Rapid Adaptation

Respected Readers,

Today Le Poseur will depart from his typical grumpy and cynical perspective on the sorry state of cycling in Fresno and the rest of the U.S. to tell you about a magnificent event he had the pleasure of taking part in on Sunday, June 7.

The event was America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride (AMBBR) that circumnavigates Lake Tahoe in the High Sierra, with a 30-mile out-and-back flaggelum to Truckee to make the ride a century. It truly is a beautiful ride.

However, the best part for Le Poseur was to watch the extremely successful adaptation (not to say operant conditioning) of the motorists in the face of roughly 3500 cyclists!!!!

The route proceeds clockwise around Lake Tahoe, starting and finishing at the casino ghetto at Stateline. The southbound leg of the circumnavigation follows Nevada Route 28 from Incline Village over Spooner Grade. Not only was the road recently repaved, but the road is consistently 4 lanes wide, with two travel lanes and a bike lane over most of its length. 

The best part was that the auto traffic completely abandoned the right travel lane to the cyclists with little or no encouragement from the local Nevada gendarmes patrolling the ride. It was Heavenly Valley! The cars treated the thousands of cyclists with consistent respect and courtesy, supporting the idea that the more bicycles that are on the road the safer all the riders will be. Perhaps encouraging more and more people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes is the most effective thing we can do to enhance the safety of cyclists.

The more we are a normal part of the street scene, the better the cars will treat us. 

Atypically positive pour Le Poseur, n'est pas?