Riding on borrowed time

I have just bought a bike. This excites me very much because riding a bike is not only fun, but it makes my commute much shorter... or so I thought. In the trip from my apartment to my work I have to hop at least 5 curbs before I even make it to the halfway point, which is the city center. Once I get here things tend to slow down because I have to navigate through the previously mentioned "drunk walking people" that move all over the place except for a straight line. After I find my way out of the center then I encounter the parking lots. Now I do not actually mean there are parking lots that I have to cut through. What I mean is that the sidewalks here are just used as parking lots. I have always noticed this but eventually it became second nature as I am walking to go past them, it was easy. On a bike when you are trying to get from one side to the other and 4 cars are parked in a way and the only way to get past them is going around the entire thing, it sucks. Cars park in a weird maze kind of way that usually blocks at least one of the drivers in but as long as you can get out who cares neli? It is very dissappointing that in most cases I have to actually get out onto the street to find any room to ride my bike and because of this I then have to deal with Macedonian drivers. Macedonian drivers are fucking horrible. Im sorry for the foul language but you can ask any Macedonian and that is one of the first things they will agree with. If any of you can remember seeing the very first fast and the furious movie? Do you remember coming out of the theater and how every single person felt they needed to drive as fast as they can and swerve back and forth? That will give you a very good representation of how the drivers are here. They swerve back and forth through lanes at pretty high speeds for no other reason than they think its fun. This leads me to another point. Yesterday while walking around a government official and his police convoy drove past me. This happens quite often actually. Some tinted out Benz's or BMW's will have their sirens blaring and go speeding past you and what can only be said an extremely dangerous speed in the city of Skopje. If any Des Moines Police officer was caught going this speed for any other reason than an actually emergency, they would be fired. Thats how fast they are going. So my friend told me they have to do this because they work for the government and they need to take care of important things. Skopje is not a large city. To get from the center to the edge of the city may take 10 mins if there is heavy traffic. Usually it takes 5 mins by car and thats it. These guys are just going so fast because they can it seems and its interesting when I tell you this next part. So my friend told me that they have the police escort them everywhere now because driving that fast is dangerous so the escort helps. Another reason why they have the escort now is because the first president of Macedonia was horrible injured in an accident driving those speeds. So to sum up, the drivers are crazy, the politicians drive at ridiculous speeds even though the first president was nearly killed doing the same thing and finally all the sidewalks are just parking spots.