Originally Posted by
kbarch
Yup, you're a bad person.
But I confess, I am, too, in my own way.
No one is any more "entitled" to be alone on the road than they are to have amiable company along the way. It makes more sense to just consider ourselves fortunate when we have what we want, and it's only polite to apologize if we get in the way or disappoint others: "sorry for bothering you, I'll leave you alone" or "sorry, but I don't want company, I'll ride by myself, please." It's not our failure to indulge other people that makes us jerks, we're only jerks when we fail to politely acknowledge them, and we only make ourselves miserable when we stew in our resentments.
This is just weirdly orthogonal to the argument. Of course there are other people on the road who you have to share that space with. What no one is obliged to share is a conversation they didn't ask for, or their draft, or a fake race, or whatever. I'm not going to bite someone's head off if they say hello, a friendly greeting is perfectly appropriate. I've even let a stranger sit on my wheel after he said hello and asked; I'm not mean or dismissive in real life. But yes, here on BF and other parts of the Great Bicycle Intarwebs there does seem to be a sense of entitlement to the time and attention and personal space of absolutely every other person on a bike. Just witness the tooth gnashing over whether someone waved back or not. It grates. In my real world cycling life, as I said above, strangers are by and large polite and don't demand I validate them every time I go for a training ride. It's almost as though there's a social norm against bothering someone you don't know for no good reason! On the internet, though, the roadie out minding their own business is the villain - they're smug, elitist, they think they're so great. Or maybe they're just being tailed by some Fred who thinks he's got something to prove, or wants a stranger to solve his inability to find friends for him. On the rare occasions that happens, it's real annoying!