I'm not a strong climber or descender, but I live in quite a hilly part of Australia, and so several of our rides involve climbing and descending. The chances that I'm going to wave to anyone while I'm climbing or descending is pretty much 0% ... I'm too busy trying to get myself up or down the hill as comfortably as possible.

Yes, I ride road bicycles most of the time. Yes, I wear cycling attire. No, I'm not trying to be rude to any complete strangers who happen to encounter me out there. I'm just focussing on my own ride.



As an example of both your points ... Rowan and I did a Great Ocean Road randonnee a couple years ago. The Great Ocean Road is a popular road for both cyclists and drivers, and on that particular day, not only was the club we were riding with out there, but it looked like half the clubs in Melbourne and Geelong decided to do rides out there too. We could have just set up one of those waving hands you see in the backs of some cars there were so many cyclists.

But as I said, that road is also popular with drivers, especially tourist drivers ... and it can be quite narrow in places ... and where there are shoulders, they aren't necessarily in the best shape (potholes, gravel, parts that have fallen off the side of the cliff, etc.), so the ride involved quite a bit of concentration even on the part of the best riders to negotiate tourist drivers, road conditions etc.

And the road is undulating and twisty, so there's some climbing and descending. Nothing overly challenging, but with everything else going on, the undulations add an extra element of exciting and needed concentration.

I think I might have waved at about half a dozen cyclists in moments where I could relax for a moment, but that was about it. For all the rest, I was just too busy focussing on my own ride to be concentrating on waving every few seconds.


But maybe we should install one of those waving hands on our handlebars to keep the newbie cyclists who like to be waved at happy.