Saturday, May 30, 2009

Take a penny leave a penny

Alright so heres the senario at play here. You're on a bike trail and you start drafting off of someone and chances are that the rider your drafting off of will get pissed. Noone likes to take a pull for some random person on a path, it's even worse when someone doesn't ask if they can draft behind you. It's one of those unwritten rules that you don't do that.

Yesterday I was on my way to the U-district from Redmond on the Burke Gilman trail when someone comes up on my wheel and starts riding in my draft. At first I was a bit peeved that he was doing this so I put the hammer down and started pulling hard but he was like my shadow and probably had much fresher legs than me. This went on for a while when he came up in front and started pulling for me. This was great and I was very happy at this point. He was even signalling for people, stops, and debry. This is how it should be done: if you draft off of someone expect to take your turn in the wind pulling and feeling a burn: its another unwritten rule. After I realized he was willing to work with me and take turns I started signalling like the lead-out of a group ride. The other rider and myself took about two turns each and set the pase pretty high: I could tell that we were both getting pretty tired. This lasted until we reached the U-district and he branched off and exchanged out respective "thanks for the pull" and went on our merry way. It was just a perfect cap to an otherwise great day of riding. It's great to know that there are very nice riders out there.

No comments:

Post a Comment