Roody

I know there are a lot of cool people on this forum, and I bet you all hang out with other cool people. So I think it will be interesting to hear about some of the people you ride with. Maybe you will tell us what makes the person a good (or bad) riding companion and why you ride with them. Or maybe you have a little anecdote about them, or about a ride you took together.

Steely Dan

greater than 90% of my riding is solo, because the vast majority of my riding comes from daily commuting (28 miles per day roundtrip). i do go on occasional weekend rides with my girlfriend, but she is a much weaker cyclist than i am, so those are VERY slow, relaxed, recreational rides that are more about us spending time together than they are about getting some serious riding in. but at least she does like to bike, even if slowly, so i am quite grateful that we can partake in one of my favorite activities together.

i do like to ride really fast, but i've never taken very strongly to the group ride thing. i think it's because i've never really viewed cycling as social time; i treat it more selfishly as my alone time where i can clear my head through the meditation of spinning my legs without being hassled by the presence of anyone else.

ReinderDijkhuis

On my commutes, I ride alone, though my project coordinator may join me once every few months or so. Most other journeys are with my wife and/or other members of the family.

chasm54

Mostly I ride alone. However, there are a few people I go out with occasionally. One is a woman I used to work with. She'd never been a cyclist until a few of us planned to take a couple of days off work and ride a popular route across the UK, 145 miles from west coast to east coast in the north of England over some fairly serious hills. She trained for it for a few weeks and completed it in some style - not bad for a woman in her fifties who hadn't been on a bike since she was a kid.

Not only did she get the bug, she introduced her husband to cycling. Last November the three of us joined a group riding 300 miles in Tanzania to raise money for a charity. She's a tough cookie, at the end of the second day she had to be treated for heat exhaustion but she was back on the bike the following morning.

We ride together every couple of weeks or so. Not terribly fast, just a relaxing twenty miles or so to lunch and a still more relaxing twenty miles back. Makes a sociable change from my usual solitary training rides.

Booger1

Most of my friends are married or dead(or both).I'd like to ride my 50 year old friend.......actually two 25 year old twins!

I don't ride with anyone on a regular basis,been there,done that.I enjoy going at my own pace,as slow as it may be.

It's better to remain quiet and be thought a fool......Than to speak up and remove all doubt!

Caretaker

I commute alone but at weekends I usually go with a couple of friends for a 3,4 or 5 hour cycle with refreshments and a natter thrown in.

What makes a good cycling companion? Must be easy going and have a sense of humour.

Anecdote? Once was cycle-touring in Sicily with my mate and one evening we met a nice German lady in a restaurant. The vino flowed and my friend was getting a bit tipsy. Suddenly he announced "bye the way, we're not gay but my friend here is showing tendencies of late." The lady stood up, said she needed to get up early and left.

Spudd

I commute alone (as I'm sure most commuters do). Aside from commuting my husband and I usually ride together. We haven't tried to find any group rides or anything - neither of us is a racer-type and I don't think group rides where you just tool around are very common.

We went on a 1900 km ride across Sweden in August. It was fun and challenging. He found it a lot easier than I did, which was a little frustrating for both of us at times, as he felt I was slowing him down and I felt I was going faster than I wanted to, in order to keep up. However marital bliss prevailed, I gave him the heaviest panniers and he agreed not to fuss if I fell behind.

wahoonc

Me, Myself and I ride together...plenty room on the bike.

I do ride with a couple of vintage groups. I like the meandering rides, quite often referred to as herding cats.

Aaron

gerv 

Of course, I usually ride alone, but lately I have been riding back from my Saturday gig at the bike co-op with one of the volunteer mechanics. He's retired at 61 and volunteers three days a week. He's very car light and has some nifty bikes too. A cool dude overall.

There are a few people around who don't travel everywhere by car...

dcrowell

There's a group of us (2-4 depending on availability) that usually get together several times a month in all kinds of weather. We do gravel rides, road rides, and the occasional off-road ride. We do morning coffee rides and evening pub rides. One of my favorite rides was a freezing rain/snowy day in February where we stopped often for beer and pizza.

Our pace is usually slow-ish, but sometimes we do long miles (we've done a century). We've done a camping trip and have another planed later this month.

Oh, and we're planning on doing the Gravel Grovel race this year.

I'm the only-car free one in the group. The others are married. All but one have kids. One lives the "typical suburban soccer parent" lifestyle.

There's also a car-free group, but we rarely ride together. We meet up for food & beer once a month though.

cyclokitty 

I ride alone. I once went on a bike ride with my best friend and her boyfriend but it wasn't much fun. She didn't dress for the chilly weather and complained the entire ride of the cold, she worried about her car parked on a side street while we were cycling, and our day long ride turned out to only be a couple of hours because she and her boyfriend were going out for dinner. The worst part was her boyfriend refusing to ride on the street (quiet, residential streets that are part of the city's bike routes) and rode (fast) on the sidewalks as well as riding thru stop signs and zipping around pedestrians. It was disappointing because I was excited about sharing one of my favourite routes but had to make new plans because she didn't tell me that she'd changed her plans. We haven't ridden since because she likes owning a bike but doesn't like actually riding it.

