On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 6/1/2013
Miss Manners in bike shorts
Are you familiar with Miss Manners, the columnist who offers advice on matters of social decorum and etiquette? I've always enjoyed reading her columns. Someone even gave me one of her books once--perhaps they thought I needed it--and I read it, cover to cover. Her views seem eminently sensible and practical, and a bulwark of civility amidst a chaos of rudeness and cluelessness.
It occurred to me on recently, while chatting with another rider, that the bike world could use a Miss Manners to sort out some thorny points of etiquette in the ranks of club rides.
Okay, sure, most of us, if we're halfway sensitive to the nuance of bike life, will pick up many more-or-less obvious social courtesies for group rides. For instance, it's bad manners to try and jam yourself in right behind a pulling tandem and in front of a line of other riders already glued to that wheel. It's also considered less than ideal to avoid taking a pull in a pace line: slinking off to the back just before it's your turn to be on the front. (And saying, "Hey, sorry…I can hang in at this speed, but I can't pull at this speed!" is not an acceptable excuse.)
It's bad form to attempt to take a leak in the middle of a pace line. (Sounds absurd? I've seen people do it. I've been downstream from people doing it.) It's also discourteous to be chronically late in showing up for group rides. Making everyone else sit on their top tubes while you finish putting on sun screen is not acceptable, at least if it happens every week.
Some rules of etiquette are relative or situational. One standard may apply on an easy-going social ride, while quite another standard may be imposed on a hammer ride or, obviously, in a real race. Riders attacking off the front of the peloton is fairly normal in races, although even there, there will be days, in a stage race, where the patrons in the pack will let it be known that today, we're all riding piano. Tomorrow is a crazy-hard mountain stage, so today, nobody attacks and makes us all chase. On a lazy, social ride, flying off the front and exploding a nice, steady pace line can really be an irritant and can get a lot of riders pissed off at you. (I've discussed this cycling faux pas at length in another column.)
But my chat with that other rider produced some other, slightly trickier questions about doing the right thing on a bike ride. So, with a tip of the old chapeau to Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners), I will impersonate her, briefly, and will try to be as sensible and practical as she is with the answers.
Q: I made a plan to meet a guy I know for a ride. (We're not regular riding buddies nor best friends. We just somehow hatched this plan to head out together for this one ride.) We both knew it was an 80-mile ride, and we both knew that there was not one single place around the remote loop where we could buy any food. Whatever we were going to eat, we had to bring with us. So I packed six energy bars in my pockets, but he only brought two. Then, when he had eaten his two bars, fairly early in the ride, he asked me if I had any food to spare. I thought that was a little short-sighted of him to only bring two bars for an 80-mile ride, and also rather presumptuous to think he could then sponge food off me. So I lied and told him I had only brought four bars, not six, and that I could only give him one, which I did, leaving him with a total of three and me with a total of five. Was I wrong to lie and to not share what I had evenly?
A: This would make a nice problem-solving exercise for a college freshman in the Philosophy department: Ethics 101. There are two parts to the question. One is about the lie and the other is about sharing the food. Had I been in that position, I wouldn't have lied. But nor would have have shared out all my energy bars. I would have handed over one bar, as you did, and then said: “Sorry, but you knew what we were getting into and you didn't plan accordingly. I need this fuel to finish my ride. If you bonk near the end from not eating enough, perhaps it will remind you to plan more carefully next time." Is the hard truth better than lying? I think it is. But giving him two bars, so you each end up with four, simply enables his bad planning. File it under that old bromide: "Bad planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part."
Q: I loaned another rider a tube on a ride, after they had run through the ones they brought. Afterward, they never gave me back my tube or a replacement tube. Is it petty of me to remind them that they owe me a tube?
A. Absolutely not! You have every right to expect that the tube borrower should return your tube or replace it with one of comparable quality. If anyone is being petty, it is the other rider in overlooking this fundamental group ride courtesy. Someone might say that a tube only costs a few bucks, so what's the big deal? But it isn't the money that's important in this transaction. Giving away your tube, especially if it's your only tube, is a small act of kindness that may have dire consequences. If you then get a flat yourself, in particular one that can't be fixed with a patch, then you may end up stuck on the side of the road with no way to continue your ride. From that perspective, your contribution of the tube is just about worth its weight in gold, and to not honor that act with the small effort needed to replace the tube…that's very bad form.
Q: I showed up for a club ride where I didn't know anyone. Looking around at the start, I realized that out of ten riders there, I was the only one with a tire pump. Not just a full-size pump, but any pump at all. Every one of the other riders had chosen to go with CO2 cartridges. Later on, in the ride, I came upon one of the riders fixing a flat. He had it back on the rim and was getting ready to use his CO2 to inflate the tire. I thought about stopping and offering my pump but decided not to. Was it wrong of me--bad bike etiquette--not to stop?
A. That's a tricky one! Some folks might say you should always stop and offer assistance on a group ride. But in fact, we see that this is not done all the time. Sometimes we stop and sometimes we don't, and why we do and don't on different days, different rides, different moments, is almost beyond reckoning. Given then that we don't all stop all the time, in this case, I would say that no, you were not breaking any rules of etiquette to cruise on by. This rider had pared his bike kit down to the minimum by tossing a good, old-fashioned pump in lieu of a teeny gas canister. Did he do it for the spurious reason of saving a few ounces? Or did he do it for the even more spurious reason of vanity: wanting to look like a sleek pro? In either case, that's the bed he's made and now he has to lie in it. He has to make do with the kit he brought along and cannot expect anyone else to go to bat for him.
In every one of these cases, it comes down to being responsible for your own self while on your bike…being self-sufficient. Whether it's having enough food, or having your bike in good working order, or having enough tubes (or patches and glue), or…whatever…you need to be the master of your fate on a ride. If you fail to hold up your end of the social contract by showing up with a funky bike or junky gear or not enough food, don't expect the rest of the bike world to take up the slack for you. And in those rare instances where you do have to accept help, as in the case of the borrowed tube, you need to be honorable enough to make it right as soon as you can manage it.
One of my oldest friendships in the bike community dates back to a ride where a stranger handed over a fold-up tire, way out in the middle of nowhere, when I had blown my own tire to shreds. I got the guy's name and number, and as soon as I got home, I took that tire off the rim and drove it over to his house. That was 20 years ago, and we've been friends ever since. That's how it's supposed to work, and that's exactly what Miss Manners' rules of etiquette are all about: do the right things for the right reasons; observe the little social niceties, and usually good things will happen.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net