Reply #4

when I was riding my bicycle every day in San Francisco, and I only had traffic to contend with. Then I moved to the southern rim of Yosemite and mistakenly thought that the experience of riding bicycle would become a slice of nirvana. What a fool I was!

This area is largely inhabited by red necks for whom the concept of being obliged to share the road with anything other than themselves is indeed a foreign idea. Most of them drive huge American pick-up trucks that consume large portions of the many narrow country roads that are common in this area.

If there are any witnesses in the vicinity when they come upon you, they will make room for themselves simply by laying on their horns to tell you that you need to stay off of 'their roads'. Then they will roll down their windows and curse at you while making an obscene gesture as they pass you buy.

If they are not in a hurry, and if there is no one around to observe, they will deliberately try to hit you, or else run you off the road with their pick-up truck. Yes indeed, all the real 'sportsman' up here consider running down bicyclists with their trucks to be almost as great a challenge as when they slaughter the grazing deer by the side of the road with their scope mounted, high power rifles.

I'll take riding in a bicycle savvy city any day.