For the uninitiated out there, there are 2 types of biker — road bikers and off-road bikers (what non Texans would call mountain bikers, but we don’t have hardly any mountains, so…). I am an off-road biker and get fairly sick of the holier than thou attitude of most road bikers (which will be detailed below). Most of my problem with them comes from their inability to warn you that they’re going to pass you, which can turn a relaxing ride into a terrifying very quickly.
True, I’m sure there are off-road bikers who don’t do this, but the vast majority of the times this has happened to me, it has been a road biker.
Biking in Dallas is tough, but it’s getting better. But it’s getting better. Most trails are just wide sidewalks, so you’re sharing that trail not just with other bikers, but families, pets, strollers, and children running wildly and not looking where they’re going. We’ve had joggers killed by cyclists in Dallas, and granted, from how I’m reading it, it wasn’t the cyclists fault (the jogger made an abrupt U-turn on the trail straight into a cyclist who was riding up behind her). But it highlights one of the problems with modern cycling. Cyclists have to share the road, and from my perspective, most cyclists are not very good stewards of this.
Continue Reading “The Dying Art of Passing Courteously in Biking”