aplcr0331

You went 40mph downhill in the dirt...on this?



How long had you been riding the bike prior to this? Did the battery get you home? How long was the total ride? These bikes were $3K back in the mid 2000's, akin to a $6K bike today (like the one ridden by the high priced little crying ***** you dusted).

seypat

Is a 7 post internal sine-wave controller as powerful as a flux capacitor? I know the flux capacitor will take you to another dimension when you hit 88mph.

kbarch

I never said that riding with anyone was not hazardous. I only said that being a stranger doesn't make a rider more hazardous. It would be safer to draft a steady stranger whom you intently watch than it would be to follow a squirrely acquaintance with whom you idly chat. Typically, when strangers draft or allow themselves to be drafted, they do so in a deliberate and focused manner, and they don't "hang around" each other as friends and acquaintances often do. I think it's that hanging around that really gets hazardous, regardless of how skilled the riders happen to be - that's definitely when all the half-wheeling happens.

Anyhow - getting back to the original question about racing a random person... There's been a lot of talk about drafting and matching speeds, bridging gaps and breaking away - all mid-course kind of stuff, but what about "finishes" - town line sprints and such? It's hard to imagine a stranger not consenting to participate in that kind of thing. They may be kind of silly, but riders will either take the bait and sprint, or they'll decline - either way it's whichever the rider wants to do. I haven't had much if any experience with that, except on climbs. I won't argue about whether it's dangerous to sprint to lines with strangers, but I do think conditions/circumstances make all the difference, and deliberateness is essential. If you're going to be a show-off, you can't be tentative about it.

maddog56

If someone passes me (usually when I'm day dreaming) I take it as a challenge and the race is on.

grolby

100% endorse. Except that I am a bad person and will start deliberately riding over manhole covers, potholes, etc if I'm in a bad mood. I am not required to indulge some stranger's desire for social contact that he thinks trumps my desire to do my own ride, and I really resent the apparently very common belief both on BF and IRL that not indulging it makes me the jerk.

On one occasion, I told a stealth drafter that he was being very rude, and he gave me some whine about how he never gets to ride with people. Like that's somehow my problem, and drafting a stranger out for a workout is riding with someone. Make some friends, find a ride online, anything. If you crash a wedding and get called out on it, do you complain that you haven't been to a wedding in a long time? Good grief - yet this is the entitlement some people have.

Fortunately, though from reading BF you'd think secret wheelsuckers and other unwelcome "companions" trying to race you on rides are a constant danger, I've only encountered these people a handful of times on road rides in the last ten years. Fellow bike commuters trying to race the "fully kitted roadie" on the bike path, though, are a weekly occurrence. Sadly.

downhillmaster

kbarch

Yup, you're a bad person. But I confess, I am, too, in my own way.
No one is any more "entitled" to be alone on the road than they are to have amiable company along the way. It makes more sense to just consider ourselves fortunate when we have what we want, and it's only polite to apologize if we get in the way or disappoint others: "sorry for bothering you, I'll leave you alone" or "sorry, but I don't want company, I'll ride by myself, please." It's not our failure to indulge other people that makes us jerks, we're only jerks when we fail to politely acknowledge them, and we only make ourselves miserable when we stew in our resentments.

seypat

I have one of these installed on my steed. I never have a problem with others wanting to join my solo rides. It must be the intimidation factor.

kbarch

Does it come in carbon fiber? Is it street legal?

Rootman

This was years ago, my 'golden' summer as I call it. I rode nearly every day. I was in the best shape of my life. I was on a long straight stretch, doing pretty good for myself, keeping a steady pace and a good clip - for me at least. I passed an intersection and there was a girl sitting there waiting for me to pass. Now, this girl was stunning, she looked like something out of an old LOOK magazine. She was pale, almost alabaster, had on a cute pastel sun dress, had strawberry blond hair and bright red lipstick, big 'Jackie O' type sunglasses and a sunbonnet held on with a scarf all with little deck shoes. She was riding an old Schwinn girls bike, pastel as well, basket on the bars double swoop frame - the works. She literally took my breath away. I breezed past and didn't look back.

The road started to go uphill a bit. You can belch HTFU all you want at me, but me and uphill just don't get a long very well, so I started to slow. The grade increased and I slowed some more. All of sudden I heard KACHING-KACHING coming from behind me. Yep, it was her. She easily passed me and I stood up on the pedals trying to keep up but melted in another 50 yards. This was turning into steep dang incline. She was up and over the hill and long gone by the time I topped it. She must have legs like iron.

So, it was no real race, she smoked my easily. But I'm not upset. The small glimpses of her outstanding beauty carry with me to this day.

grolby

This is just weirdly orthogonal to the argument. Of course there are other people on the road who you have to share that space with. What no one is obliged to share is a conversation they didn't ask for, or their draft, or a fake race, or whatever. I'm not going to bite someone's head off if they say hello, a friendly greeting is perfectly appropriate. I've even let a stranger sit on my wheel after he said hello and asked; I'm not mean or dismissive in real life. But yes, here on BF and other parts of the Great Bicycle Intarwebs there does seem to be a sense of entitlement to the time and attention and personal space of absolutely every other person on a bike. Just witness the tooth gnashing over whether someone waved back or not. It grates. In my real world cycling life, as I said above, strangers are by and large polite and don't demand I validate them every time I go for a training ride. It's almost as though there's a social norm against bothering someone you don't know for no good reason! On the internet, though, the roadie out minding their own business is the villain - they're smug, elitist, they think they're so great. Or maybe they're just being tailed by some Fred who thinks he's got something to prove, or wants a stranger to solve his inability to find friends for him. On the rare occasions that happens, it's real annoying!

kbarch

What argument? Doesn't matter. But I do like your observation about the difference between all the drama people describe on the interwebs and the general lack of drama that we actually experience on the road - most of the time, anyhow. Of course, if there's no conflict, there's not much of a story, so sometimes we make it up.

wipekitty

Not really a race, but an interesting one happened today. I was cruising on a ~3 mile, mostly flat highway with a larger shoulder, when I heard WOOSH! and a guy flew by me pretty quickly. It was surprising, because I thought I was hammering along pretty good.

So of course I decided to push it and see if I could keep up. After maybe a minute the guy slowed down 1-2 MPH (not enough that I thought he might be doing intervals), at which point I got cranky because now I had to slow down to avoid leapfrogging or (my initial thought) wheelsucking a stranger. I just kept pace about 3 car lengths behind him, speeding up and slowing down to mimic his pace. That poor guy seemed pretty tired by the last part, which had a climb up a bridge, but I avoided passing him so as not to start drama.

I wanted to know who this bloke was, so I checked Strava flyby when I got home. Looks like he got his 3rd fastest time on the segment. (I did not.)

kbarch

Oh yeah - Strava segments. I think people race strangers on those ALL the time - not just virtually, but actually. Hardly a weekend goes by when I don't get an opportunity to "race" someone up a hill on some popular training route. I love it when I'm sort of dawdling up a hill and I hear someone coming up from behind.... No, I do NOT like people passing me on hills; four out of five times, I WILL wake up and I WILL drop them like a hot potato.