Originally Posted by SethAZ

I know what you mean about the MUP warrior. Only one of my long routes has two MUP sections of a combined 3-4 miles, with one 2-mile or so section being the busiest, and it can be nuts, especially now with so many families either out walking together or toodling along on their bikes together.

If you've ever had or observed a dog, they can be just lying there with the ears down flat on their heads or whatever, then they hear some noise and they pick their head up and their ears stand straight up and start scanning. My daughter and I called this "alert mode," and we had one dog in particular with normally very floppy ears, and when she went into alert mode her ears would strand straight up and rotate from side to side like a radar dish. That's exactly how I feel when I encounter others on the MUP, although I haven't got the ear dexterity to pull off the radar-dish scanning. It's especially the worst with kids, since they'll be swerving around from side to side completely oblivious, and often only their parents telling them to move over gets them to clear the path so I can pass safely. No matter how fast I was going, I'll slow way down to pass groups like these, simply because of how unpredictable they can be.

I'm going to be very careful about not saying that since evolution saw fit to involve dogs' ears so fundamentally in their alert mode that we must do that as well, though I do think there are enough parallels here to be worthy of consideration. Let the "yeah but whadabout ****" counterexamples from the peanut gallery begin...