colleen c

I think most of us have at least one. What's your? Some are worst than other. Here the one I hate most:

1) car in front of me at the intercetion backing up almost hitting me while waiting for green light. Only reason why he back up is because some car just left a parking space behind us.

2) shopping carts that always seem to roll to my locked bike at the grocery store where I do my quick stop. Too often I wonder is my rear derailer misalign.

3) last minute motorist in front of me who suddenly decide to slam on their brakes to make a right turn just because their GPS said so.

4) kids on the train in the front seat of my side seat who turns around playing with the stuff on my handle bar.

5) cyclist who start Pet Peeves thread on the forum.

AndrewP

1) There is never a car in front of me when waiting for the light to turn green

2) Realigning your rear derailer wont stop the carts rolling into your bike.

3) Any motorist who does this makes me mad - not just last minute motorists.

4) What is the front seat of your side seat?

colleen c

Imagine two seat in the shape if a letter "L". My bike is along the lenghtwise of the L in front of me and the handle bar at the corner of the L. Then imagine a mother and child sitting on the other side where the kid turns around and play with my bike. I tried turning the bike the other way but then the handle bar will be right at the door way of the train. Some passenger has caught their purse and other stuff on my handle bar if I place my bike in that position. One time I took a nap and woke up to see a little girl playing with my Airzound button. Of all things to for her to be messing with, imagine everyone on the train going deaf. However that better than my pepper spray which I used to have it rubberband to my handle bar

noisebeam

Waiting in line behind a few vehicles at red light in narrow outside lane. Then some cyclist squeezes by, giving inches of clearance when they do, and the plops themselves in front, light turns green and they proceed way slower than I'd like to holding up me and the drivers ahead they squeezed by. There is no reason they could not have waited in the position they arrived at and easily made it through the intersection when the light turned green.

oboeguy

Where to begin? Let's take a sample of five:

1) murderous drivers
2) clueless pedestrians
3) double-parked vehicles
4) lousy road maintenance
5) oblivious wrong-way cyclists

yarb

I don't have any peeves, I love bike commuting!

I suppose hangovers are more problematic than they used to be.

stringbreaker

The nimnal produce delivery driver that buzzes me almost every morning at around 4:30 even though we are on a four lane arterial and he could get over like his compatriots do in the other produce trucks. He is the only one.

crazybikerchick

1. Motorists that don't signal
2. Motorists and cyclists with the "me first" to the red light mentality.
3. Pedestrians that assume because you are just a bike they can wander jaywalking across the road right in front of you and you won't hit them
4. Cyclists that pass right-turn signalling vehicles on the right
5. Cyclists that squeeze between a car and the curb at the red light effectively meaning the vehicle that got their first cannot proceed on the green light
6. Construction crews that leave the roadway in a bumpy state when they are done

Enh I better not keep going.

rumrunn6

haha - without even reading I see the lists ...

I guess mine are: stock piling food and clothing at work

Seattle Forrest

(1) Being buzzed by drivers passing me with about six inches of clearance. I'm taking the whole travel lane more and more often lately because of that, if the lane isn't wide enough to share. It's unfortunate, and I prefer to ride in a friendlier manner, but not at the cost of a trip to the ER.

(2) People who say "irregardless."

(3) Cyclists who call people going the wrong way "salmons." It's a clever innovation and all, but the plural of salmon is salmon.

(4) Linguistic prescriptivism and peevology.

yarb

Agreed.

The plural of the fish is "salmon". The plural of the contrarian cyclist is up for grabs I think. It might be useful to make a distinction; I wouldn't want people to think I was some kind of fishophobe.

Ha ha. Right on!

filtersweep

Bike lanes. I generally hate them, because I am expected to ride in them-- and in spots the lane is maybe a half meter wide. I especially hated one today when I was very nearly right hooked. I had a sense this would happen, so I was able to cut in front of him as he turned into a gas station, and gave a stink eye worthy of legend. I took the lane until I turned off after that.

cyclezealot

. Little bothered me about my commute.. Loved it. . My only fear. Would a string of flats make me late for work.. About bike commuting to work.. It was the car commute that more often than not made me late..... But, Not son on the bike.. Traffic jams pose far more of a threat to being late than my fear of bike flats, particularly in California. Something that a bike commute avoids.

Chris Chicago

1) cars that honk at you to move out of their way when there is no where for you to move.
2) stealthy pot holes. like there arent enough things to look out for without worrying about the blacktop

and I second
" Pedestrians that assume because you are just a bike they can wander jaywalking across the road right in front of you and you won't hit them"

JPprivate

1) head wind
2) flats
3) getting hit by car
4) lousy streets/potholes

snorkel

1. Traffic lights with no cars around to trip the censor. Easily my biggest pet peeve.. Want to be a good bicycle representative and obey the traffic laws, but also don't want to spend the rest of my life at the red.
2. Glass, glass, glass, glass... To paraphrase the prophet Nugent: "I don't know where it comes from, but it sure does come."

snorkel

Many, many, many moons ago I was reading a book that had glossary of computer terminology. One of the points it made was that while the plural of the living rodent form of a mouse is mice, the plural of the computer mouse is technically mouses.

On one hand this makes sense to me. On the other hand it does nothing to change the fact that you sound like a giant bloody tool when you say "mouses". I think the exact same applies for "salmons". It is technically correct in this context, but also sounds idiotic.

JPprivate

It's mouse devices, thank you very much....

snorkel

It is funny but I often find myself rephrasing sentences in order to avoid having to use the plural of awkward computer terms. Virus and BlackBerry are two that I frequently try to avoid using the plural of.

CACycling

Poorly aimed irrigation sprinklers.

The guy in the black Ford Ranger who inevitably changes lanes at the last minute to get behind me at the red light at 5th and Oxnard Blvd. After waiting for all the traffic in the other lane to pass him while he is stuck behind me (he would usually be the 2nd or 3rd vehicle in that lane if he had just stayed there) he changes back into the other lane, passes me and yells out his window that I'm an idiot! I've lost count of how many times he's done this.

Seattle Forrest

Yeah, I understand the distinction. There are some pairs of words that have diverged from a common ancestor, and get different past tenses because of it, usually from gerunding ( creating a new verb out of a noun ). For example:

* I ringed the lake with my bike the other night. They ringed the city with artillery. It's not that they rang it ( past tense of ring as a normal verb ), but they created a ring ( noun -> verb form ) around the city.

* I flied out the last time I tried to play baseball. It's not that I levitated myself out of the stadium; I hit a pop fly, and it was caught.

And there are all kinds of other idiosyncrasies to language: not every woman who falls, is a fallen woman, etc.

But "salmons" isn't Standard English. Maybe it will be, some day, if enough cyclists use the term often enough that it catches on. Until then, though, it grates slightly on my ear, and every time I hear it, the first thing that jumps into my mind is that someone has made a minor and basic grammatical error, getting an irregular plural wrong. And yeah, I realize the irony here, since mine own peeve was peevology. It just bugs me a little.

( And, for the record, there's no such thing as technically correct or incorrect in language; only standard. There isn't a higher authority we can look to for facts about how language should be, only how it's used, and how a person can make themselves understood. But to say a person's use of language is 'technically incorrect' is like saying a panda is eating bamboo with the 'wrong' hand. )

colleen c

If the hangover are from the drinking, then I strongly do not recommend staring at spokelite in the dark in the early dark morning hours.

colleen c

Haven't got one of those yet, but summer is arriving......

colleen c

Doggie owner who do not pick up after their dog poop and I end up picking it up for them with my tires.

JPprivate

Oh, I love those... especially on a hot summer day....