Andrew

Same here. On a hard ride I may be suffering too much to even raise an arm to wave.

what about this example: a guy has a 15 year old mtn. bike and rides on the local trail but never talks to anyone or does anything other than ride his bike and keep to himself. no one cares, right? now, take that same guy and put him on a $2500 trek with a $300 biking outfit and i'm willing to bet people will think he's a snob.

I just ride by myself. No worries, no cares. Just me.

I do make a point to wave at anyone on a bike (that I notice). Most ignore me, even if looking right at me, but who cares? I also wave at every car that passes safely ( I ride in rural areas, so it's not that big a deal).

A couple months ago, I came up behind a big group on a commonly used boulevard. They were obviously "serious" meaning high-end bikes, hairless legs, uniforms etc... A couple of them snickered as I rode around them on the left on my low-end frame (with Ultegra everything, but you can't tell in motion, right?) hairy legs, and plain white jersey. Reinforced my choice to ride alone.

Still rode by them, though

And if I ever pass you on the road, I'll be sure to wave to ya!

P.S. If you are truly appreciative, you can send a few bucks to my Paypal account.

[QUOTE=Trsnrtr]Do people here, while driving a car, wave at every other car they pass?

/QUOTE]
Odd you mention this, if its a pickup- well- Yep we most often do.

I don't know about where you live, but in my part of the US (Central Illinois), my arm would get tired if I waved at every pickup truck!

i got a short ride in before work today. on the way out, i passed a woman named eva, smiled and waved and said "hop on my wheel." she said "i was planning on going easy to day, but what the heck." we then passed a guy named jean and i smiled and waved and inivited him to join us. he did. we had a fun paceline screaming along the laksehore in montreal.

both these people were strangers. eva, riding a specialized dolce elite, shops at my lbs. she's a former sports medicine professor who's gone into the sports beverage bottling business. she's been riding for three years. jean, on a trek 2200, runs his own enterprise applications integration consulting firm. he's been riding for two months. we had a nice chat, i pulled about 80 per cent of the way. i'll see them again on the road sometime and wave.

too bad i'm one of those snobbnish, insular roadies.

get mental help

I didn't express that point very well. I didn't mean to say that triathletes were snobs, I meant to say that, when mountain bikers and triathletes started mixing up the roadie population, they weren't to know what the normal etiquette was, so I think that's when people stopped waving to each other, which has contributed to the perception that there are more snobs around. There's still the same amount of snobs out there.

I agree with your perception of triathlons. After cycle racing for a fews years, only at club level, a friend got me to do a team triathlon, where I obviously did the bike leg. Well, being used to the relatively inhospitable scene of the velodrome and the criterium circuit, I could not believe how friendly the triathletes were to each other and to me.

If anyone says there are no snob roadies, then they must be one of them

percentage-wise, i agree that there are the same amount of snobs out there.

i gotta get me a runner and a swimmer and do a team tri sometime...(i'd do it all, but i'm just not built for running, and i haven't swam (swum?) in years!!

I do most of my riding in my neighborhood, sometimes I drive to a different neighborhood but I usually just ride alone. Walkers wave, joggers wave, MTB and hybrid riders wave, but all I get from road bikers is stared at. It's just plain wierd.

Yep, it's true I tells ya!!

Sometimes on really hot days I ride in a tank-top (we call them "singlets"), and I tell ya, absolutely NOBODY speaks to me. Normally, when I'm wearing all the "right stuff", a few roadies will at least grunt in my direction.

Why would the same guys say "g'day" one day, then snob me off the next day because I'm riding in a singlet?

This kinda proves the snob-factor to me.

i usually get waves from 75% of the guys coming from the opposite direction on one of my regular rides. then again, i'm not usually there during "peak riding times" (i only get sundays and mondays off, and i'm usually too wiped on sundays to do much of anything).

Cycling has many sub populations even among people who are reasonably "serious" cyclists. What I mean by serious cyclist is someone who knows something about handling the bike, basic repair, who routinely rides the bike for exercise or recreation or anything other reason, and knows some basic survival skills like recognizing a potential right hook from a motorist or an incipient case of heat exhaustion.

