"Rangersfan" wrote in message
...
"greggery peccary" .@. wrote in message
...

RANT WARNING!
i am a native arizonan now living in seattle. trying to ride a bicycle
there
was difficult at best. the streets are very wide but the average speed
on
surface roads might be over 50 mph, and everything is very spread out.
summers are difficult because it's dangerous to go on a long ride in the
dry
heat.
the southwestern cities from phoenix to texas are a cultural wasteland
and
are now full of giant vehicles and an arrogant, aggressive culture. the
dominant mode down there is a big texas-style '**** you i will do
anything
i
want-even if it means running you over with my mega truck/compensator'.
posers with cowboy hats and boots that never saw a ranch or roped a
calf,
and a big new truck that never hauled anything dirtier than their own
thoughts of racial, cultural and national superiority.
i still get down to phoenix area at least once a year to see my family.
it
pains me to go down there because it's getting worse. when i was a kid
that
city had about 500,000 inhabitants (1970's). now there are 3.5 million.
and
tucson is also growing wildly. boxes and strip malls as far as the eye
can
see.
LA isnt much better for bikes, but at least it's more interesting.
up the coast from there is much more bike friendly all the way to
vancouver
canada...but even in seattle i have problems with arrogant drivers who
dont
know the rules of the road and just random yahoos. (i think it's a
national
epidemic)
HTH
-alan

I'm from Texas and I have to agree. I love the weather down here, but I
hate the attitudes. The attitude of the average driver sucks. Most can't
drive their thumb up their...well, you get the idea...but still they want
to
drive way faster than the posted speed limit and zip in between traffic
like
they're really going somewhere faster than everyone else.

The heat is not really a problem once you get used to it. You just have
to
adequately hydrate yourself and travel earlier or later in the day. The
worst of it only lasts a couple of months and you have the rest of the
year
which is very mild. There are some suburban roads that have wide
shoulders
and the pace of building new bike trails has really picked up.



i should add also that once outside of the cities, the sw can be a great
place for biking. i often visit prescott and spent years in flagstaff where
the biking can be great (had some great trips up around sunset crater and
out near seligman on old 66!). i dont want to dis the whole area, just those
suburban cancers they call cities...but you didnt hear that from me