A moment on the ride home that was just So right.

If you have ever traveled Hiway 1 from anywhere above Ft Ross down to Jenner you have seen them more than likely. You may have been scared for them. You may have cussed them out. You may have almost hit them.

Yes the bicyclists on the steepest part of the 1.

I can understand the lure of that road. Its raw and the view is unlike any other. It just worries the shit out of me sometimes when a motorhome is traveling north and the cyclist is on the white line and I'm put between them. I'm not going to hit the motorhome rest assured.

So where does that leave us or me? I know now that a buffer of at least three feet from the furthest out of my vehicle to the handlebars of the bicycle has to be at least three feet. That's the law now. You can also be cited for harassing a bicyclist while on the road if you call out inflammatory remarks. Whatever. If these people would just obey the same rules of the road I have to follow I could have a lot more respect for them. Meh.

So after the Simply Fishing Tournament Abdiver and myself were traveling that section of 1 down below Russian Gulch. When you get up on the flats past the Gulch you head towards a hairpin turn. There was a female bicyclist riding the  edge going south. No shoulder there. Being a good rider is paramount for safety in my eye. I can tell who is a good rider and you can too. The rider who can travel that white line and be steady in traffic. This gal was all over the place. Weaving out into the lanes and making things very interesting. There was a small car in front of us who couldn't get around her safely yet kept trying. When the car finally passed her we found ourselves alongside her. Rolling the window down I exclaimed my displeasure in her riding abilities. Saying she or someone was going to get killed. I mean at one point she strayed all the way out to the double yellow apparently almost out of control at the hairpin turn.. Her boyfriend up ahead was riding and when we told him about her inabilities he pulls his cellphone out and begins to film us. I guess we were harassing them from his point of view. Fuck him. We went on down the road just shaking our heads.

Enter just this last Saturday the 8th of November. Myself and Dennis had finished fishing the Fort with Adam. Driving down that same stretch and being followed by a Sheriffs explorer, I was relating the story of that day with Eric to Dennis about the chick on the bike. We get the exact same spot in the road and there is a guy riding a bicycle. No shoulder. Double yellow in the middle of the road. No way to pass the man without being legal as there was NOT three feet of a buffer zone. I'm not going over the double yellow either. That's against the law. So I just slow down. To a crawl. For a longtime.

After about three to four minutes of this we now have about 10 - 12 cars behind the Sheriff. I'm letting the Sheriff's deputy call the shots at this point. Just obeying the law and being a good driver. hehehe. After the hairpin the deputy has had enough. Over his loudspeaker he yells out" if you can't driver that thing 55 pull over and let the vehicles pass. You are impeding traffic!!! Pull over right now!!!" Sheer fucking joy was being felt in the cab of my truck. As we pulled away we could still hear him yelling at the bicyclist.

Fucking righteous. Have a great day. God is great and just at times.

 

That just made my day! hahaha

Pretty funny Craig    When Sara and I were driving home from the Simply Fishing Tournament, we passed some bicyclists on the other side of the road heading north, also a couple.  But the guy had put a bicycle flag mounted on his left side, sticking out horizontally to about 3' I'm guessing with the orange flag out.  I was like, wtf is he doing that for?  Then heard on the news about the new rules. 

Great story.  We get them on the Delta levee roads too.  Insane, with all the drunks out there.  I bike, but not where I am an obvious traffick hazard, or a threat to my own safety.

As for the guy with the Flag. If it comes to getting my self killed or lass than 3 ft. I'll take the ticket. OOPs sorry that flag got torn off your bike buddy.

Very rare that a cyclist on the highway pisses me off. But the bicyclists riding in the city, they're a different story. I had so many close calls with them failing to stop at stop signs/lights, it's very frustrating.

When I was working and had to go to work the Aids ride camped at the fair grounds. when they left I could not get to work on time because they would not stop for the stop sign. Then contend with them almost all the way to work.

Great story!  I had some safety training recently & got to question a police officer re: this new law.    Can I cross the double-yellow line to pass a bike?

Technically, no. However, police have the authority to exercise discretion when enforcing the law and have consistently said they are unlikely to ticket a motorist who straddles the double yellow line to provide three feet of clearance, provided they do so safely and carefully.

I pulled the above from some other website but the officer I spoke with said the same. He stated he would not issue a ticket for slowly passing a bicycle over the double yellows. He also said that unfortunately some bicyclists have been caught deliberately riding 2 or more abreast trying to provoke cars into passing within three feet while the bicyclists filmed their license plates. The video was brought into the police dept who after reviewing decided to take no action against the motorists.

I've seen several idiots riding bikes with 6ft pvc cages built around their bikes since the law went into effect. I hope karma catches up with these idiots. To bad those bicyclists that were impeding Ravensblack didn't get tickets. I frequently drive my motorhome on Hwy1 & always pull over to let cars, that are driving faster than me = not many  , go by. Some bicyclists do this as well...... but not all of them.

Highways are for cars, plain and simple. It's about getting from point A to point B in a timely manner.
I can't drive my truck on the bike trail. Why should they be allowed to ride their bikes on the highway?
It's a safety issue for all involved.
If there is no shoulder then they should be required by law to walk the bike and get the hell out of the way of the cars that are going from point A to point B in a timely fashion.

I often times wonder if bicyclists on highway one have a death wish!  Another road that can be bad is Blue Lakes road in Alpine county.  Maybe my vehicle is too quiet and they don't actually hear me behind them or they don't give a shit or maybe the thin air prevents them from thinking clearly but they just don't get out of the way.  I would love to rig up a train horn on my vehicle and give them a few blasts. 

Take 30 fucking seconds out of your day, to avoid killing someone.

The girl, an idiot. The cages, idiots. But they don't deserve to die.

As for the guy with the Flag. If it comes to getting my self killed or lass than 3 ft. I'll take the ticket. OOPs sorry that flag got torn off your bike buddy.

If you hit that flag, you are more than likely going to send that rider right into your rear quarter panel.

Then he's dead.

He's an idiot, just wait till you have enough space, no cop will ticket you for not killing somebody.

Highways are for cars, plain and simple. It's about getting from point A to point B in a timely manner.
I can't drive my truck on the bike trail. Why should they be allowed to ride their bikes on the highway?
It's a safety issue for all involved.
If there is no shoulder then they should be required by law to walk the bike and get the hell out of the way of the cars that are going from point A to point B in a timely fashion.

The equivalent to bike lanes are freeways. No bikes on freeways. No cars on bike paths.
If there is no shoulder AND it is not safe to pass, then a cyclist can take the whole lane- cvc2102- and you can just wait a bit.

What you guys are ignoring is that a bike is a completely valid method of travel, with equal rights and equal responsibility. Yes there are riders that blow through stops and such, but don't lump us all into one bucket, and certainly don't threaten my life just because you can't take an e tea minute out of your day

hahaha!

I've done that! I have a PA system in my jeep and a train horn... if the PA dont work, I use the train horn....

pretty funny how razzle'd they get when they here the air horn

I don't mind bikes on the driveways. Just have some effing self preservation FFS. I don't drive my car like a maniac on the roads and expect the world to accommodate me. So don't bike like a idiot (read: 75% of the bikers on the streets) and expect the world to accommodate you. Bikes can turn faster, stop faster, and get the f*** out of the way faster than my 2 ton mass of hurling steel. I don't want to hit bikers, I want them to respect cars approximately 10% as much as they are demanding the rest of us to respect them.