OMG, so sorry your trip was marred by a bunch of morons. (((((hugs))))) and glad that you're safe.

No guns for me, skeered of 'em. Would probably shoot myself in the foot if I did.

Carry a cell phone and have the local police dispatch number programed in. Calling 911 gets you who knows where and 3 misstransfers later you're at the local PD. I keep the PD for the city I live in and the city I work in programmed into my cell. If I was touring would probably get a local number for one there.

My alien tool has a knife, it's funny that we're talking about this I just reached my 10 year service anniversary at work and we have a choice of lovely gifts. My best friend at work said
"What? You didn't choose the pearls?"
"no, I got the buck knife with the leather scabard. I don't have an angora bike jersey to go with the pearls"

anyways....

Ok, going there again. My "other" sport is Aikido, a Japanese martial art, derived from Jiu Jitsu it's deeply rooted in a philosophy of non violence. Our aim is to defuse the situation and actually protect the assailant by causing minimal harm. Some people call the art "dance like" but it is devestatingly effective and particularly with multiple attackers.

I've been training since about 1979-80.

I hope I never ever have to "use it"....again, that's not the goal. I just love to train, those "ah hah, that's how it works" moments.

But let's go there shall we? You absolutely did the best thing you could. Seeing the bigger bike those jerks probably presumed a man was there, they are drunks, they are chicken s*** and they left you alone.

You survived, you win!

There is no way I could break down years of training to a single post or even a book. And I probably would not have done better than you. But if I distill the training down to a post it would be this.

You always want to avoid conflict, diffuse the situation, leave. These days for one thing you don't know who's armed. Who knew Queen has the gun rack attachment on her bike?

If you find yourself in a situation where there is no way out but to fight:

1) make as much noise as you possibly can, yell, scream, keep doing that continually
2) keep moving by that I mean fighting
3) repeat steps 1 & 2 until they are not a threat anymore and you can take that anyway you want ie: you've got away and are in a safe place or they are not a threat anymore.

Remember for one thing you are fit cyclists, they likely are sedentary out of shape drunks, all 4 of them.

If there are multiple attackers identify the leader and or largest one, I'd go for him. The rest may think you're nucking futs and leave.

BTW I hope you did call the police? They need to know this is going on.