I just got a new bike a month ago and it's been great to get back into bike riding. I'm not what you'd call a cyclist, don't own any spandex, and don't like to ride on the road with traffic. It's just great exercise, easy on the old knees, and more fun than most other forms of exercise. I read the cycling threads on here, and the way they usually go is a bunch of posters telling the cyclists they're idiots for riding on the road with vehicles, don't understand the laws of physics, and so on and so forth. Which I kind of agree with to a point and that's why I don't like riding on the road. You never know what a driver is going to do or even if they see you. All it takes is one driver looking at their cell phone and a cyclist is toast.
So I ride in a local state park, off road on their paved trails. The trails are concrete and 8 or 9 feet wide, wide enough to comfortably pass other riders and walkers as long as everyone understands they need to leave enough room on the left to pass. Riders understand this but walkers don't. I've had people walking toward me three abreast, looking right at me and just stand there blocking the trail. Or walking the same way I'm riding, walking down the middle of the trail with earbuds so they can't hear anything behind them. Or the woman today, walking down the center of the trail with her back to me yakking on her phone, not hearing me as I ride up behind her saying "passing on your left" until I'm actually passing on her left and she pivots to the left right in front of me so I had to lock up both wheels and skid off the trail.
What is it with these lame brains? The traffic on the trails is about 75% cyclists and 25 % walkers, you'd think after about the 30th cyclist passed them a light would go on and they'd say to themselves, "there's a lot of bikers out here, I need to pay attention so I don't get run over." You know, the laws of physics and all that.
And the thing is, every single one of these idiots drove an automobile to the park.