With the advent of trails, we have a whole new class of cyclists out there. The class that avoids roads. Actually bike trails scare me more then roads do. At least people sort of follow the rules on the road on roads and on trails it is like tag team wrestling - anything goes. I stay with the semis where I feel safe. But trail riders tend to ride at a very relaxed pace. Sure they get where they are going and they get exercise so more power to them. But because of my riding style, I won't mix with them much unless we happen to stop at the same place and chat.

You also have the road tourists. They fall into several categories. One group tends to ride at a very relaxed pace. They enjoy the scenery, chat, and seldom push themselves. That isn't my style, but there are many very nice people who do this.

At the other end, you have people who tend to treat every weekend ride as a sort of miniture tour de france. They push and push and push until only the top rider is left or maybe 2-3. The fast riders in our local club do this fairly often but not ALL the time.

Now I have not tried to exhaust the various subgroups of cyclists out there and there are many more then I described above. But many cyclists just because of their riding styles are just not going to interact significantly on the road. If I am at a group ride, I am perfectly happy to chat with any other cyclist. Most have something interesting to say.

I think Roark may well be mistaking the differences in cycling styles for an unwillingness to socialize i.e. snobbery.

about snobbery on this forum... it initally really turned me off with many peoples' describing their new bikes (many '03 and '04) with fancy named parts and the like... while I am still burning the midnight oil to pay off a cheap 80's used single speed....
... but I gotta think that perhaps if I had fancy campy parts or what not, i'd like to boast and brag just a little.... and this isn't such a bad place for that, so ... now i understand.

if you want an insular group... try "professional" mathematicians. I've only been studying math at Chicago for 3 years now, but there aren't big enough aleph-numbers to count how many times my profs have made jokes about "amateur mathematicians." They always like to laugh about how often they're written to by 'amateurs' with claims about solving this or that theorem. It really pisses me off how greatly they *like* to disregard non-academic peoples' attempts at mathematics. Inside the community, this has grown in past years into nation-wide struggles by mathematics educators to even be considered in the same group as hardcore college professor types (who would prefer the teachers be called as such, and not "real" mathematicians). I for one, don't think I'll go into mathematics further than college, but I don't like the idea that this means if I ever want to do math again later in life I'll be so highly looked down upon as to be laughed at for trying.

There is no excuse for "our" attitudes.

I have been a cyclist for over 25 years and when I was introduced to the sport of Mountain Biking it was ingrained on me to

1) Always say hello to another rider / trail user
2) Always stop to offer assistance to another rider / trail user
3) Always be courteous to less experienced riders

I still follow these rules no matter what facet of this great sport I am enjoying! All cyclists enjoy riding their particular style of bike just as much as you enjoy your particular style. We are all cyclists, stop calling yourself a roadie, mtb'er, old school ,etc.

A few stories I would like to pass along.

In 1997 I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks in Tuscon during the winter months. I hooked with group rides and rode solo depending on my training schedule. On a long solo ride I came across a cyclist who had flatted in the middle of nowhere and was walking his bike into town. I stopped and offered an inner tube or pump or both. He galdly accepted. As he fixed his flat he told me that was his first ride on his new bike and the LBS didn't recommend a tube or pump. We chatted some more and he stated " You aren't from Tuscon are you?" I replied I was from the east coast and I asked if my accent was the give away. He replied "no", but at least eight cyclist had passed him and none even acknowledged his presence. He figured I wasn't a local because I offered to help.

On my morning commute to my part time job at the LBS I stopped to help an older gentleman push his car out of an intersection where it had broken down.


Last week I was doing sprint training at the local school with a few friends. A small group of young BMX'ers started talking to us about our bikes and the sprinting. After a few minutes they told us they had built a BMX track very close by and they wanted us to check it out. So we left the school and rode to an open field a few hundred yards away and watched the young cyclist jump, slide and of course, crash. We even rode our road bikes on the course. These young kids were amazed that we could handle our bikes on their course. I hope they stick with cycling and become interested in other facets of the sport (like I did).

The bottom line is this, Our Sport is growing rapidly, take the time to be kind to another cyclist, teach them to do the same and maybe the Snobbery will go away.


