Everybody wins.

And the time for a ban is now, when bicycultists are still groggy from hiberation.

After April 21, it might be too late. The annual blessing of the bikes at Trinity St. Paul’s on Bloor St. that Sunday marks the launch of cycle season.

Or, as I call it, psycho season.

Mike Strobel’s column runs Wednesday to Friday, and Sunday. mike.strobel@sunmedia.ca, 416-947-2265 or twitter.com/strobelsun.