Odd encounters

Most of you have heard or at least read of my complaints about the encounters cyclists have with the rest of the traveling public. On the roads we will experience everything from being flipped the bird to having speeding SUVs come within inches of us. A few weeks back a friend was challenged by a guy with a pipe in hand! Seriously sometimes this shit is just scary. Of course the common thread with the motorists is that bicycles don't belong on the road. This stunning logic only leaves us the option of sidewalks in most cases. Where not only are we likely to hit cars pulling out of driveways without looking, but are also going to be yelled at by pedestrians, for going too fast. Cyclists really can't win, so we chose the safer route, the road, where we are the only ones in danger, but the nobility of this gesture is certainly not appreciated.

Last night I was out riding with some of the club doing cyclocross practice. This is a unique style of racing, in that you take a road bike off road (sometimes on paved roads/trails) and race a course where you invariably forced to dismount the bike (at full speed) to clear an obstacle. For the practice the club has found a local park that suites our needs perfectly, with a steep hill good for practicing our running, a fast descent to get the handling skills and a couple of low fences that we have to run over. All in all a pretty good course, except that it's in a public park. So in addition to the intended course barriers there are occasionally pedestrians, children, strollers and dogs to contend with. Fortunately there were only 8 of us, and we got spread out rather quickly during the 20 minute hard sessions. Just the same we had to alter the route a little to accommodate the other park users.

At the end of the second 20 minute session a woman we had all passed several times approached us (directly at me, damn red skinsuit, I'm always the target) with her dog. Immediately I'm getting ready to apologize for riding so fast/coming too close/spooking the dog, whatever the complaint is:

"Hi, I just want to thank you for riding your bikes here tonight."

Wait a minute, she must be really pissed, she's being sarcastic.

"Really?" (probably with an odd look on my face)

"Yes, it was good to see you out exercising. It's a good example for the kids to see people being active"

"Thanks" (less odd of a look now, just a bit stunned)

It seems that this woman was genuinely happy to have us tearing it up through the park. We were all kind of shocked at that, since we always get negative comments from non-cyclist. But thinking back we did have a bit of an audience, plenty of little kids were watching us from the playground with their parents, a bunch would cheer us on as we went past. A number of others on bikes were watching us clear the barriers and one kid with a football helmet in hand chatted with one of the guys on a mountain bike between our intervals.

It's good to see that we can do what we love, have a positive influence and not be yelled at. We also realized that the neighbourhood is not the best in the area so having us running around on bikes may be a pleasant distraction from the potential seedier characters that may frequent the park. And as the woman said, it is a good example for the kids, it shows them that even adults like to get out and play on their bikes (I doubt anyone was less than 25 tonight). But still it was just so shocking that she wasn't pissed at us, that was probably the coolest birthday present yet!