Thank You For Smoking

Ok, gonna go ahead and put it out there. If you're easily offended, you might want to hit the back button on your browser, as I'm about to RAGE.

I got home from work today and immediately hopped on the bike, leaving roughly an hour of daylight. It's amazing how much can happen in an hour of daylight. Frightening to think about what could happen in an hour of darkness. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, scares me more on the bike than elderly drivers and the various nationalities that are taking over my local park. I don't care if I lose readers because of this, because damnit, the majority of the time generalizations are completely true. That's how they became generalizations. Allow me to outline the things that happened solely during this evening's ride:

• Enjoying the sweet smell of Black 'N Milds while riding through the park
• Little kid (not supervised) kicks a soccer ball across the road nearly taking out my front tire
• Gentleman crosses the road with dog, which decides to crap in the middle of the road
• Multiple cars decide to pass/cut me off with 20 feet remaining to a stop sign
• Car (elderly person) pulls out in front of me while I'm cruising at 20 mph 
• The constant passing way too close to the bike lane when the on coming lane is open

Now, I understand that cyclists are sometimes the problem, and I will focus my attention on that in a later post. But right now, the cycling movement in Greenville is full bore, and I want to be a part of that movement. Unfortunately, I anxiously await another article in the paper outlining a new accident involving a cyclist and motorist. In my opinion, with cycling gaining so much attention, it'd be nice to see driving tests include lessons on safely navigating pedestrian and cyclists. I don't think Driver's Ed currently addresses such matters. Of course, that would only include people with legal driver's licenses, but we'll avoid heading down that road for now.

Point is, if you're going to introduce bike lanes and parks to encourage people to get outside, then safety needs to be the primary concern. Personally, it'd be nice to see some patrol efforts in the local parks. Instead of pulling over the person going 40 in a 35, maybe officers could ensure the safety of pedestrians (See Dude in the Red Van) and cyclists. /rant.

So...obviously I rode tonight. Short ride, 45 minutes and 12 miles. I did discover that I need my bike tuned, as there were multiple occasions where I got out of the saddle only to have my gears slip. Didn't take long for me to realize I need to stay seated. But it was good to get out there. Feeling pretty good about 3 straight days of running/riding. Beast Mode.