Why Can't We All Just Play by the Same Rules?

Sometimes, riding my bike, I feel like I'm playing Fizzbinn with cars, except that we're both making up the rules as we go along.

Me: Ah, here we are at a four-way stop. The car on my right goes, and then it's my turn ...
Car: No, I get to go, too. It's Tuesday after 7:30 pm, and Rule L84WORK states that I don't have to wait for the bicycle.
Me: Oh, sorry. My bad. Well, now I'm back on the road and ... yeow, that was close!
Car: Yeah, my car gets less than 15 miles to the gallon, so the three-foot law is waved. Rule H2-F150 says that no guzzling inertia should be wasted.
Me: Yeah, what was I thinking. I'll just cut through this neighborhood here, then, and down this hill and ... oh, another stop sign up ... well, nobody coming so I'll just run it. Rule Z00M-Z00M, you know.

Now, a lot of folks may think that there's nothing wrong with this, and very often they are right. We all just kind of "bend" rules usually. I mean, who am I hurting when I run that stop sign? And, since that car is going to just pass me in a hundred yards or so, what does it matter if he goes ahead and skips my turn in the four-way stop? Usually, nobody gets hurt.

Usually.

Very often, the problem is that people really don't know what the rule is. How many of us understand what we're supposed to do when we come to a four-way stop at the exact same time as the vehicle opposite us, and we both signal for left turns?

Tuesday morning, I was driving to work (yeah, in a car ... ugh) and passed a cyclist on Holt Road. He was riding against traffic -- biking west in the eastbound lane -- and listening to an iPod with both ear buds in. And Holt is not a quiet back road -- it's got a 40-mph speed limit, but is one of the few roads that runs between Nolensville Road and Edmondson Pike, so it gets a ton of commuter traffic. I don't take Holt to work on my bicycle in the morning, and most people think that I am crazy.

I could have pulled over and yelled at him to get on the right side of the road and pull out those ear buds, but I think that would have caused an accident in its own right. Hopefully, he was just going down to one of the neighborhoods on Holt, because if he went all the way to Edmondson Pike and continued on, he would need nerves of steel. Or an adamantium skeleton.

Don't mess with my muttonchops!

Maybe we need more police, or cameras on every lightpost and telephone pole, so that any infraction yielded a ticket. I kind of wish that a police car had come along and gotten that cyclist off of Holt Road, if for no other reason than to explain to him that he needs to get on the right side of the road (using the iPod in traffic isn't illegal -- just stupid). A lot of folks don't know which side of the road they're supposed to bike on, just like a lot of car drivers don't know that they're supposed to leave at least three-feet clearance when passing a cyclist. Hell, most drivers don't even know that a bicycle qualifies as a street-legal vehicle, with the same rights and responsibilities as cars.

Probably, though, it's that second word -- responsibility -- that we need more of. People need to be responsible for their own actions. Before we get out on the road -- either on a bicycle or in a car -- we need to learn what the rules are, and once on the road we need to play by the rules at all times.

Sure, I'm going to look like a bit of an idiot when I come to a full stop at an intersection in the middle of nowhere at 3:45 am on an overnight brevet. But if we keep playing Fizzbinn, sooner or later we will all lose.

Don't Send a RandoBoy To Do a Max Watzz Job

Yes, lucky people, it is I -- your hero (and mine), Max Watzz.

I know that you've been regularly watching RandoBore's blog waiting for my report from Avery Trace this past weekend, refreshing the page until your fingers bled. I wanted you to taste the sweet thrill of anticipation, so that when you could read my perfect words you would be properly primed.

Of course, a few thousand of you came out to watch me race Saturday, and were hiding up in the hills so as to better view the entirety of my splendid ride. You need not be afraid to get closer -- few, if any, of my fans have yet to spontaneously combust from being too close to the wonder that is me. Fortunately, I am graced with super-human hearing (of course), and could hear your cheers and thunderous applause, even if I could not see you. I believe I heard many of you swoon -- and not just the women.

Anyway, as I am sure that many of you already know from the tweets of my many fans present, I destroyed all of the competition again in the time trial at Avery Trace. I was fluid perfection, an aerodynamic synthesis of energy and grace as I pumped my glorious self over the rolling hills along the river. I was inexorable and unstoppable, like lava ... or like lava would be if it moved at 25 miles per hour.

Sadly, I must again report that the so-called "results" do not properly reflect my performance, claiming that I was second (a mathematical impossibility) in the time trial. It's obviously an error, since they also have me 15th in the road race, and I have no recollection of doing the road race. I think that a letter-writing campaign is in order, or perhaps a congressional investigation. I would not blame you all for petitioning the War Crimes Tribunal in Hague.