Follow the rules
Buddy B

Yeah I'm gonna have to go along and say that the attitudes in road cycling are substantially worse than they are in other enthusiast groups. I've been riding road for about 3 months and could rattle off a list of occasions when I've had other cyclists act inconsiderate (sucking my wheel for miles then trying to blow past me on a hill without a word of acknowledgement), rude (responding with nothing but blank stares when I show up at an open-to-all, broadly advertised group ride and introduce myself)), and hostile (making snide remarks as they pass me). I don't really mind the waving thing, like sometimes youre just too busy or tired to wave and that's fine. But I draw the line when people seem to go out of their way to act like a-holes, and I've never experienced the blatant a-holism that I have in the past three months of road biking.
I understand safety concerns. But those concerns are no excuse for acting like a jerk. If a new guy shows up for a ride, give him a chance! If he does something stupid, by all means let him know. But don't give him the cold shoulder and the attitude just because he's wearing a camelbak and has hairy legs.
I've really been turned off to the sport because of this. I love road riding, and will continue to do so. But my primary focus will remain with mountain biking. I'd much rather be a mtn biker who trains on the road sometimes, rather than vice-versa.
Im not trying to say all roadies are jerks- clearly the people on these forums are great, and I wish most of you guys were on the roads where I live And I have had a grand total of two positive experiences involving other roadies (both on the same day!), so I know there are civil people out there. But man, overall the attitude just sucks, and there seems to be this general agreement that "yeah, roadies are kind of jerks, but just stick with it and 'prove yourself' and they'll warm up to ya." Sorry, but a fraternity-esque hazing process of acceptance is not what I'm looking for in my recreational activities.
As a side note, what someone said about academics being insular jerks is spot-on too! I recently finished up my first (and last!) year in a PhD program in English. My advisor referred to non-academics as "civilians". The first time she did this I waited in vain for the laugh or smile that would indicate she was just horsing around. It never came. Wowzers.

Universities are obviously another can o' worms.......I knew a couple of lecturers who insisted they be addressed as "Professor"!!! We call them "w@nkers" (jerk-offs). One of the guys almost reacted as blatantly as The Maestro on Seinfeld if you got it wrong.

This is good fun if you wanna p1ss off some snobby roadies:

I have a reasonable quality, old bike that I use for short commutes, and therefore have it set up for riding in running shoes.

I love causing a stir by wearing my baggiest shorts and t-shirt, and my joggers, then mowing down the regular roadie/tossers on the usual route. We talk about rudeness and hostility; you should see their response when they get dropped by a guy wearing surfing shorts and running shoes, especially when there's 3 of them that can't catch me. I sometimes hear them screaming at each other to get their drafting organized: "come on, catch the f--ing b@stard"....hee hee hee

(Now I'm the tosser -- sure glad this is anomynous )

I had this thread in mind Sunday afternoon. It's become my Independence Day tradition to ride out to Granite Bay (about 33mi) for a bbq at my inlaws' house. Most of the ride is on the American River Bike Trail. Lots of cyclists on the trail: a couple of "serious" riders I recognized from the River Ride; lots of X-mart full-suspension bikes; a few old school steel-frame racers that looked like they've been hanging in the garage rafters for a few years.

I waved at everyone and the only one who didn't wave back was the guy in the Phonak shorts and no helmet.

In NYC, if I had to wave at every biker I see, I'd a) be riding one handed for most of the way and b) have died months ago dragged under the wheels of a truck as I waved and lost control.
When I'm on my roadie and I see another person riding out on his roadie, I'll usually wave, but I'm not gonna wave to the 20000 immigrants delivering fast food every day, there's only one of those I usually wave at and it's the guy who delivers fast food near the place I usually have sushi at that I helped fix his brake last winter when it wasn't working and it was snowing.

I thought I was the only person who did that. Seriously, though, I think it helps to build rapport with people who see you every day. Maybe if they're in a bad mood next time they see you, they won't be tempted to buzz right by you. They'll know you're the friendly guy on the bike.

Snob-what's that n doing in there? LOL

Another equipment heavy sport is skiing. You can spend as much or more money on everything and the looks are quite important here too. Good setup for growing snobbery. Well, the difference betwen cycling and skiing is in the obviousness of skills. Not so good skiers can look as flashy as they want and they will still be seen at the hill and everyone will be able to see that they don't have it. And vice versa. One of the best skiers I have ever skied with answered to my foolish teasing about his 15 years old jacket: "I don't need equipment to look good at the hill". And that was sooo true.

Roadies who are only cool looking do not need to perform too much. They are either well behind or the others pass and forget them fast and they are left to impress themself.

PS BTW Talking about snobbery, I am even not going to comment the "20,000 immigrants" sentence.