Originally Posted by
john m flores
IDK, there's a lot of groupthink and conformity in the more sportive cycling groups that I've encountered. Some of it is understandable, i.e., lycra and slim fit riding gear are more aero. I've mostly ridden solo but for years I considered myself part of the sporty crowd. But now that I'm older and slower and more likely to have a bag or two on my non drop bar bike and wear non-aero clothes, I've encountered sporting cyclists who've basically ignored my friendly hello and wave.
And there's a reason why the whole mountain bike scene grew the way it did, as a counterculture to the stereotypical conformist roadie. And in a lot of ways it's still like that.
Not that it bothers me - I'm too old for that crap and have always been independently-minded. But I do think it's there.
As I said: projecting.
And you're too early. Waving threads usually start showing up in March.
All the MTB people I rode with in Maryland starting in the early '80's were also road racing guys. Except for a couple of dirt bike riders. They could handle their bikes on trails like nothing I'd ever seen. Unbelievable.
Yes, MTB guys have a tendency to sneer at road riders for some reason. (Have, or had; I doubt that it still happens much.) Again, I've never understood it, unless it's the usual human proclivity for seeing another, slightly different group as a monolith of subhuman alien outsiders.
Whenever any American male congratulates himself on being independently minded (I include myself), I remember, in Charles Portis's
True Grit, Rooster Cogburn saying to LaBoeuf, the former Texas Ranger, "If I ever meet a Texas Ranger who doesn't say he once drank water out of a muddy hoofprint, I'll shake his hand and buy him a five-cent Daniel Webster see-gar."