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# Blown away by a biker’s bad attitude
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/blown-away-by-a-bikers-bad-attitude/
- Published: 2008-06-19T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:16:40.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Meredith C. Carroll Meredith Pro Tem*

MY CHEAP, DUSTY BICYCLE RECENTLY made a cameo appearance outside the garage After watching me ride up a hill last Saturday, my husband rightly decided that I needed a lesson on how to properly use the various gizmos atop the handlebars. I marveled at the chain magically jumping from one ring to the next as he showed me how to correctly calibrate the little thingies on the grips. After the tutorial, I felt much less sissy-like while ably maneuvering between the various levels of granny gear going up and down inclines in our neighborhood.

Learning how to correctly ride the bike I’ve owned for over four years didn’t help me ride perceptibly faster. But thankfully, I don’t actually mind being passed. I just prefer to be passed (in either direction) and acknowledged at the same time. When I go out running, other runners pass me frequently. Most times runners will flip a wave, flash a smile, give a quick “hey” or a little nod of the head. The same cannot be said for the bikers.

I can’t accurately speak about the salutation practices of mountain bikers because it’ll take several beers for me to mount an aluminum frame with two fat tires and attempt anything steeper than a molehill. On the other hand, I can say after having logged thousands of miles running on local and East Coast paved trails that rabid dogs are likely friendlier than the majority of road bikers whom I’ve encountered.

When I lived in Manhattan, I spent a lot of time running in Central Park. The park’s dedicated running lane, however, is next to the curb and on an angle, which can be rough on the legs after a few miles.

So, when the park closes to vehicular traffic for a time each weekday, many runners drift over to the flatter bike lane, knowing that bikers can easily move over, too, and take advantage of the lanes left vacant by the lack of cars.

Sadly, though, “share” isn’t a word in the vocabulary of Central Park bikers. No matter if they have easy access to 85 percent of the empty road, bikers become enraged at the perceived crime of air and space theft when they see a runner in the bike lane. They frequently sneak up behind runners, scare the living crap out of them by abruptly screaming, “Get out of the bike lane!” and then race away before any runner could manage to form a response (especially a witty one).

Local road bikers aren’t nearly as vocal about their disdain for runners as their East Coast counterparts, but that might be because their non-verbal communication speaks volumes. While at the very least runners make eye contact with other human beings they come across on a trail or boardwalk, it seems as though that’s too much effort for roughly four out of five bikers. Turning up the corners of their mouths into something resembling a smile, lifting a hand in acknowledgment or uttering a single-syllable greeting appears akin to asking them to partake in a voluntary, un-Novocained root canal. One out of five bikers will offer a grunt, but only in response to one offered first.

The best explanation I can come up with for the ornery behavior of road bikers is their clothes. I’m not knocking the shorts — I’ll never pass up an opportunity to don padded spandex if it means my butt will look smaller. But cyclists proudly wear jerseys with large advertisements splayed boldly across the chest and back in various colors so bright they can presumably be seen from Canada.

Wearing shirts (for which they paid a small fortune) that resemble ones they might have received free of charge from a sponsor or by participating in a race seems to give bikers carte blanche to ride, say, to the deli or pharmacy, as if it were one of the final stages of the Tour de France. Were that actually the case, demanding full control of the trail would be entirely understandable. Short of that, not so much. Besides, even cyclists in the Tour riding on the Champs-Élysées make eye contact and wave every once in a while, don’t they?

Or maybe the bikers are just anxious and acting out because, like me before last weekend, they don’t really know how to properly use their bikes. If that’s the case, I’m more than happy to share my new gear-shifting skills just as long as they don’t forget to use the magic word. Actually, at this point, any old word will suffice.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 19, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061908.pdf?ref=smdp.com)