Gas prices and my bike

So I bought a used bike from a local shop. Great deal, not pretty, but the best bike I've ever owned. It's a women's Giant. I've ridden to work (18 miles roundtrip) this week three days in a row. I'm proud of me! And it's a great ride (it's flat here in SC). But Florence, SC is not what you would call "bike-friendly." First, I have to ride on the shoulder of a very busy road (the ONLY road to the beach) because there are no bike lanes in Florence. It's OK because there is a very wide shoulder (most of the way). However, the shoulders are in various stages of disrepair. So today, as I gently swerved to miss a crack in the pavement-- I'm not kidding, I swerved maybe a foot on a five foot shoulder-- a woman in a mini van with a couple of kids just fell on her horn. Sigh. Nice role model...oh yeah, and her mini van had one of those "fish" on it. Jesus loves me too! From my house to the big beach road, I have to drive through a kind of dicey part of town. I'd never go through there after dark. I was asking a male bike rider about that part of town and told him that I was a little uncomfortable. He sort of admonished (maybe it was just his British accent) me and said, "They are just poor...,not bad." I said, "And how many times have you been called: honey, honeybaby, sweetheart, sweetthing, wooo-hoooo mama...??? It happens to me almost every day." You would think with these ungodly gas prices, things would change. So every time I'm flipped off by a person that obviously is compensating for something by driving one of those gigantic obscenities, I think, maybe they just paid $150 for a tank of gas and are taking it out on us poor peddlers.... "Stupid is as stupid does..."