Evan, we're not bad people. We're not badmouthing your friend with the carbon bike (or you if you have one - knock your lights out). Life is full of strange encounters, some leave us feeling mildly insulted, some stick out in our minds. Every day we have weird experiences whether driving behind a Volvo, or showing up at the river with a '70s fiberglass fly rod and meeting a guy who stepped out of the LL Bean catalog. Humor by definition is a healthy refocusing of anger. Stand up comics earn a meager living throwing out their life examples. Julian opened this thread with a curious encounter of his own. We all have them, pedaling either direction. Sometimes people's strange expressions are just their performance grimace. But when their expression changes just for you, it's natural to internalize it and try to figure out what it's about.
You seem to want more understanding and context, so I'll offer. When I ride, it's most often for calories. I like to pump out 50 to 100 mi / week. It doesn't make me lean and racy, but lets me pretty much eat what I choose. When I jump on my bike on a Sunday morning and my daughter is still asleep. Up early, out and quick to be off the rural roads before the hungover guys get out in their pickups. I'm going to ride 26 miles and be back in 2 under hours. 400' drop to the creek bottom. 2-mile hill up to the county park for a water and stretch break, on the way back, so I don't want to ride the cliff side against the creek, so I turn up and make the climb to the rolling hills. There is a good stop at the top of that climb. One day leaving that stop, I encountered a group of people on road bikes. To cook my daughter breakfast, I don't have time to coast down the hills, and it's not my goal. So I stand to pass these people on the first descent (I'm on my upright, which I love for all the reasons we come here). The woman in the group laughs with incredulity. I don't know why she did that, but it seems like it was something along the lines of, "hey, he's not supposed to do that (on that junk), I'm the one who paid to look and ride like this." One guy in their group broke out and chased me 2 miles to the next stop sign, leaving his group a half-mile behind. That was competitive. Every one of the interactions alluded on this thread would require similar context for complete understanding. It's probably better to assume the context does exist, and it might be better to ask about the context than to make broad generalizations about the people posting them. On Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at 5:11:29 AM UTC-5, Ron Mc wrote: > > Right? Wrong. Folks making observations with a narrow brush. No wide > generalizations except your own. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
