A beautiful day on the bike!

I had lent my truck to my daughter, and when she was done with it the choice to figure out how to pick it up incentivized me to get on the bike.  Really not a difficult decision when temperature is in the 70's with a light wind and abundant sunshine. 

Really the only negative is the traffic.  When I was in north Missouri over ten years ago, riding a bicycle was very pleasant.  A lot of paved roads with minimal traffic and courteous drivers.  I could also hear the traffic coming a mile away.  The only real down side was the fact that they generally used a less expensive paving process that they called "cold patch."  It was a mixture of tar and gravel that was generally not smooth by any definition.  It caused me to move away from a very ridged bike with small high pressure tires, to a more forgiving frame geometry with larger tires.

 When I moved to central Missouri the traffic was so much more intense.  There are still many back roads with light traffic, but usually in the ride there is a connector piece that has much higher traffic, and often little or no ride able shoulder.  The path to my daughter’s house has that dilemma.  I can ride eight to ten miles on a rather major two lane road before cutting off on a nice back road that brings me into Columbia on back streets, or I ride three miles of recently graded gravel to get on a series of smaller roads with less traffic.  Riding on the recently graded gravel on a thin tired bicycle is like riding on ball bearings.  It can be done, but it is certainly not easy or safe.  At any moment you can lose forward motion, or have too much.  Either causes a crash.

I had fixed the spoke on my drop bar road bike, and wanted to test this out.  It has 700X25 tires, not thin but getting there.  Not ideal on the gravel, so I decided to go on the more major road.  It is a nice road, wide gravel shoulders and great visibility.  I usually ride on the white line on the side of the road, after years of riding rollers I am comfortable with my stability on a bike, and do not have a fear of riding near a ditch or drop-off. I have learned on this road to ride fairly far into the lane.  If traffic comes behind me they must go wide around me, and as they come on me I move to the side giving myself the most space.  If I do not do this many drivers will not alter their lane at all, driving within inches of me. 

If traffic from in front and the rear come at the same time I will usually take the shoulder if that is possible, or I will stay wide so that the two cars don’t pass me at the same time.  On this ride I had two cars that decided to pass me anyway.  They were at different times, but both decided that they could pass me and the oncoming traffic with me half way in the lane.  They really have little appreciation for life, theirs, the drivers in the oncoming traffic or mine.  My little mirror on my glasses gives me a good idea of what is happening, and I usually go straight for the shoulder or ditch.

I also don’t mess with semi’s, they have enough wind suck that it makes it dangerous, and most of the drivers have no idea where their rear wheels are, or if they do they do not have any appreciation for the trouble they will be in after they run over me, kind of ruins their good driving record and makes insurance a much harder thing to find.  Of course at that point I will be dead and can only haunt them for the rest of their days……

You can usually tell the rural drivers from the city drivers.  Rural drivers will give you the space and wave at you.  They think you are crazy for riding a bike, and they were brought up not to mess with women, children and crazy people.  City people don’t even know you are there.  I don’t know what they are looking at, but it is not what is on the road in front of them, and they certainly are not looking at the scenery.  Most of the time when I find someone being inconsiderate they have a cell phone pressed to their ear. 

The thing that burns me the most is when you have a car that runs you off the road, and you look up in time to see the little Christian fish symbol on the back of the car……so much for their care for fellow man…..