🚀 go-pugleaf

Phillip Russell (flip@sage.cc.purdue.edu) wrote:

> You only ride if the roads are clear? WIMP!!!! 8-)
> For me the cars don't really matter much in the winter. Mostly they're

I think you may be underestimating the danger of riding in the winter a
little bit.  Perhaps those cars "don't really matter much", but I think
they do.  The trouble is that they can loose control very easily on
slippery surfaces and slide into you at speeds sufficient to kill you.

I ride a lot in the winter, and frankly, it scares the hell out of me.
I'm not afraid of falling; the worst that happens is a bruise or two.
But what scares me is the prospect of a passing motorist loosing control
on ice and mowing me down.  At the bottom of a hill that is on my way to
work, I have watched half a dozen cars in a row skid through the
intersection because they couldn't stop going downhill on the ice.  In
the summer I merge into the left turn lane there, but many times in the
winter, cars skid through the intersection and I'd be flattened if I
stopped there.  One needs different tactics to survive.  The only time
I'm *not* afraid of riding in the winter is if there are no cars about.

Don't get _too_ complacent if you choose to ride in the winter.  It is
better to be alive and a wimp than dead and brave, eh?

  - steve "it is impossible to be sufficiently paranoid" k