I get buzzed by another cyclist on the Minuteman path.
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About jsallen
John S. Allen is the author or co-author of numerous publications about bicycling including Bicycling Street Smarts, which has been adopted as the bicycle driver's manual in several US states. He has been active with the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition since 1978 and served as a member of the board of Directors of the League of American Bicyclists from 2003 through 2009.
Idiots like that give bicycling a bad name. I suppose you could have shaded left and forced the dumb f*** to stop. It puts everyone else in danger to make allowances to get the idiot past you. $#@!@@#$
But if I’d shaded left, I might have sent him head-on into the approaching cyclists….or the dog walker on the grass. It’s fortunate that the pedestrian ahead on the right stepped out of the way, probably in response to my calling out “no, no, don’t, don’t.” If the poseur hadn’t been approaching, I would have called out instead “bicycle behind you” to alert the pedestrian.
I wish there was more time in situations like these, because whenever I have some idiot trying to do something stupid around me, all I get chance to say is either an expletive or an expletive followed by the word ‘idiot’. I just wish there was time to cite a couple of subsections of transportation law, quote a passage from the Driver’s Handbook, and to urge them to revisit traffic school and retake their driving test, THEN follow it up with the expletives and the character assassination. But there never is.
At least these days I have my trusty Airzound, which, when I use it in time, at least makes me feel as if I’ve done something to make them think twice next time they try to get me, my daughter or themselves killed.
That’s true, John.
What a douche! In England, we’d use a more colorful word beginning with the letter ‘C’ and ending in ‘T’, but it’s kinda taboo here.
But this illustrates the main reasons I avoid bike paths:
1. They are mostly not actually bike paths, and even if they are in theory, they are not in practice: they are multi-use paths and they are too narrow to accommodate so many different people going at so many different speeds.
2. Even if it were a ‘bikes only’ path, a 4ft lane is way too narrow for safe cycling.
We actually ran into a situation similar. Walking our dogs on the Canyon Rim Trail, a ten foot wide clearly labelled multiuse path (four by five foot signs at each end), Lance Wannabe came speeding around a sharp curve and with no time to avoid us, bailed into the gravel that lines the path edges. We looked at him and he looked at us, and I suggested that if he wanted to train that hard, get on the effing road.
By the way, and not to monopolize the discussion but to reply to Ian about designs. When the Canyon Rim Trail was built by Parks and Recreation, they did not pass the design through the Transportation Board or county traffic engineer for comment. I was chair of that board at the time and was livid when I saw what they had designed, at least from a transportation perspective.
Its a truly lovely and artistic path and probably would win awards for landscape architects, but, based on curve radii and blind curves, must be walked, jogged, or ridden slowly. Even though it connects all the new light industrial and commercial development along the NM 502 corridor, which is a bitch to ride on the highway for a host of reasons.
Last time I was riding on the Minuteman some dude came plowing through down in the aerobars…and this was past the Great Meadow so he wasn’t just using the path to get out of town and then get going on the workout. I’ll bet he gripes about cyclists when he’s doing his run training.
Actually, speaking of, John, have you seen the wetlands treatment on the Fitchburg Cutoff path? There’s the main multi-use path going through, and then boardwalk over the wetlands as an alternative ramble….and no “walk bikes” signs at the entrance to the boardwalk, just a nice row of bike parking to get the hint across. Brilliant.
Ian, I’m told “gent” is an acceptable substitute 😉
And second Khal on Canyon Rim. It’s honestly a little dicey at times at seven minute miles. But also very gorgeous, and just about the only “flat” option around. I did an 18-miler there with “only” 800′ of climb, vs. the one I did the previous week in Michigan with 170′ of climb (mostly a freeway overpass.)