DaveReading
Don't suffer fools gladly (must try harder!)
- Location
- Reading, obvs
I'm still fuming after an encounter yesterday with an idiot cyclist while out running.
Round here there are lots of old country lanes that have been turned into shared-use paths now that the area has been built over. Mostly when I use them I'm on the bike, and I've learned to be very wary when passing walkers and, especially, runners.
Well the boot was on the other foot yesterday when I decided to go for a run. On a long, straight stretch of path I was keeping well over to the narrower, pedestrian lane, which at that point was on the RH side. Yes, I know pedestrians are entitled to use any part of the path, but there's no point in being unnecessarily provocative.
Anyway, I see a bike coming towards me from some way off, also in the narrower lane (ie the LHS from his perspective). I know the importance of behaving predictably, so I carry on running in a straight line, expecting him to move over into the wider cycle lane. To cut a long story short, he doesn't, and we have an "encounter" (no actual physical contact).
This is followed by what the papers refer to as a full and frank exchange of views punctuated, I'm ashamed to say, by lots of four-letter words on both our parts, not helped by his idiotic insistence that a) he was entitled to use any part of the path he wanted to and b) I was the one who was in the cycle lane !
How do you deal with idiots like that ?
Round here there are lots of old country lanes that have been turned into shared-use paths now that the area has been built over. Mostly when I use them I'm on the bike, and I've learned to be very wary when passing walkers and, especially, runners.
Well the boot was on the other foot yesterday when I decided to go for a run. On a long, straight stretch of path I was keeping well over to the narrower, pedestrian lane, which at that point was on the RH side. Yes, I know pedestrians are entitled to use any part of the path, but there's no point in being unnecessarily provocative.
Anyway, I see a bike coming towards me from some way off, also in the narrower lane (ie the LHS from his perspective). I know the importance of behaving predictably, so I carry on running in a straight line, expecting him to move over into the wider cycle lane. To cut a long story short, he doesn't, and we have an "encounter" (no actual physical contact).
This is followed by what the papers refer to as a full and frank exchange of views punctuated, I'm ashamed to say, by lots of four-letter words on both our parts, not helped by his idiotic insistence that a) he was entitled to use any part of the path he wanted to and b) I was the one who was in the cycle lane !
How do you deal with idiots like that ?