The fun and frolic continues apace here in the Land of Enchantment, a subsidiary of Netflix, Inc. Look for the miniseries “The Ten Plagues of Aztlan,” coming soon! “Episode 1: The Gabachos.”
Now it’s Las Vegas in the hot seat. More precisely, the wet seat, as flash floods close roads and force evacuations.
Word is Ruidoso is getting some rain, which, yay. It’s the proverbial good news/bad news scenario — helps with the fire, but not with the flooding. You gotta play the hand you’re dealt, I guess. Meanwhile, it seems full-time residents may be allowed to return Monday morning.
We woke to a light rain here at El Rancho Pendejo. By 8:30 we’d recorded 0.10 inch of rain since midnight, and we will take it, thank you. Sorta throws a spanner into the ol’ training schedule, but what the hell am I training for, anyway?
If it keeps up I don’t think I’ll have to worry about whether a fellow cyclist returns my friendly wave today. My old VeloNews colleague John Rezell broached the topic yesterday at The Cycling Independent, but I beat him to it by nearly three decades (h/t Khal S.).
In my dotage I see this churlish behavior from all manner of knuckleheads. Wave casually at a brother roadie, get The Great Stone Face. Say, “Good morning” to another hiker on a narrow stretch of trail, nuttin’ but nuttin’. Everyone has the AirPods in their ears and an iStick up their arses, I guess.
It doesn’t bother me much anymore. I keep waving and yielding trail as though it matters. Which it kinda does.
Mad Blog Media 
alex has this phenomenon figured out in this pithy analysis:
”mountain bikers who also ride road bikes are usually faster. Roadies who don’t ride MTBs are usually assholes.”
Well said, gents; well said. Also, cyclocrossers are gods who could ride the Russian River with the proper tire pressures.
That was some fine prose back in BRAIN and VeloNews when you, CP, and company were scribbling words. I’ll never forget the Tour de France Sunflower Conspiracy story in VN. And Wave Dynamics in BRAIN, of course.
I wonder if Back in the Day when fewer of us ventured forth on bicycles and motorcycles, there was more effort to respect the community of two wheelers. I do recall with motorcycling, there was a time when the only thing a motorcycle could be counted on to do regularly was break down, so having a buddy you didn’t know not only wave, but stop to help, was important (such as the night I ran out of gas between rest stops on the New York State Thruway while riding from Boston back to Rochester).
I was riding the Bandelier Loop up in Los Alamos one Sunday a while ago and came across some younger dude who managed to trap his chain between chainwheels (or something) and bend a link. He was looking a little lost and forlorn. Given I always rode with enough tools in my seat pack to equip a bike shop, I had a chain tool handy so had him up and on his way promptly, reminding him not to cross chain those gears with the shortened chain.
Seems nowadays, the only form of communication Homo sapiens americanus knows how to use is a little screen attached to a smart phone. Even when sitting across from each other at dinner. Real human interaction? The Horror…the horror….
Charles had so many strengths. He could cover a stage race, take deep dives into doping and governance, edit a Lennard Zinn book, juggle nine weeks of live updates per annum, and write a genius April Fool’s story. Plus he actually liked working the early shift, which of course is when it’s all happening across the pond.
I haven’t had to actually help a stranded cyclist in a while, which is great because I’m a lousy mechanic, but I always check in when I see one wrestling with a flat or some other issue. And I’ve had a few people do likewise for me.
“Everything OK?”
“Yeah, no worries, nothing ever goes sideways with eight-speed friction shifting and rim brakes. I’m just taking a break to shoot some pix of this cactus.”
Jeebus, you scared me, using Charles in the past tense. I guess he is still on this side of the sod, right?
O, to be sure. Have I not mentioned that he’s Wyoming Public Media’s local host for NPR’s “Morning Edition?”
We got an inch of rain overnight. Beauty, heh?
Riders of two wheel vehicles should always wave and help each other when the need arises. It carries over when you’re driving and see a cyclist broke down. Like a wise woman said, “It has got to stay tribal.” Some folks who do not do this will learn the hard way how to become a member of the tribe. The others should be keel hauled.
