Road Warriors: How I learned to stop worrying and love bicyclists (or at least not hate them)

My relationship with the biking community is rough, at best. On any given week, I find mounds of trash on my property (mainly detritus from tire change kits and water bottles), have people blocking my driveway to rest and socialize (and have been cursed at and spit at when I’ve asked them to move along) and have even had the opportunity to hear loud, graphic details of people’s dating lives being yelled at the top of their lungs (Did I mention I have a small child and there are often children on the property who learn fun, new words through these encounters?) Finally, there is the weekly parade of public urination on my property; let’s just say I’ve seen far too much of the local population of male bicyclists over the last several years.

And, this doesn’t even begin to touch on traffic issues — riding in a questionable manner, riding three or four abreast, blocking or impeding traffic and weaving all over the road. That behavior, which can be frustrating when you are in a car, becomes downright dangerous if you are attempting to pilot large agricultural vehicles, which are not made to climb hills at two miles an hour or are too big to pass safely if the riders aren’t traveling single file.

If you favor social media, you’ll know I’m not the only one with these issues — people from every part of the county are finding the idea of “sharing the road” less and less palatable. Meanwhile, the bicycle community is also becoming more defensive and strident in favor of their rights to our roads and fighting back on social media — and their complaints are not without merit. Every cyclist I spoke with had horrifying stories of being run off the road, harassed or pelted with trash and other objects.

Thanks to the rising level of vitriol on our national political stage, I’ve become less and less comfortable with my own level of rage at the bicycling community, so I decided to sit down with them and try to start to bridge the gap and find common ground. I reached out to members of the bicycling community, and let them tell me what I’m getting wrong, and what I’m getting right in my frustration.

I started with Sergeant Crum from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, as I wanted to first understand what the law says about bicycles and cars — a topic which is filled with misinformation from both sides.

“(Bicycles) are not required to stop and get out of way,” he said. “They have to ride as far as possible to the right side of the road. They can’t ride abreast, and if they are in a group, they do have to get into single file.”

However, he was a bit dismissive of the frustrations of rural motorists. “They are not big enough to be impeding traffic — by the theory of relativity, they are not impending traffic riding on the edge of the roadway. So, you have to wait until you get that clear shot and abide by the three-feet rule. There’s nothing in the law that says they have to pull over to let cars go by.”

He did say that potential traffic infractions would likely handled by the California Highway Patrol and that issues of littering or public urination, while not legal, are low enough on the legal totem pole to be beneath their notice. “We have better things to do than follow bicyclists around,” he said. “It’s not a practical use of our time, even if it is against the county code.”

The DMV manual sets out clear expectations for both cars and bikes, but there were aspects that I’d seen being disregarded by both groups. Essentially, bikes have the same rights and responsibilities as cars, and must follow traffic rules, except when being passed (motorists must leave three feet between vehicle and bicycle) and there are rules governing where on the road they can ride (as far as possible to the right and single file, except when they can’t).

George Adair recently purchased the Windsor Bicycle Center, now called Windsor Bike and Sport, and he was not ready to sit down and talk with me, however he sent me an email that set out the cyclists’ basic refrain.

“As a local bike shop owner who not only rides these roads, but also drives them and lives amongst them, I understand concerns and frustration towards the bad behavior you outline,” his email said. “The reality is the actions of a few cyclists don't represent the behavior of most. These behaviors are not limited to cyclists. Further, most cyclists are also drivers and many live in our community. The majority of cyclists consider peer behavior like road hogging, littering and other law breaking to be wrong.

“Windsor Bike and Sport endorses the importance of all cyclists in our community to obey the laws and ride with etiquette,” his statement continued. “We also hope for continued improvement with the interaction of some drivers who put lives in danger when they harass cyclists. The laws of physics heavily favor automobiles when they come upon a cyclist. Road rage and overt lack of concern for the safety of cyclists continues to be an issue that requires open dialogue. As someone who has been harassed on several occasions, simply because I was sharing the road, we all have a responsibility to protect cyclists of all ages.”

Not a thing wrong with any of that, but it smacked to me of: “But her emails!” In other words, yes there are problems, but we are far more the aggrieved party.

So I sat down with the enemy, if you can call an affable 6’–5” guy with a slight British accent any sort of an enemy. Richard Peacock has been biking since he was 14, and he moved to Healdsburg 30 years ago. Biking is both his passion and his business, as he owns Spoke Folk Cyclery in Healdsburg. He’s also on the board of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition (though he made it clear he was only speaking for himself, not the organization) and has had his own share of life threatening experiences while out on the roads.

The first question I asked him was: why do guys like him want to ride on roads that, to a muggle like me, seem ridiculously dangerous? “Because it’s one the most beautiful roads in the county and it’s paradoxically safer to ride — if everyone is following the rules of the road — on a narrow and twisty road than on a road where it’s wide, where the road has been designed for cars and in some sections in a vehicle you can be doing 100 miles an hour on it,” Peacock said. “If you drift over, because you’re looking at your phone or whatever you can hit a cyclist from behind at 60 miles an hour and that’s happened a few times in the county.”

Peacock says their business, which services a lot of tourists, often recommends to visitors to ride on those types of roads. “From a non-cyclist perspective it looks incredibly dangerous, why would you want to ride on that type of road? Well, because it’s narrow and twisty and the locals know the road and the commercial traffic knows the road and they expect to see cyclists on that road and so there are very few, if any, accidents.”

