Riding country roads

[Miranda]

You have good suggestions thus far. Always gotta love TE for that!

On the routes, you could get the organized routes from those groups, without actually riding with them (as you mentioned them to not be nice people). That's one of the things I did to find more suitable routes here in rual Mayberry.

And yes, unfortunately, I know exactly what you are saying. Things are so bike-unfriendly here. Even with the few so called bike lanes, people will run you over in the city while in the bike lane.

I know you don't want to hafta drive to start your ride, but sometimes you do what you gotta do. I once asked a church pastor permission to park in his lot to start my ride. To avoid a deadly busy road. Most of the club rides start from schools, where public parking is not an issue with school not in session at the start time.

My routes leaving directly from home also involve riding on the "death roads" I call them. But I did figure out how to avoid as much of that road as possible. When I'm on the bad road, I just put my head down, get in the drops, and ride my azz off like I'm time trialing or something. To get off the bad road as quick as possible.

Good Luck!

[Melalvai]

If you don't have good shoulders to ride on, you are completely justified in not wanting to ride on those roads. imo.

That type of road is the most dangerous--for cars and for bicycles.

[marni]

I ride a variety of roads with and without shoulders and the only place I have ever had problems is at intersections with red light runners or people honking at me because I take the lane in the direction I am going.

I also ride with a very bright red flashing light on my underseat bag, outside (left) rear fork and on the back top of my helmet.

I remember that the cars are bigger than me, I try to be a good driver, but I will pull off, slow down or wait until the road is a bit more clear from time to time.

It helps if you ride steady and look like you know what you are doing, plus making a point of making eye contact and turning your head back to let drivers know that you know that they are behind you.

I so much prefer highways and roads with good shoulders though.

marni

[Catrin]

I usually just avoid state highways and focus on the lower classed country roads - there aren't shoulders but the traffic volumes are quite low and there really aren't any signalized intersections. It also helps that there are a lot of cyclists who ride where I do so drivers are accustomed to look out for us. I've not seen worse than a car full of young adolescents shouting complimentary things to me. I couldn't hear what they were saying so I choose to think it was something nice

[OakLeaf]

It all depends on where you are. Just the other night our County Engineer explained (in an unrelated context) that all our county roads were originally wagon trails, and most of them have been improved very little since then. Some of them have not much more traffic than they did when they were wagon trails - or even less - and those are the ones that are great to ride on. They're just wide enough for two cars to pass, NOT wide enough for a car and a tractor, have very short sight lines (1/4 mile MAXIMUM) due to hills and curves, and if the speed limit has been reduced at all for residential development it's a minimum of 45.

But then there are county roads, not legally or physically distinct from the good riding roads, that are convenient for cars to get from point A to point B, and have a traffic load of 100+ cars per hour. Those are the ones I just don't ride on, no matter what. Either I add 5 miles to a ride to avoid them, or I drive.

Usually there's no place to pull off, since there's no shoulder, just a steep ditch at the immediate edge of the road surface. If there is someone's driveway to pull off into, it really wouldn't help, because you'd have to wait until 10 pm for traffic to clear enough to re-enter, and I don't ride ANY of the roads around here, busy or not, after dark.