PS: I went back, using your link, to your first post on waving. Now, I am puzzled. What happened to the Vespa?
I still have the scoot, Paddy me boyo. I never ride it, though, and it needs a bit of work. Honestly, if the weather’s good enough for the Vespa, I’d rather be riding a bicycle.
Bicycles are cool. But, a red Vespa is cooler. I guess cool doesn’t matter much to us these days. But, I still think Khal should get one of these right now, like tomorrow.
Quite the “Monster”, eh? I’ll stick with the R1200RS. It doesn’t have “death wish” written all over it.
It’s a 950 Super Sport. Less torque and hp than your beemer, but it’s 130 pounds lighter. I think it would fit you like a glove, physically and mentally, right up to the crash…. Oh well, nevermind. Besides, you have a Litespeed!
It is gorgeous. And ruby red. Did I say gorgeous? If I had room in the garage for another one….
I think people should devote more attention to other people and less to the electronics. At the grocery I shun the self-checkout and go straight to any human working a register, no matter how long the line is. I don’t use AirPods and won’t even answer the phone in public unless it’s some class of an emergency.
If I make eye contact with someone I’m gonna say “Hi,” or at least nod, wave, whatever. Acknowledge the other person’s presence in our little piece of shared space. Ain’t no thang.
And you gotta offer to lend a hand when a hand may be what’s needed. That should go without saying. Alas, so should many other things.
” Acknowledge the other person’s presence in our little piece of shared space.”
Yes.
I always wave across the way to cyclists, but I don’t look long enough to see if they wave back. Saves me from feelng insulted if they don’t. I just figure they might’ve returned the acknowledgement, and that’s enough to keep me waving.
Good on you, Eric. I look at a wave as a kind of shorthand for a longer conversation: “Isn’t a beautiful day? And here we are on our bicycles, enjoying the sunshine and the cool breeze and the not being run over or mirror-tagged or shot at yet.”
these days, you hold the door open for someone, they look at you twice and then scan the periphery assuming it’s a trap.
You did. I checked after I saw the past tense, in case I missed something. At our age, one starts reading the obits first.
I started checking the obits before the last time I got killed just to make sure the most recent time wasn’t permanent. That was when I realized reading or not reading my obituary didn’t prove anything about my survival or lack thereof.
In the bag of negotiating tricks, reminding your nemesis that you have a sound-proof basement is worth saving for the proverbial rainy day.
Wherein one might find a professional-grade kitchen, some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
if you’re lucky. My fear is the guy in the rubber suit with the ball-gag sharing the space with you.
You don’t know the power of the dark side.
Unfortunately WP will not allow me to post a “like” to this comment nor to PO’G’s reply. They are immanently “likable”.
Waving to other road users? I’ve had a chance to see a lot of this issue this spring. I’m working with a local Scout Troop as their gen-yoo-wine official merit badge counselor. We do a lot of time on the Heritage Rail Trail here in York County Pee-Yay. As a general policy I wave to all comers, mainly just to to see what kind of people wave back and what kind don’t. I don’t have statistics, but here’s my set of observations. 1. People who are out there for a Good Time generally wave back. 2. People who are out there for a Workout generally don’t. This goes for runners as well as cyclists, as well as walkers. As a result, since runners are mostly there for a Workout (I mean really, who runs for the fun of it), they are less likely to wave back. Walkers are generally there for a Good Time, so they usually wave back. With cyclists you can tell who falls into each of those groups pretty easily and it plays out the way you’d expect. The Lycra crowd is more often in it to win it, so they’re less likely to wave, and the more casually equipped are more likely to wave back
An odd thing that I haven’t figured out yet is those people on e-bikes. Most e-bikers are there for a Good Time, and they follow that profile, but there’s a subclass of e-bikers that use those things with small diameter giant tire profile wheels, and I suspect they are class 2 or 3. Because I don’t see a lot of them actually pedaling. That subclass rarely waves back, and they seem like they’re in a trance because they never look around. It’s like they’re in a car. It’s a really scenic trail for god’s sake, and it’s like they’re going down the interstate.