Another horny driver

 After a relatively placid summer on the road, I had another horny driver pass me yesterday, sounding the trumpet of doom from close behind me all the way by. As often happens, the driver actually gave me a fair amount of room. The windows were rolled up, so I don't know if anyone was also cursing me in there.

Many riders can't take the stress of riding among the megafauna. I don't prefer it, but I have no good alternatives. I'm also used to it after more than half a century of it. I started as a road rider when I was seven years old. "Transportation cycling" was how a kid got anywhere in the 1960s. Working kids carried newspapers in the galvanized metal baskets clamped on their bikes. I never had a paper route, but my brother did.

As a child I had heard of "bike paths," but never experienced one. The first designated bike path I ever saw was in the Miami, Florida, area in 1971. And it was notoriously dangerous: just a strip of tar that crossed streets and driveways right where a motorist would want to hover before entering a busy roadway. Collisions were numerous, some of them fatal. When I graduated from my innocent childhood wandering on a three-speed to more focused cycling on a ten-speed, I learned from more experienced riders to avoid the dangerous, token infrastructure.

Over the decades, offerings for cyclists have evolved. I have ridden on many forms of trail and lane. I've noticed a few things. For one, it's a tough transition when I've been riding on a segregated path suddenly to have to blend with traffic. You have to have a combat-ready attitude, whether you consciously believe it or not. Another thing you don't get on a path is the continuous draft provided by passing motor vehicles. It is much more helpful than you realize until you don't have it for mile after mile.

One quirk of rail trails is that they tend to have long straight stretches and only mild curves. Nobody wanted their train snapping quick turns. Boredom is a serious problem for the cyclist.

Other trail users are also a problem. Bike paths seldom offer as much width as a road, and people tend to ride with less alertness and discipline when they aren't flanked by large vehicles that could obliterate them in an instant. I can't imagine a world in which there is a designated, efficient bike space appended to every roadway. If cyclists are restricted to dedicated infrastructure and eventually barred from routes that don't have accommodations, transportation and travel by bike will suffer as a result.

Thinking of touring, a cyclist can ride to virtually all of the enjoyable destinations currently served by general purpose roads. The risk factor varies widely with traffic volume, filtered through local motorist attitudes. Some places seem to have a lot of bike hate. Others not so much. Where I ride on a daily basis, outright hostility is fairly low. It ramps up when I push the commute into darkness, and shows a few seasonal waves, most notably when school goes back into session. That used to bring not only direct action by motorists but an increase in broken glass. Both have diminished. I don't get three feet of passing clearance from a lot of drivers, but I see little direct aggression.

You never hear the shot that kills you. I don't assume that conditions will remain placid. Because I ride as fast as my physical condition will allow, I may blend with traffic better than I will as my powers inevitably dwindle to the point where I can do no more than poke along. The law gives me the right to poke, but the law isn't riding with me, shouldering aside any potential attackers. I'll be a sitting duck. Will I get fed by onlookers who think I'm cute or chased off because I foul the beaches? It would be unsporting to shoot me.

A coded message from AYF

 For years, an American Youth Foundation summer camp in the area had run bike tours as part of its offerings. Camp Merrowvista in Tuftonboro had even had a dedicated bike service staff and an account at Quality Bicycle Products. Many counselors took advantage of this to outfit themselves with Surly Long Haul Truckers or Cross-Checks.

Because the camp was self sufficient, we seldom heard anything from them. For the brief couple of years when we stocked Cross-Checks and Long Haul Truckers in the shop, we were also able to help some of these new Surly owners to prepare their bikes for years of reliable use. Mostly, though, we only knew of them by seeing their tour groups on the back roads.

Curious about the state of the program, I checked the Merrowvista website. What I found reflects the sorry state of road cycling in the United States. First of all, cycling is not featured anywhere prominently in text or photos. I had to dig for it. Then what I read was kind of depressing.

The camp has reinstated bike touring after they dropped it during the pandemic. They refer to this as a suspension, but the way they described their assessment of it, they might have considered ending it completely. Instead, they modified it to make it safer for the campers. In other words, they took it mostly off of the road. It isn't even in New Hampshire anymore. They transport the participants to a rail trail in Vermont. The routes use "rail trails, dirt roads, and scenic rural routes."

The camp is on a scenic rural route. They used to ride from the camp on a circuit around the Ossipee Mountains. On bikes equipped with panniers and safety flags, their tour groups could be seen representing the activity on the roads that were part of their territory here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Now they're gone. The scenic rural routes are just too busy and full of impatient drivers. The danger zone of the immediate shore roads around Lake Winnipesaukee has expanded to take in the roughly parallel routes of 109A and 171.

A little at a time -- or maybe not so little -- cyclists are being forced off of the public right of way that we all fund with our taxes.

In addition to the modified routes, the set of programs that included the bike tour now includes "off-bike activities" for campers not interested in bike touring. The little screen addicts can now engage in "expanded in-camp programs and other Four Trails experiences."

I do sympathize with the difficulties that go with organizing and supervising any group ride on public highways.  A group of adult roadies with some racing experience can manage itself better than a group of young campers who will need more direct instruction. A motorist has a harder time passing a group of riders as opposed to one experienced rider holding a steady line, cooperating with traffic.

The ultimate cooperation with the motoring public is to go away completely, I guess. Thing is -- and I can't say this often enough -- a cyclist is a whole lot easier to pass than a slowpoke motorist who chokes the whole lane for mile after mile. That math doesn't work when the driver is faced with three or more riders. The average speed is slower.  A motorist passing the group has to keep track of the ones near the vehicle when oncoming traffic forces the overtaking driver to have to squeeze into a gap in the peloton to wait for the next opportunity to pull out and around. More likely, the overtaking driver pays chicken with the oncoming traffic while all the motorists blame the cyclists for being there at all.

He travels safest who travels alone. Not always, of course. A lone cyclist on a very lonely road could end up dead in a ditch or even stuck in a shallow grave in the woods if the right weirdo comes along. But in general, a single rider can negotiate with the faster, larger vehicles better than multiple riders. You may feel like you're asserting your power in a group ride that holds back a whole string of traffic, but you're really just building up the fund of grievances against us. The AYF knows this, and has made a strategic decision to preserve what they can of their program in the face of road realities and shifting tastes among the campers and society in general.

A video I watched recently about "why Americans were so skinny in the 1970s" got a lot wrong, but one thing they got absolutely right was that kids played outside and used their bikes to get around. That translated into the bike boom, the cross-country ski boom, and the rise of jogging and running. Kids these days have a lot more sedentary options for their leisure time. Don't blame them for taking them. Teach them something different. However, rampant development has wiped out a lot of the habitat for self-propelled, free-range kids, and professionally crafted fantasies fed to them through their devices have replaced their own imaginations for devising diversions. 

Smaller motor vehicles would absolutely make the roads safer for vulnerable users. They would make the roads safer for other drivers, too. And they could be made more energy efficient, whether they're burning petroleum or using up battery charge.

Dream on. For the moment, a few stubborn roadies continue to hold a little space on the road, while the kids and their handlers keep at least a few younger pedalers coming along. From this little corps of survivors may we launch a new world, safer for pedalers.