Originally Posted by scotton

So here is how I have won the hearts and minds on my local routes. It's called the smile and wave. It's pretty simple. When a motorist is coming towards you, or at a cross street waiting for you to cross, take your left hand off of the bars, extend it up to approximately ... etc

Originally Posted by scotton

.......Do you shave your legs to make yourself more "aero"?....

Originally Posted by Digital_Cowboy

Actually, from talking with a nurse a while back. That is just a myth, the hair on one's legs (male) will keep bacteria, etc. out. And make for longer healing times. Don't believe me call or drop into your neighborhood clinic and ask them.

Originally Posted by SBRDude

Lots of assumptions here. People don't know their neighbors very well. People are going to the same place. People have the same schedules. People don't already try to be neighborly and helpful, carpool, etc. Public transportation is available. People don't already plan trips to do errands all in one shot instead of running in and out all day long from their house.

Originally Posted by genec

You are saying that the hair is good? Not sure with your statement there.

However one thing I'd like to introduce to support the healing aspect of shaved legs is the fact that before any invasive surgery, one is "prep'ed," which usually includes shaving the area about to undergo that surgery.

For the record, I don't shave my legs... heck, I don't even shave my face.

Originally Posted by Digital_Cowboy

Originally Posted by Digital_Cowboy

+100

If a motorist waits for me to cross an intersection I'll give them a wave, smile and a thank you.

Originally Posted by genec

I'd say a few assumptions have been made, sure; but then again there is some basis for these assumptions... There are a lot of SOVs on the road, and folks indeed don't know their neighbors today as they may have in the past when it was more common to "share the load" for things like grocery runs... We do this only with our closest neighbor... so we do benefit a bit from that sharing. And I have to admit that my wife DOES go out, get something come back and go out again... she often doesn't consider the time and fuel expended on her errands. I tend to think the other way, due to a need to more efficiently use my limited time and effort on a bike. No doubt there are others like my wife... the classic "take the kids to school" shuffle is a great example... often school is not that far away, why not bike with the kids to school... opps have to use the car.

The fact is that we are an auto centric society in the US, and NOT thinking of using the car is counter to the convenience that is built in to so much of our environment by that auto centric design. But the other fact is that the resources to continue this modality are limited... yet, as a society, we treat them as if they are endless.

Originally Posted by genec

I'd say a few assumptions have been made, sure; but then again there is some basis for these assumptions... There are a lot of SOVs on the road, and folks indeed don't know their neighbors today as they may have in the past when it was more common to "share the load" for things like grocery runs... We do this only with our closest neighbor... so we do benefit a bit from that sharing. And I have to admit that my wife DOES go out, get something come back and go out again... she often doesn't consider the time and fuel expended on her errands. I tend to think the other way, due to a need to more efficiently use my limited time and effort on a bike. No doubt there are others like my wife... the classic "take the kids to school" shuffle is a great example... often school is not that far away, why not bike with the kids to school... opps have to use the car.

The fact is that we are an auto centric society in the US, and NOT thinking of using the car is counter to the convenience that is built in to so much of our environment by that auto centric design. But the other fact is that the resources to continue this modality are limited... yet, as a society, we treat them as if they are endless.

Originally Posted by scotton

As the OP, let me clarify a few misconceptions that seem to have arisen from my original post.

I'm a roadie (apparently a long winded one).

I know why cyclists shave their legs, I was poking fun at the people that don't seem to understand why they do it, they just got a free razor in their "New Roadie Bag". If you crash often enough to justify shaving your legs and you don't draw a paycheck from riding your bike, please wear a warning flag on your back that says "I am a crash monkey with poor bike handling skills" so that other cyclists know to avoid you.

I don't really care where you ride in the lane. I general ride on the part with the fewest potholes.

I don't care what you wear, but you have to admit that your Team Astana "kit" looks ridiculous to most humans as well as a lot of dogs.

If you got a smile from my post, I'm glad. If you got irate and defensive from my post, you were probably the target audience.

It doesn't have to always be bro rage and lane angst, with the Alpe d'Huez grimace and the Italian hand gestures. It's only us versus them if you decide that there is an us and a them.

I reserve the right to have this post deleted the next time some half-drunk roofer puts me into a tree, but until then the smiling and waving makes me feel good on the bike, and I hope it is raising my local level of bike awareness.

Love, peace and chicken grease.

Originally Posted by SBRDude

I live in a neighborhood that takes me about 7-10 minutes to get to the nearest shopping areas, and since I am too lazy and bored to make several trips to stores, I usually wait until I can run a few errands and then do them all at once. But, I often have a relatively tight schedule and I seriously doubt I could share shopping trips with any of my neighbors. On the other hand, since I am a little league coach and some of the kids are in my neighborhood, I do try to take some of them with me so their parents won't have to make unnecessary trips (the other parent can then pick them up on their way home or I can bring them back, but parents usually want to watch the kids play). Where I live, it's not feasible for kids to ride to the schools - the roads are winding, hilly, and have no shoulder. I am an experienced rider and feel comfortable riding there, but I wouldn't want kids to do it, especially not young ones. As far as knowing my neighbors, of course I don't know them all, but I know a lot of them and one of the reasons I like living where I do is because of the community. There is zero public transportation where I live and none nearby. My guess is that you'd have to go about 2 or 3 miles to find a bus, at a minimum.

