The leashed dogs on my favorite MUP drive me nuts. Their owners let their leashes run out all the way, so there's a walking human on the right, but a darting-back-and-forth yap yap on a 20-foot lead running all over the road. Even if it's far to the left, I can't get around the leash safely. I try to yell "LEASH!" when I'm coming up on them, and most of the time they reel them back in in time, but I usually have to slow way down.

I've been known to say something like, "Lady, I'm the slow cyclist out here. There's a bunch of big guys doing about 20 coming up fast behind me, and they don't call out," as I pass. There are a lot of really fast cyclists who work out around the lake, and they're not all observing the 15 mph speed limit.

And young mothers who let their toddlers out of the jogging stroller to run around while they're talking on the phone. One of them got a panicked "Watch the baby!" from me when I was coming around a sharp curve and there she was, there her stroller was, and there this little boy was, about twenty feet farther around the curve in the middle of the path. I had to screech to a halt -- luckily I was on my mtb at the time. I wouldn't have had that kind of traction or control on my Ruby. I hope whomever she was talking to heard me scream.

Foot traffic is just one of the hazards we have to learn to deal with. I wish sometimes that we could post our own Rules of the Road for people who seem to miss those giant signs at the beginning of the pathway.

Roxy

Roxy