One Clydesdale’s Journey

I know you’ve all seen the bumper sticker that reads “Share the Road with Bikes” and it is an important one. Cars seem to either give us no respect what so ever or just way to much when we are on the road.

Take the other day for example;
I was riding down the parkway and approaching the road that I wanted to turn left on. I checked behind me and there was no traffic coming up from behind me, so I move to the far left side of the traffic lane and signaled my intention to turn left.

I still had about a half of a block to go; but I was moving along at about 17mph, so I felt that it would be able to get out of the way quickly enough if any traffic did come from behind me.

There was a single car coming towards me, but he was going to reach the “T” intersection before me since he was about the same distance away from it as I was. That also meant that there was no need for me to adjust my speed since he was clearly going faster than I was.

He, however, continued to slow down as he got closer to the intersection and I had to finally start to slow down as well. By the time I got to the point where I was ready to turn he had no come to a dead stop in the road and just looked at me.

I’m no fool, he had no blinker on and even if he did he still would have had the right a way (based on all known traffic laws that I’m familiar with), so I finally had to come to a quick and sudden stop.

And go figure, a car had now come from behind me and also had to come to a stop since I was in the way.

It was at this point that they guy who was headed towards me suddenly decided to signal that I should go ahead and make my turn in front of him.

I politely told him that he was an idiot and that he needed to drive his car correctly or just park it. Okay, okay, it may not have been all that polite, but you get the idea.

In any event, this prompted him to put on his blinker and make his right turn.

Why he did that, or would even think about doing that is beyond me. You certainly wouldn’t do that for another car!

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the people riding the bikes can be no angels either. But I’ll save those stories for another time.

So what does this have to do with training? Plenty!

Shelly and I logged over 60 miles on our bikes this weekend. And that’s just one of the many stories that I could tell you about from this weekend alone.

And we’re not the only ones out there.

So keep an eye out for bikes, but don’t be foolish about how you share the road with them.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training