[TriLUG] [OT] TriLUGger on the news

[tomed at bellsouth.net]

This accords with my experience as well. I would also say that motorists
tend to get mad at me more when I'm driving a car than a bike, but maybe
that's a reflection of the way I drive a car.

The bikely website is a good resource for selecting bike routes. I believe
the url is www.bikeley.com. It's a google mashup that allows you to draw
routes on a google map and save them. It calculates miles. You can save your
routes, and share routes with others.

Tom Ed
At Tue, 22 May 2007 08:36:43 -0400,
Scott Chilcote wrote:
> 
> 
> I bike commuted between Cary and RTP much of the time between '95 and
> '02, when I started working at home most of the time.  In all those 
> years I was never touched by a car.  People would get mad and shout once 
> and a while, but they honk and yell at each other too.  Once I had a 
> sandwich tossed at me.  I also chose to leave the roadway at times 
> rather than get squeezed between two passing trucks, but at most it 
> delayed me by half a minute.
> 
> The two most critical things for me were carefully selecting the route
> (I changed employment sites five times) and learning how to ride
> effectively in traffic.
> 
> Choosing a good cycling route to work is a lot different than what you'd
> want to use in a car.  Primary roads (highways) are of course out.
> Secondary roads are usually too busy as well, and often have no
> shoulders like 54 in Cary and Durham.  You have to take a close look at
> a map, and sometimes go exploring to find connectors that have extra
> lanes or wide shoulders.
> 
> For heading through Morrisville, I'd use roads like Evans, Sheldon, Town
> Hall, McKrimmon, and Davis (which has good shoulders most of the way).
> If there's a back way to get from one major road to another, like Slater 
> Road from Airport Blvd to Emperor/Miami or Hopson from Davis to 55, 
> those are the ones I'd try to string together.
> 
> Irritated drivers are the worst thing I had to deal with, but choosing
> less traveled roads that had room to pass most of the time helped a lot.
>   The second part is attitude.  You can ride your bike like a
> pedestrian, or you can ride it like just one more vehicle in traffic.
> Fit into the flow of traffic and ride predictably as much as possible.
> A friend who is an LAB certified cycling instructor uses the phrase
> "driving your bike".
> 
> It isn't a cure-all.  People in cars get mad at other people in cars, so 
> cyclists are hardly immune.  But there is a lot we can due to minimize 
> the interactions.
> 
> I'll throw in a third item too - having a good rear view mirror and 
> learning how to use it while bicycling.  Mine is on my helmet.  It 
> provides a lot of confidence to be able to see how the traffic situation 
> is developing in advance.  If there's an eighteen wheeler coming from 
> behind and another large truck up ahead coming this way, I have the 
> option of looking for a place to pull off and subtracting myself from 
> the equation.
> 
> http://commutebybike.com/cats/commuting-101/
> http://www.trilug.org/~chilcote/Bike/rtp-bicycle-commute-FAQ.html
> 
> Enjoy the ride.
> 
> --
> Scott C.
> -- 
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