Ha ha I just had a long weekend

Ok so it's not that big a deal, plus I didn't get the long weekend for Victoria day, so it all balances out in the end. But Monday was a holiday in the US, Memorial day, which is apparently a rather large holiday. Apparently it is also the start of summer (officially 22 days away, but how can you argue with Americans?).

It was a nice day for a change, actually the whole weekend was. Though Monday I took a nice ride out to a town on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, a place called still water. Most of the way there it was all bike paths so that was nice, kind of hidden in the trees and away from traffic. Though I did take the highway for the last part of the ride. And that's where things get really funny. One thing to note is that the shoulders of highways in the states are just MASSIVE. This shoulder is wide enough for 3 people to ride side-by-side without coming close to the white line. So one would think that no car would object to you riding on the shoulder of the highway, well one could think that. It seems though that I managed to offend a woman passenger of a vehicle while I was riding yesterday (I'll give you one guess what type of vehicle it was). See there is a paved bike path that happens to run along the edge of the highway, and she felt it was necessary to stick her head out the window and scream "bikepath" at me as they sped by. Now normally I will ride a bike path, unless it is too congested with slower traffic, it's just safer if I'm not speeding through. Now next to a highway, or any major road, I really don't like riding on a bike path that is detached from the road. I have learned from experience that most vehicles forget that the path is there when they turn across it. And seeing as the shoulder of the highway was even wider then than the SUV that she was yelling from, I figure nobody should care if I'm there. But alas, my health lifestyle, doing minimal ecological damage and obstructing nobody's way was highly offensive to her. Should I ever chance upon meeting her in the future I will have to apologize fully, and promise that the next time she sees me I will be driving the mandatory gas guzzler. Perhaps I can be like the fool I saw the other day with Florida plates on a hummer, I only hope that the idiot didn't drive the damn thing here from there, but somehow I feel that is too much to ask for.

On a more positive note there were a lot of people out biking this weekend, which was very good to see. However I was surprised to see that of those out riding were older than me, it would be nice to see more kids out, maybe one of these days. One interesting thing I noticed was the frequency of tandem and recumbent bicycles. It's kind of odd to see so many of them, but still neat. There was even one recumbent tandem. All in all neat to see.