Stop signs mean stop, but really...

Park rangers on the American River bike path say they’re going to start writing up tickets to cyclists that don’t stop at the stop signs along this phenomenal path, which goes through many miles of wildlife preserve. The park conservancy told a cycling club that it is the third largest complaint they get from people on the path, behind homeless people and off-leash dogs. Well, that’s just amazing! Who knew? I’m a little suspicious. They must need some fine revenue or something.

First of all, stopping at a stop sign on a paved bike path, when there is no cross traffic in sight anywhere, just because a sign says to, is ridiculous. Nobody does that! Ever! And with good reason! And this scenario happens on the bike path all the time.

When there is a car to the right or left that’s going to cross, sure, the cyclist should stop. But most of the time, being that it is a bike path, you’re riding along, and there’s a stop sign, and a car comes up to the stop sign, drivers almost always wave you through.

Even though they’re technically correct to wait for the cyclist to stop so they can go.

If I’m the driver, I wave the rider through the stop sign every time, just to save time. As long as the rider shows some protocol and acknowledges that he or she should slow down and stop if necessary. A wave of appreciation by the cyclist, then the no-stop ride-through, and everybody’s happy! It works great!

I’m thinking the complaints must come on weekends, which happens to be when I avoid the bike trail like the plague. That’s when there are endless riders, runners and walkers on the trail. Drivers then may be complaining nobody stops in the unending parade passing in front of them, so they end up waiting and waiting for an opening to cross. So they complain.

Like many others, I like to ride the trail uninterrupted. So we don’t go on the bike path on weekends. With a little luck, maybe that’s when the stop sign cops will be in place! Here’s hoping!

Ahh, the glorious weekends on the bike path! I used to ride the path on weekends. But after a more than a few near collisions with the odd weekend rider or runner on the trail, I stopped.

What’s the big deal about riding the trail on the weekends? Well, here are a just few reasons I don’t:

• Clueless Company Keeper. A woman jogging on the dirt next to the asphalt path, is accompanied by an older man on a cruiser bike along side her, weaving slowly back and forth, clueless that he’s obstructing two lanes to other cyclists. “Pick a lane,” I say, and he jerked around in panicked reaction, unsure of where to aim his bike. As I rode by having to nearly stop to get by, the woman runner snarled at me. “You don’t have to be an A-hole about it.” I pedaled on, just happy I’d avoided a collision with CCK.

• No Signal Whip Turner. A guy on a road bike that I’m drafting on, slows way down, so I start to pass him on the left. Then he snaps off a left turn in front of me to get to a crossroad. I miss hitting him by nanoseconds. I’ve also seen riders do no-look U-turns like this, coming really close to taking out two opposing lanes of cyclists.

• Rock Man. A tall bald guy, tan, shirtless, well muscled, strides along the bike path as he tosses a smooth, shotput-sized rock high up in the air and catches it repeatedly. He’s got a scowl on his face, like he’ll throw his rock at a cyclist if he gets the notion. This guy is out on the trail a lot, always doing the same thing. He could be a character in an early John Irving novel.

• Walk and Blocks. Four large women walking shoulder to shoulder on the bike trail, blocking both lanes, chatting loudly, clearly unaware and unconcerned that they’re doing so. They look surprised and annoyed that there’s anybody else on the path when you ride around them.

• No Look Darters. A high school cross-country team of shirtless guys runs in a pack alongside the paved trail on the dirt. As I pass them, one of them suddenly decides to cut across the trail to the other side. I miss hitting him by inches.

• Chicken Runners. A pair of runners are running against traffic in the asphalt lane meant for bikes, counting on riders to veer left into the oncoming lane to avoid them. This becomes a game of chicken that fuels animosity between runners and riders on the trail.

• The Happy Wanderer. Spaces out on the bike while talking or looking around, without realizing they’re drifting into the oncoming lane, which faster riders need clear to get around them. And which oncoming riders also need clear to get by.

• The Camper. The rider who needs to get off the bike for some reason, maybe a mechanical issue, maybe to talk to somebody they encounter, maybe to take a photo of a wild turkey. Instead of pulling out of the bike trail lane so that others can ride by cleanly, they camp out in the lane with their bike, unaware that they’re needlessly in the way of every rider that comes through on that lane.

• Wandering Dog. Now this is never the dog’s fault. It’s the dog walker’s cluelessness. He or she has the dog on the leash, big dog, or small dog, or in-between dog, and the dog wanders out into the bike lane where cyclists riding by can easily hit it. Most of the time, the walker pulls the dog out of the way in time, sometimes begrudgingly when the rider goes by. To be fair, most dog walkers keep their pet off the cycling lanes. But there always seems to be at least one…

 • Left/Right Confuso. A rider creeps along in the middle of the right lane, which upon hearing your call out of, “On your left,” instead of making room by moving to the right, makes a move to the left to cut you off. Same if you say, “On your right.” This is the reason I’ve come to use the less confusing request of  “Pick a lane!”

• The Phone Watcher. This is someone walking or skateboarding right for you while looking down at their phone/music selection. Nary an idea they’re headed for a collision. So in this case I shout, “Look Up!” And it usually – not always – prompts the needed course correction.

• Show-off Kid. This is a kid riding his or her little bike frantically, and erratically, trying to impress their parents or teacher. But when they look up at you riding the other way, they fixate and ride right at you, until they turn sharply to avoid a collision. For a cyclist, these unpredictable little riders can induce cardiac arrest.