I’ll admit, that opened my mind a little bit — I may curse the bike traffic on my road but it’s true that I’m used to and expect it and drive accordingly, knowing any blind curve could hold a potential hazard.

We also had a meeting of the minds when it came to bicycling wine tasting tours — something he agrees is a terrible idea. “We don’t do that,” Peacock said firmly. “We are very clear you can visit the wineries, but in California you can get a DUI on a bicycle, and if it’s hot you are going to get dehydrated. If you spend 45 minutes to an hour at each winery that’s going to suck up your ride time. So did you come to ride or did you come to go wine tasting?”

“We have people who literally show up and say: ‘we want to ride bikes because we want to get plastered and we don’t want to get a DUI,’” he continued. “We say: ‘in that case, we aren’t renting to you. If you want to do that go to the plaza, there are 10-20 tasting rooms, knock yourself out.’ I can see there are issues with that type of tour.”

Where things got a little sharper between us was when I used the turn of phrase “some bicyclists are OK,” something he was quick to call me on. “See just right there, ‘some of them’ meaning the vast majority are not. I understand, but when you say some of them are OK, it’s like saying some of the drivers are OK,” he said. “That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? When you are on a bike, nobody talks about the hundreds of cars that go by you giving you enough room; it’s the one bad one you remember. That’s the perspective I see — the vast majority of drivers are fine. Yet somebody coming from an anti cycling perspective says the vast majority of cyclists are bad. So that I do have a problem with.”

He had a point. But, I brought up the issues of garbage, of public urination and poor or illegal riding practices, and as I thought about it, I found it a struggle for me to feel like the bad actors were in the minority. Peacock stated that he understands and sympathizes with the frustrations of littering and other discourteous practices, and says he himself has admonished other riders for behaving carelessly. However, his point is, that sort of behavior is endemic in an individual, not a population.

“The people that are going to leave that crap in your yard are of the same mentality as the ones who are going to dump anything on the side of the road,” Peacock said.

When I tried to bring up the issue of being able to conduct business out of our property and the impediments caused by bicyclists for our clients and others, he asked me how long I had lived there. I’m a Sonoma County native, but I’ve been on my current property for about 11 years.

“There are people that have been riding (that road),” for decades,” he shot back. He went on to relay a common frustration for the cycling community, in which newcomers attempt to change things that have been occurring for years under the guise of safety or protecting commerce. In particular he mentioned the group that was lobbying to have mountain bikers kicked off of Fitch Mountain in Healdsburg.

“There have been mountain bikers there for decades — there are some locals who are old men now, who as young teenagers were riding on it,” he said. “And now they’re being told you can’t do what you’ve been doing because it’s now dangerous. And we’re saying wait a minute, we’ve coexisted on this thing for decades, there isn’t suddenly a problem. It was self managed before and if all those users can self manage it why shouldn’t it work now?

“Cyclists have been riding those roads for decades and are now being told, because other people have moved in and there is now a profitable business and its commerce, now cyclists who have been riding these roads have to go or change. That’s not reasonable,” he concluded.

This brought us to our final point of discussion, the issue of riders not moving single file to allow passing. The DMV manual requires it of cyclists, but my personal experience says you have about a 50 percent chance of compliance. Peacock, who rides frequently with large groups, says a good, experienced outfit can move into single file quickly and seamlessly, and they should, though he does say he believes on certain roads it can actually be easier to pass two columns of six than a long column of 12.

However, discussion about the fact that it doesn’t happen as it should brought forth a concern that has been brewing for Peacock — the increasing number of organized rides for money being promoted throughout the county.

“You talk about education and tolerance and groups getting together, one of the things that needs to be discussed are the sheer number of these organized rides actually making it worse for those that live and ride here and have been doing so for decades. Is there a point where we can exceed what is feasible, and have we reached that already?” he asked.

He even relayed a story about riding with a niece during a popular organized ride and having other cyclists “all over the road” to the point where it was a hazard for Peacock and his niece on their bikes, let alone any vehicles that may have been on the road.

So in the end, where does all this leave us? The bicyclists aren’t going away, and motorists and property owners’ frustration with them isn’t either. There is more common ground that I thought there would be when I began this inquiry, but it doesn’t prevent me from having negative feelings when I’m confronted with an infraction. Here again, Peacock provided much needed perspective.

“Everybody has a part,” he said. “Everybody has the potential to improve this situation and everybody has an opportunity to make it worse. It’s what you choose to do. It’s a choice. And in this current divisive environment there’s a need for greater tolerance and acceptance.”

He believes that a simple wave from a driver when riders move into single file, or likewise a wave from a cyclist when they’ve been passed safely, can go a long way in ratcheting down tensions. He also advocates seeing cyclists as your friends and neighbors, which many of them likely are.

“When you see a cyclist you’re not seeing them. You’re just seeing some a**hole that’s blocking my right to drive on the road,” he said. “If you saw them as people its different — it’s harder to hate them if they are a person and not a faceless cyclist.”

He added that the faceless nature of social media, cyclists clad in near identical helmets and wrap around sunglasses and being a driver in a car makes it easier for people on both sides to not be on their best behavior. “It’s easy to be an ass when nobody knows who you are,” he said.