Saturday, March 26, 2011

Saturday SART Race, Umm, I guess!

Link to new SART Thread at it's new home in SoCalBikeForums.com
SART Thread


OK, so it's hard being nice all the time so today, this is a poopy report haha! Somebody on the forums once mentioned that I should do a video titled "worst of" when I mentioned dopey riders..... here it is! Well, just one incident and my pet peeve. Riders that block you from passing then pretend you're in a race you don't know about. etc.

Ride start with Me, Gina and another dude that asked if he could tag along on our rides (forum member (El Monarcha). He's a strong rider but he just stays out of the way, doesn't say much either.

So we're riding, holding our pace just rolling along. Pretty breezy so doing 18 is pretty tough with the constant headwind. We roll up on another couple. I ring my bell, shout onyerleft and begin the pass. We're moving passed the gal when the dude picks up the pace. Great! Now we're left hanging in the lane of opposing trail traffic. So I back off the pedals just a bit so that we can move back into the proper lane. He pulls away so we resume our steady pace. His woman has hopped on the back of our line, no biggie!

Next thing I know, and expect, the dude fades and we are catching back up. No, I am not increasing the pace. As soon as we are about 20 yards from the dude, his woman goes sprinting around and jumps his back wheel. No Biggie!

So we continue and they both fade a bit more. So once again, I have to do the routine for a safe pass and hope the guy doesn't pull the stunt again.:mad: I use all the proper signals then he waves me around on his right side! WTF! I shout, "I'm passing on your left !!"

So we pass then he hops on the back of the line. Pfft! So I whip out my recorder and get a shot of the guy. Of course he backs off to make it look like he wasn't sucking ha ha! I continue with my pace wishing I had recorded them from the start as I was sort of expecting this behaviour as I've seen it so many times before. Seems we just can't ever pass other riders without them blocking our pass and thinking we are racing in the TDF.

So I look back only to see that his woman is about 50 yards back. I've seen this before, the guy is just too macho to let other riders pass without the fear of thinking others might consider him weak. So he sucks our wheel for a bit, his woman falls far back and he just leaves her. So after he rests, as expected he sprints around and lifts the pace. I just laugh and mention to Gina, "he'll fade".....again!

Sure enough he fades and we almost catch him at a bridge crossing. He sees us then steps on it once again, OK! Still, I am just doing a consistent pace. Sure enough we see him down the road again. He's fading fast and he can't hold his race pace. We roll by and sure enough, once again, he hops on. Pfft!

At one point of the trail, there is a big water puddle so we take caution going around. As we regroup, the dude cuts off our ride partner (El Monarcha). That's it, we stopped at a park just to lose the guy. I can't take this and it happens all the time. Some dude that thinks just because we're out riding our bikes, we're racing Gimme a break! This happens all the time. Where are all these people that claim they just ride and mind their own business?

Too many times I tell myself I should catch these guys on video, this time I did haha!

Well nice thing to day is we met a couple of new riders. Father and son hitting the trail. I have some video but wil post it with tomorrow's since it's a short one.



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