Yes, I am still mad about that day.

davidmcowan

Fun question Roody, interesting to see everyone's responses.

I spend a lot of time riding with my little girl in tow. My wife joins us about a quarter of the time and then maybe about 10 percent of my rides are spent with friends who share the love of the bicycle. I tend to be far more utilitarian in my riding so my only frustration with others comes about when I ride with people who ride for the race/pace and not for the company. I quickly lose patience with that.

bragi

Like everyone else so far, most of my rides are solo, riding to work or doing errands. I do sometimes ride with coworkers, which is fun, but these tend to be very short rides to the pub. My SO and I sometimes ride together, but slowly and only in good weather, and, in all honesty, she only does it because I enjoy it. Left on her own, she'd rather just walk or drive. Most of my longtime friends are not cyclists; a few of them silently think I'm a bit of a lunatic because I ride almost everywhere I go.

I like riding with others, but it's a little hard for me to find like-minded cyclists, and, to be honest, I'm not terribly eager to find too many more cycling companions anyway. I'm a bit of an oddity in the US cycling world: not a novice by any means, but also not a person who wants to wear full kit and ride a light-weight, totally unloaded bike purely for recreation. I love riding a bike, but enjoy it even more if it involves an actual destination or purpose.

hammandegger

Usually nobody.

I'm like Bragi. When I ride it is to accomplish something. Like getting groceries or to run an errand.

Sometimes on the trail when somebody is going the same direction as me, and we are traveling at around the same rate of speed, I will have a conversation with them.

Rona

I ride alone a lot, but on weekends it's with the hubby. Sometimes with my kids.

chasm54

I can see how you wouldn't want to ride with a dead person. What's the objection to riding with the married?

dcrowell

Married people have fewer opportunities to get out and ride all day without consulting "the calendar".

cooker

I'm a bit of a loner by nature, equally happy with or without people. One of my kids used to do the annual Ride for Heart with me, but after 6 or 7 years he's done his filial duty, and another one joined me this year. I sometimes participate in other event rides, like the mass commute during bike week, or "the Tooker" - a demonstration ride advocating for converting Toronto's main east/west street into a bikeway, and happily chat with whoever is alongside me. However, on a day to day basis I ride alone.

And I like it.

bjjoondo 

We were members of a local cycling club but got tired of the "haul butt, get coffee, haul butt back to load the bike on the car" routine! So now it's just by myself or with the wife. I'm medical retried so I do all the "errands" by bike or walking, the wife commutes to work via Bus or bike, as we don't own a car. I guess I'm in the "slow" bunch, I don't do "training rides" but when the wife and I ride, it's purely for enjoyment, weither just local or trying a bit of "touring" that we have the time and funds for". Would be nice to find a "ridding buddy" during the week days but so far either they all ride "too fast" or far to "short" so I'm alone but enjoying my cycling time.

Roody

My favorite riding buddy is my grown-up son, Jerry.

Anecdote: After several months in the hospital and nursing home after a severe auto accident, Jerry had his first Physical Therapy session. He was frustrated when he couldn't even turn the pedals on the exercise bike, and the therapist said he should not ride the bike anyway for a while. So Jerry said, "They don't know what they're doing so I will do my own PT. You always told me that riding a bike is the best exercise, and I think you're right about that."

After a couple weeks I convinced Jerry to return to the professional PT. "Fine, but I'm riding my bike there to show them how wrong they were." I was sure he wouldn't be able to ride the 4 miles to the hospital--he was still using a walker--but I reluctantly agreed to meet him so we could ride together. He wasn't at our meeting place. Worried, I sped to the hospital as fast as I could. There was Jerry, standing by the bike rack with a huge grin on his face. "What took you so long? I've been secretly riding my bike a little bit more every day, and now I'm pretty good. See, I told them I knew that a bike was the best exercise!"

That about sums up Jerry--his courage, his self-reliance, and his faith that bikes are "the best way to exercise and the best way to get most places." Who wouldn't want to ride with somebody like Jerry? (Besides he can do a roadside tire change in less than 3 minutes.)

chasm54

Maybe. In my experience they're quite glad of the excuse. My own most frequent riding buddy is a married woman - see post#4 above. Sometimes her husband comes along, mostly not.

jebbesen

I usually ride with my friend Mary Jane

j/k I never plan ahead so when I want to ride I ride.

cooker

Do your plans depend at all on Mary Jane's availability, or is there no problem there?

Roody

That reminds me of my friend Tony--great guy to ride with even if he's totally a stoner.

I remember one time when we rode across the city right after a big ice storm. I'm trudging along on my studded tires, slow and timid. Tony's handling his little BMX bike with bald tires like he's ice-dancing with it. He was literally riding circles around me. To stop his bike he put his foot down and threw himself into a controlled sideways skid. I fell a few times but Tony fell only once--and I think that might have been staged. His fall was preceded by a fantastic block-long skid, followed by another skid of twenty feet directly on his butt.

Fortunately, there were no cars around because it was too icy for them.

Booger1

I don't have any objection to riding around with my dead friends,their still my friends,but the police might.

As much as I like my friends' wives,ain't none of them going to let us do what we did when we were single......Just a slight mention of some of the stuff we did would be grounds for divorce.....