Seriously, if you're setting out on a ride waiting for the moment to use an inflammatory comment, you will use it. If you just set out on a ride to have a ride, you probably won't find the opportunity to offend others.
Sorry Bicycle, but you do not know the type of people who live around these parts (they are not bicycle literate). Some of them are confused when presented with a cycclist on the road in front of them and get scared when they realise they will have to overtake me.
If they do so with lots of care and room, then I am very greatful and if I had the chance I would thank them (as many other cyclists do).
If they just choose to get passed me as quickly as possible, thinking that it will be safer when they come too close for comfort, I will explain to them my feelings for such a manouvre in expletives and non-friendly hand movements and gestures. This could possibly result in them giving me the same response I had given, or they will simply brake and I will make sure I am well away from them and not attempt to overtake.
The reason you may have got a little worried that I am purposely going out to find incidents is quite insulting. I simply meant that I have got a memory like a siv and have a habit of shouting rubbish when presented in a situation not to my liking. If I have the word going over and over in my head, it does not only cheer me up (because it is a funny word in my world), but increases the awareness I have of my surroundings because I am looking for the right moment and therefore the right time to use it.
I am not going to shout at someone who passes me closely (I will if they were very close), I will only do it in a situation where I feel safe and they cannot retaliate in any way.
Many people have said that if I keep shouting things and tooting the airzound, that one day I will get thumped. Apart from that never happening so far, people in these parts have a habit of not doing anything. They know if they hit anyone, then they are in trouble and as I am aware this could happen at any moment, I wil to keep my distance from people and cars. That is the reason I deem many overtakes as too close where as someone in a city centre might have got used to them being that distance and therefore discarded most of them.
