Quote Originally Posted by WindingRoad View Post
I feel for you Darcy, is there anyone who can ride with you? For whatever reason they seem to be better if there's more than one rider.
Hi WindingRoad, I bet your parents shrugged off the old guy honking at them as just another riding experience. That is how it is for me, until I started noticing a pattern. Mostly though my rides are quite safe. I only got bit by a dog once, and it was a tiny fast dog.

I have a few friends with whom I bike, but I bike myself a lot too. I don't wait around for other people, I get on my bike and go. I put a lot of miles on the bike, and so I experience a lot of odd things. Like last year I was pedaling along the road on a steep uphill where there was an embankment above me, and there were two farm workers shooting out across the road at birds over my head, totally oblivious to the legality of what they were doing, much less the bullets could have fallen out of the sky and impacted my body. I had to yell at them to let them know there was a cyclist on the road, and thereby diverting valuable oxygen away from the climbing muscles. I was not happy about it. Nor do I expect to see wildlife killed by guns when I am out on a ride.

I have no idea what fuels road rage. The story of the ER doctor who got 5 years in prison and destroyed his career goes to show you the road-rage-guy can be well educated yet allow rage and anger to consume his entire being without recognizing that anything is wrong with his emotions and thought proccesses. I never engage the road-rage-guy, because who is to say that the next road-rage-guy doesn't pull out a gun and shoot me. I just say, sorry you are wrong, please look up the laws, and pedal on.

I thought at one time the road-rage-guys think all bikes are mountain bikes and are supposed to be riding off the asphalt of the road, down in the ditch, or off in the field. I stay alert for road-rage-guys on my rides, just like I stay alert for the motorists who look me right in the eye from a stop sign on a side road, then pull out in front of me in their pickup truck that is hauling a trailer with a boat behind it, and sometimes there is a horse trailer in the mix too, and I am expected to go from 15-18 mph to zero mph in just a few seconds with no way to go around the vehicles because the length of all of the trailers and such is too long.