AG: Aunt Granny's Advice, or How to become an elderly cyclist:

On Sun, 26 Oct 2014 00:17:36 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:


When someone is stuck behind you and can't get around, keep your eyes
peeled for a place to pull off and let him pass.

Never mind that it's the only polite thing to do. Never mind that
most state laws say that slow-moving vehicles must not hold up traffic
any more than they have to. You want those guys out in front where
you can keep an eye on them!


Well stated and undoubtedly makes more sense then to ride out in the
middle of the road with a long tail of infuriated drivers that you
can't watch without turning your head :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

Joy Beeson wrote in
news
When someone is stuck behind you and can't get around, keep your eyes
peeled for a place to pull off and let him pass.

Never mind that it's the only polite thing to do. Never mind that
most state laws say that slow-moving vehicles must not hold up traffic
any more than they have to. You want those guys out in front where
you can keep an eye on them!

Chaplin's Philosophy for Bicycling:

1. Keep out from underneath other vehicles.
2. Do not unreasonably impede anyone else's progress.
3. Yield the right of way to the less aware so that you can keep them
where you can see and then avoid them as required.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

On 10/25/2014 11:17 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:

When someone is stuck behind you and can't get around, keep your eyes
peeled for a place to pull off and let him pass.

.... but don't endanger yourself for someone else's convenience.


Never mind that it's the only polite thing to do. Never mind that
most state laws say that slow-moving vehicles must not hold up traffic
any more than they have to. You want those guys out in front where
you can keep an eye on them!

I've heard the following: "Ride far enough right to be courteous. But
first, ride far enough left to be safe." (Brits and Aussies need to
reverse right vs. left, of course.)


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Sun, 26 Oct 2014 14:52:20 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/25/2014 11:17 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:

When someone is stuck behind you and can't get around, keep your eyes
peeled for a place to pull off and let him pass.

... but don't endanger yourself for someone else's convenience.


Never mind that it's the only polite thing to do. Never mind that
most state laws say that slow-moving vehicles must not hold up traffic
any more than they have to. You want those guys out in front where
you can keep an eye on them!

I've heard the following: "Ride far enough right to be courteous. But
first, ride far enough left to be safe." (Brits and Aussies need to
reverse right vs. left, of course.)


I prefer the "Old Farmer's Advice". "Never mess with anything bigger
or meaner then you are".
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Mon, 27 Oct 2014 09:14:17 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

I prefer the "Old Farmer's Advice". "Never mess with anything bigger
or meaner then you are".

I prefer "ride far enough to the left that they can see that you have
moved over for them". They are more likely to realize that you are as
far right as is safe if they see you move.

Also helps to turn the head as if just now noticing them before
shifting right, to emphasize that you are moving for the overtaker's
convenience, but I'm always and forever forgetting that part.


--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

On 10/27/2014 7:27 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 27 Oct 2014 09:14:17 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

I prefer the "Old Farmer's Advice". "Never mess with anything bigger
or meaner then you are".

I prefer "ride far enough to the left that they can see that you have
moved over for them". They are more likely to realize that you are as
far right as is safe if they see you move.

Also helps to turn the head as if just now noticing them before
shifting right, to emphasize that you are moving for the overtaker's
convenience, but I'm always and forever forgetting that part.

Good idea.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Nothing will guarantee that you won't get run over. There were two
incidents within walking distance of my house where a driver came
right through the wall of a building.

By great good luck, the boy who usually slept in the room that one
driver demolished was elsewhere that night.

The other driver smashed through the wall of a tavern. With even
better luck, nobody was in the space the car came to occupy -- one
patron told many times how he had been about to walk through that
space when an acquaintance spoke to him and he turned back.

Sometimes the inhabitants of the building aren't lucky, and then the
incident gets into the newspapers.

So does this mean that taking a nap in the middle of a road is just as
sensible as sleeping in your own bed?

You can't guarantee absolute safety, but learning how things work and
behaving sensibly can improve your odds.


--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

Don't count on water fountains in public parks; they are apt to be
turned off in the fall.

Once I found that a special event had put the only water fountain in
the City-County Athletic Complex behind a paid-admission fence; on a
previous occasion I had arrived to find that the other fountain had
been ripped out because, the groundskeeper said, there was frequently
a line to use it.


--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

One day while strolling down the center of a recreationway without a
thought in my head, I was startled by the whirr of off-road tires to
my right: two bike riders were overtaking me.

I was only mildly startled, so it was only mildly rude -- but suppose
a squirrel in the trees to my right had done something cute and I had
swerved in that direction to look? Both riders could have ended up in
the hospital or, with only a little bad luck, the morgue.

Before you overtake someone, MAKE SOME NOISE. "Hi!" is popular for
this purpose when overtaking another bicycle on the road. When
overtaking a pedestrian on a recreationway, I like to give a little
more information. After experimenting with many phrases, I settled on
"I am on your left". This usually elicits a smile and a step to the
right.

Cyclists who train in a pack often say "left!" or "on your left!" when
overtaking. If you address either remark to a random stranger, he
will jump to his left.

By the way, *always* overtake on the left, unless you are across the
pond or in the 5-Boro Bike Tour. On that tour, the cry when
overtaking was "Keep Straight!" (It would have been a *much* more
pleasant ride if they had told us that the front was being motor-paced
to a maximum speed of six miles per hour. For one thing, I'd have
worn walking shoes.)

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

Joy Beeson wrote in
:


One day while strolling down the center of a recreationway without a
thought in my head, I was startled by the whirr of off-road tires to
my right: two bike riders were overtaking me.

I was only mildly startled, so it was only mildly rude -- but suppose
a squirrel in the trees to my right had done something cute and I had
swerved in that direction to look? Both riders could have ended up in
the hospital or, with only a little bad luck, the morgue.

Before you overtake someone, MAKE SOME NOISE. "Hi!" is popular for
this purpose when overtaking another bicycle on the road. When
overtaking a pedestrian on a recreationway, I like to give a little
more information. After experimenting with many phrases, I settled on
"I am on your left". This usually elicits a smile and a step to the
right.

Cyclists who train in a pack often say "left!" or "on your left!" when
overtaking. If you address either remark to a random stranger, he
will jump to his left.

By the way, *always* overtake on the left, unless you are across the
pond or in the 5-Boro Bike Tour. On that tour, the cry when
overtaking was "Keep Straight!" (It would have been a *much* more
pleasant ride if they had told us that the front was being motor-paced
to a maximum speed of six miles per hour. For one thing, I'd have
worn walking shoes.)

If you're on foot, cyclists should overtake you on your right and they
should sound a bell or other warning close enough that you should hear it
but far enough away that they will still have time to evade should you
move to the right.

Multiuse pathways are like rural roads, and the watchword should be that
wheeled traffic keeps right and foot traffic keep left. When suburds
without sidewalks were in vogue in the '50s and '60s, the Ontario Ministry
of Transport ran public service ads on TV exhorting us, "Where there are
no sidewalks, walk on the left facing traffic." I would propose that modus
vivendi be observed on multi-use paths.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)