To me, on the bike trail, it’s a no-brainer to ride through a stop sign if there are no cross traffic cars or riders at the intersection, or in sight anywhere. But in traffic, where cars dominate, it’s a different story. Cyclists should chill out and stop at every stop sign or red light. To ignore a red light and pedal on with a “hit me if you dare” attitude toward drivers, can get you hit and worse. And that type  of high-traffic riding, which unfortunately is very common in urban areas, is why many drivers hate cyclists. They think we’re all like that. Hey, but we know better, right?

And sometimes while on a ride there’s a non-human obstacle, like a stream-flooded road. Watch how this rider wows a gaggle of onlookers as he tries to shoot the rapids…

Until next time, remember to always put on a helmet before every right. Then, do all you can to keep the rubber side down!

-- Mark Eric Larson 

Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelfHis blog of personal essays is at: http://marksmuzings.blogspot.com/

Calls of the animals, found and lost

Riding in the country means meeting up with animals, both wild and fenced in. On a 55-mile ride last week that was in ranch country near the Sierra Nevada foothills, my buddy Marc and I rode by many cows, steers and horses. Now, I have to admit, it’s one of my weird hobbies to perfect the sounds various animals make. So if I’m on a ride and I see some wild turkeys, I just do my turkey gobble. Just to make ‘em look! And I do a pretty mean turkey gobble, by the way! I caw at crows, quack at ducks, bah at sheep, just to see if they’ll look up. When they do, they usually have a look of utter confusion on their face, which is hilarious visual entertainment.

After I do a call, I watch their reaction. They’ve just heard a semi-familiar animal call, but all they see are humans riding by on bikes. Cows are great for their “What the fu…?” blank expressions. My cattle moos aren’t bad, I can usually get ‘em to look around as I ride by. But my horse whinny still needs some work. It’s not so easy to make a whinny that really sounds like it came from horse’s mouth! But I’m getting there. I try out my whinnies on most horses I ride by with varying low degrees of neighing proficiency.

But one of the un-fun things about riding in ranch country, is occasionally encountering an unpredictable dog off leash, trying to cross a highway where cars blast by at high speed. We rode by one big dog sitting by the road and I looked back, wondering if he’d be OK. He decided to walk across the two lane road, and I think he made it. I didn’t hear anything to indicate otherwise.

But on these country roads, wild animals venturing across the pavement get hit all the time. They don’t have a chance if they get in the path of a low flying car, truck or semi. You can see blood stains on the pavement, skunks that have gotten hit off to the side of the road, an occasional squirrel turned into roadkill, and even deer carcasses, their skeletons picked clean by carnivorous raptors and vultures.

And sometimes you encounter an animal that breaks your heart. On our last leg of the ride, we came across an old beagle mix wandering out in the road. A truck whose driver sympathized with the dog and saw the danger it was in, slowed down and honked to try to herd it off the road.  But he wasn’t having much luck. Marc turned around and coaxed the dog off to the side of the road, holding its collar as cars whizzed by. The dog would have been hit and killed in minutes if Marc hadn’t grabbed the confused old girl, who had a bandaged leg and a limp and didn’t seem to know where to go. I have a dog, and I was scared for this one, knowing that would be the last place I’d want to see my dog. Marc has two dogs and never hesitates to try to help any he sees in trouble. He told me of a time when he saw a stray dog alongside a busy country road. He pulled over to try to call it over, but he couldn’t get to it in time, and he saw it get hit and killed by a car. Brutal.

This time, the guy in the truck who tried to steer the dog off the road, pulled over. As Marc held her by the collar, the guy checked the dog’s tags. He called the number on his cell phone and someone picked up. “Hey, I found your dog,” said the guy, a young construction worker probably on his way home. “Is her name Angel?”

He told us the guy on the phone lived in Sacramento, about an hour away and had just given the dog to somebody locally. The guy said he’d take Angel in his truck and find the new owner. He picked up the poor old girl and put her in his front seat. We all wondered how this dog hadn’t gotten hit wandering on and along the highway and how it had gotten pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The thing probably was trying to find her original owner and surely hadn’t been penned in properly. We all wondered what the situation was. How could the new owner be too clueless to protect the old dog? The guy thanked Marc for helping him corral her safely and we rode on.

About a mile down the road he passed us in his truck and tapped his horn. He pulled into the dirt driveway of a ramshackle ranch house, which I think he’d found out was the dog owner’s house. It looked like he was going to wait there until the owner showed up.

As I rode on, I couldn’t help but feel for the poor old dog. It was saved from certain ugly death on the road, but the whole thing was just brutally sad. The old dog was given up by her owner for whatever reason, and shipped out of town to a strange place. She didn’t want to be there, so found a way out to look for home. Old, hurting and pretty much left to fend for herself. Made tears come on the drive back home.

But maybe the guy in the truck figured out a way to make sure she was in good hands, either with the new owner or by taking her home himself. I hope so. She was a sweet old dog, was Angel. She deserved the tender loving care of someone who could keep her out of harm’s way. Here’s to Angel finding a caring owner and a better time of it for her twilight time.

And while I try to do animal calls, some dogs can pull a switch and speak English to their owners. Check it out:

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet before every ride. And then, do your very best to keep the rubber side down!

-- Mark Eric Larson

Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelfHis blog of personal essays is at: http://marksmuzings.blogspot.com/