Anyway, we could argue about this all night, but I just get tired of the self-righteous rhetoric used by some people (not you) to bash situations they really don't even understand. Sure, there are lots of stupid and lazy suburbanites, but there are also a lot of idiot cyclists and it doesn't make any sense to pretend that either of them are representative of their larger communities. It's just more of the 'us vs. them' finger pointing.

Originally Posted by Chris516

Quite frankly, unless a motorist also rides a bike, they are untrainable.

Originally Posted by Chris516

Quite frankly, unless a motorist also rides a bike, they are untrainable.

Originally Posted by genec

Sure, generalization is just that... it is a wide brush that paints a big picture that may not directly apply to any of us, but probably covers something that we can relate to. I don't for instance have 2.5 kids (as the US census once declared... ) in fact I know of no one with .5 kids... yet the picture painted by the US census did tend to somewhat cover what most of us consider "the normal situation."

Of course individually our mileage may vary... but the truth is that our autocentric society has painted (to continue to use that metaphor) us into some rather amusing corners... such that people may drive just blocks for a 6 pack, or that neighborhood schools are actually across town, or that the very traffic we worry about our kids encountering at school is parents dropping off kids.

Somehow we have to modify this picture... and cycling as often as possible for local errands is just one way to do this modification. On an individual level, we may not all be able to make the same changes... and certainly don't live the same lives... but a change in attitude is the first step. And moving away from autocentric thinking IS a change in attitude.

Originally Posted by scotton

I reserve the right to have this post deleted the next time some half-drunk roofer puts me into a tree, but until then the smiling and waving makes me feel good on the bike, and I hope it is raising my local level of bike awareness.

Love, peace and chicken grease.

Originally Posted by chipcom

now you went and pissed off roofers, chicken hawks and PETA!

Originally Posted by scotton

I love cycling. I love ride bikes, fixing bikes, watching bikes on TV. When it comes to bikes, I'm in. However, I don't subscribe to the bike vs car war that some people are constantly beating the drum for.

Don't get me wrong. I have been run into the ditch twice, doored a few times, swerved into, been used for beer bottle target practice, etc. But the fact of the matter is, I have 5 bikes and 2 cars, and I would give up all 5 bikes before I would consider giving up either car. So if we are at war, I'm not sure whose side I'm on. And just to blur the lines even further, 90% of the open garages I ride past have bikes in them. And cars. What the what?

Here is an uncomfortable truth. As much as I love cycling, a lot of cyclist are "ducci baggos". Have you ever referred to your wattage, and you aren't an electrician? Do you shave your legs to make yourself more "aero"? Do you refer to clothing as "kit"?

Guess what. You may be a ducci baggo. And that's fine. I love that there is a group of people making me look less like a dork for wearing black lycra shorts every morning.
But think on this. If we are at war, it is a war of sticks and rocks versus tanks and bazookas. Do we really need our fellow cavemen pissing off the guys in the tanks?

So here is how I have won the hearts and minds on my local routes. It's called the smile and wave. It's pretty simple. When a motorist is coming towards you, or at a cross street waiting for you to cross, take your left hand off of the bars, extend it up to approximately ear height and rotate the wrist 2-5 times. Try to keep your hand relaxed to prevent cramping. Now for the hard part. Simultaneously, lift the corners of your mouth and show a few teeth. The expression I shoot for is "Hey! I'm on a bike! Isn't that fun?! Yippee!" You will feel like a doofus at first, but remember this: you are wearing skin tight clothes, shoes that you can't walk in and a plastic hat. You gave up on cool when you left the house. A finger flick or micro-head bob will not get you the results we are shooting for. Every dead squirrel on the road flicked and bobbed, and look what it did for them. If they would have smiled and waved, they would still be alive.

I have gotten to the point where only one old man in a white Dodge pickup won't smile and wave back. So I've cut down on the number of people that might knock me into a ditch some day to one. I like those odds.

If you are halfway up a wall, in granny gear and starting to think about hiking the rest of the way, you get a pass. No one wants to see the expression you are going to try to pass off as a smile.

Golf used to be a dork sport, too, until Tiger came along. Lance tried to un-dork cycling, and he has helped humanize it for a lot of America. Walk into a cattlemen's bar in Lubbock and ask the old men if they know who Lance Armstrong is and most of them will at least know what sport he's famous for. But it still takes effort from the grassroots. If you insist on wearing the silly clothes, at least try to appear friendly and self-depreciating.

And if you ride in my neck of the woods, please wave to the motorists. It took a long time to train them.

Originally Posted by scotton

As the OP, let me clarify a few misconceptions that seem to have arisen from my original post.

I'm a roadie (apparently a long winded one).

I know why cyclists shave their legs, I was poking fun at the people that don't seem to understand why they do it, they just got a free razor in their "New Roadie Bag". If you crash often enough to justify shaving your legs and you don't draw a paycheck from riding your bike, please wear a warning flag on your back that says "I am a crash monkey with poor bike handling skills" so that other cyclists know to avoid you.

I don't really care where you ride in the lane. I general ride on the part with the fewest potholes.

I don't care what you wear, but you have to admit that your Team Astana "kit" looks ridiculous to most humans as well as a lot of dogs.

If you got a smile from my post, I'm glad. If you got irate and defensive from my post, you were probably the target audience.

It doesn't have to always be bro rage and lane angst, with the Alpe d'Huez grimace and the Italian hand gestures. It's only us versus them if you decide that there is an us and a them.

I reserve the right to have this post deleted the next time some half-drunk roofer puts me into a tree, but until then the smiling and waving makes me feel good on the bike, and I hope it is raising my local level of bike awareness.

Love, peace and chicken grease.