With love (mostly for myself), I remain your idol,
Max Watzz

---

Um, RandoBoy here. I kind of need to clear up something that Max said above. You see, the truth is that he sort of didn't do the road race at the Avery Trace Cycling Classic in Gainesboro, TN, this past Saturday.

I did.

It was an accident, really. I went out there Friday night to drive the course, since there are a few tricky spots that I wanted to look over. The goal was to plan my race, but as I drove up the three short steep hills early in the course, down the twisty shaded descents, and then along a 15-mile stretch of corn fields and dairy farms, I kept thinking, "Gosh, this is pretty."

"Pretty" is not a Max Watzz word.

I stayed in Cookeville that night, and then drove over to the race start in the morning. After getting ready to ride, I decided to do the climb up to the finish line so that I could be prepared to be in a break at the end. I also figured that this would warm up my legs and get my Max Watzz game-face on.

Getting to the top, I figured a fast warm-up descent would be good, so I whipped down the far side. I still had plenty of time, so I kept going down the gently rolling highway for a mile or so. It was early, not yet hot, and the easy hills along the road were full of corn fields looking ripe and lush.

"Lush" is not a Max Watzz word.

I shook it off and turned around, hammering a bit of the hill on the way back before heading to the starting line. Standing there astride my bike, I tried to focus. I could see that a few of the local teams were well represented, whereas I was the only Gran Fondo racer in the 35-and-over Cat 5 group. Using Max mentality, I tried to determine who I needed to watch and whose wheel I should get on when the race got moving. I thought through the probable scenarios, and came up with contingency plans.

As the race officials starting giving us instructions, Shawn Ewing from the Harpeth Bicycles team pulled up next to me. We chatted a bit as we waited for the start, and as we rolled out I told him, "Good luck."

"Good luck?!" I was in trouble.

A MOAB guy went off the front early, and I was able to Max myself again enough to go to the front and keep the pace hot enough to keep close. As we approached the first climb, the MOAB racer was less than a minute ahead of us when he dropped his chain. We swept past him starting up the hill, and I turned and said, "Sorry."

Whoa. "Sorry" is not a Max Watzz word. It doesn't even rhyme with any Max Watzz words. I could hear Coach MacKillimiquads screaming, "If yer usin' you lungs for anythin' other than to put oxygen in yer fookin' blood, then yer nae usin' 'em right!"

I tried to focus and stayed with the group over that hill and the next, but was falling off a bit as we got to the top of the third one. I knew that, once over this, it would be flat and that I could mostly sit in and recover, but the descent was tricky and I couldn't bring myself to just let it go. When I got to the bottom, I could see the front group was already 200 yards ahead, and the group that I was with was starting to hammer to catch up to them. Max Watzz could have hung with them, and maybe even bridged up.

But Max wasn't there any more. He'd gone back to Dairy Queen in downtown Gainesboro for a Peanut Buster Parfait, and he'd taken Coach MacKillimiquads with him, and neither of them was coming back any time soon. All that was left was RandoBoy -- sitting up, looking around and drinking from his bottle, humming a Willie Nelson tune and wishing that he had a camera so he could stop and take a picture of that neat-looking barn over there.

Shawn had fallen off on the third hill and he pulled up next to me. We rode along side-by-side for a while, chatting about a trip to South Africa that he and his wife, Cali, had just returned from. Cali races with Team Belladium, and they're both really nice folks.

When the MOAB racer who'd dropped his chain on the first climb came by, Shawn and I got into a fast rotating paceline with him for a few miles, closing with a larger group ahead of us. Max could have kept that going, but I got tired of it and waved them on. Then I rode along by myself again for a couple of miles before a slower group came by. I hung with them to the start of the penultimate climb, and then a Cumberland Transit racer and I went off the front on that hill, zipped along the last miles of flat country, and finished the race pretty strong.

But not Max Watzz strong.

Max was back for the time trial, of course, and did well. But he left right afterwards, and I took the long way back to Nashville, driving down Hwy 135 to Cookeville. I'd noticed that road earlier in the day, and thought that it might make a good permanent.

I was right. It's gorgeous, winding along the Roaring River there, with a nasty little climb back up to the plateau. The surface would be terrible for a race, but good for a brevet. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'd like to put together a route that uses that and the long Avery Trace road race circuit. It would be nice to share with some randonneuring friends.

And none of those are Max Watzz words.