Bumper Stickers

Last night I was out for a short ride around the three lakes near my place. It's a nice place to ride, the loops around the lake are relatively free of traffic lights and stop signs. However there are a large number of people who drive down to run/bike/walk the dog along the paths next to the lakes. Due to the speed I ride I figure it's best to stay out with the traffic and for the most part this works well. It seems to be a 25 mph (40 km/h) zone so riding at 30 km/h doesn't seem to tick off the motorists.

However last night I had an on instance where a driver was just driving along right beside me for a significant distance. I'm not sure why she was doing this, but I didn't really like it as there was a long line of parked cars on the other side of me. So for my own safety I decided to sprint for a while and left her behind for quite some time. When she finally did pass me I had to laugh out loud upon seeing her bumper sticker: "Courtesy is Contagious". Apparently she had managed to find a cure for this though so don't worry, I'm not likely to become courteous any time soon.

Another funny bumper sticker was the only one that I could read, of sever, on the back of a Ford Explorer. I don't know the emission standards for vehicles very well, but I'm pretty sure an Explorer is not the most efficient vehicle out there. Yer there it was in big green letters on the bumper "Be Green". I guess this is a case of do as I say, not as I do.

And one last note on cars down here. I mentioned in a prior post how many I had seen with evident damage, well I think I have a better idea why. Americans seem to be afraid of using both head-lights and turn signals. I'm not sure if they are worried about night-time air raids by the Germans but I've even seen some on rather dark streets without their lights on. And I don't mean that they don't have them on in the middle of the day, even though that makes sense to me. They don't even seem to turn them on in the rain, on cloudy days or at dusk. It's really strange. And from the cyclists perspective it's a lot harder to see a car without its lights on. Ahh well this is just more of the fun of being in America ;)