Little Things that Bug You

[RichMc]

These are the little things that bug you during a ride. Not necessarily the kind of stuff that will ruin your whole day. Most often the kind that make life a little more interesting than it needs to be at times.

1) Those square, reflective "edge of the road markers" that you can usually squeeze through before running off the shoulder. It's those times when you are distracted by something and before you know it, you hit one and BOOM!, you get that unwanted piece of air and the jolt back to reality.

2) Alternating patches of sun and shadow on the edge of the road which cause that instant & temporay blindness. Just after shooting into the shadow there's that edge marker or a pothole. Yeehaw.

3) One of my other favorites. You're on a bike path which is part of a heavily traveled, narrow road when you come across someone pedaling towards you, going against the flow of traffic. Bear in mind that there are marked bike lanes on both sides of this road. One of the best one's that happened to me was when an elderly fisherman was pedaling back at me and had his fishing pole lengthwise across his bars. Couldn't be mad at him and he had a big grin on his face. Still, you have to either stop or ride out into traffic.

[BumpyintheBurgh]

Helmet mirror adjustments.
Rumble strips.
Pick-up trucks up close & personal.
Driver's who honk.
A bee in your mouth.
Squirrels in your spokes.
Fast riders who invite you to ride along, saying we'll go slower, then drop you like a ruptured colostomy bag.

[e-RICHIE]

dangling participles.

[Jeff N.]

Runners/joggers who are in the bike lane, running straight at me, and won't move up onto the sidewalk so that I can pass without my having to look over my shoulder and go out onto the road. I don't say anything, but I'm thinking, "Get the f*** outa my way!"

[dirtdigger88]

thanks to modern drugs- nothing bugs me anymore :cool:

jason

[shinomaster]

I get tired of burning the bottom of my pizza!! ****ing ****ty cheap-assed piece of **** worthless ****ing crappy ghetto oven...

[William]

Pizza Stone. :cool:


*Riders that don't say "hi" back.
*SUV moms.
*Towns that don't street sweep the sand off the road in the spring...esp on turns at the bottoms of hills.
*Kamikaze Squirrels.
*never ending snow.
*Crappy customer service
*Yada, yada, yada....


William
:)

[cycleman_21]

Signaling and executing a left hand turn and having someone yelling,"GET TF OUT OF THE ROAD",yea happy Easter to you too buddy. :beer:

[Sandy]

Little bugs, the ones that seem to attack in little groups...

Open wide...

Sandy

[William]

Little bugs, the ones that seem to attack in little groups...

Open wide...

I agree! A good source of quick protein on a long hard ride. :D

William

[Kevan]

on what lurks in those shadows. There's nothing like zipping along at 30+ mph wondering, "What's in those shadows up ahead???" Yikes!

Other irks:

- those drops of sweat that find their way onto the inside of your eyewear, bluring your vision.

- the pedal/cleat connection that for some friken reason just doesn't happen as you push off the curb into a heavily trafficed intersection.

- hot gaterade.

- the bug that finds its way back to your soft palate, stuck, with the only recourse is to swallow.

- the car that races ahead to turn right in front of you. I hope they got good use of the 15 seconds they didn't waste waiting for me.

- fumbling in back pockets, fearing the $20 bill you stuck in with your Gu's is going to fly when you pull one of the packets out.

- worn out gaskets on pump nozzles.

- retrieving yesterday's shorts from a smelly hamper only to put them on for another ride.

- tire rub.

- chain rub.

- pedal squeak.

- saddle squeak.

- riders who can't hold a line or push their bikes back near a foot when jumping out of the saddle.

There more, but this topic is beginning to make me feel grouchy.

[TimD]

Interference between the front brake cable housing and the rear derailleur cable boss on my Legend.

TimD

[Too Tall]

Shinyone, second the pizza stone. Look for the big arse square ones so you can make manly size pizzas. William's n' Sonoma has it. White pizza with stinky cheese and basil infused olive oil, salt rulz.

Well, almost nothing bugs me when I'm on a bike unless the blood sugar gets low and than it can be like a scene from Dante's Inferno. Carrying extra calories to shove in my face is a good defense.

E - They have an operation for that you know?

OK, the "thing" which will always cause me to fume is folks with music turned up to 11 whist rollerblading on the bike path. It's just so rude that I've got to slow down, get their attention and go on. My dingy bell, yelling and a loud whistle are no match for 50 cent.

[Ozz]

cook it on the bbq grill

[BURCH]

Meeting up with my friends that teach later in the summer to find out that no work for 2.5 months in the summer equals riders that are twice as fast as I am in August!!!

[Keith A]

I'm with Too Tall about just being happy to be out on my bike, but I have to admit there are a couple of things that do get to me:

● Rude and unthinking car/truck drivers -- especially the ones that who yell "get off the road" or "get on the sidewalk", or purposely buzz you, or as Kevan said, zoom past you just to slow down and turn in front of you. BTW, I think you were generous on the amount of time they save.

● Other cyclists who don't obey the traffic laws -- especially when they blow through stop signs.

● Soccer moms driving SUVs

● Drivers who won't pass you, thus holding up traffic which causes the drivers behind to vent on you as they pass by.

● Any kind of squeaking or rattling noise coming from my bike.

[M_A_Martin]

Hausfraus on cell phones with screamers in vehicles on the same roads as I am. Sure they pay taxes...but why do I have to pay their stupidity tax?

Bicycle riders who do not follow appropriate vehicle code. (***, Riding the opposite traffic in the lane so they can see what's going to hit them?)

Triathalons that overlap the local century.

[1centaur]

...three feet from your ear at 30 mph with no warning.

Road glue (tar patches) put on perfectly good, smooth quiet country roads by DPW crews getting overtime (as is their police detail), probably so the town commuters will get bugged enough by the bumpiness to demand a complete repaving and...more DPW overtime. I'm sure they have a theory of imminent road demise without the tar patches, but as a cyclist who spends a lot of time staring at the road surface I would say the theory is fantasy.

[flydhest]

authors who submit crappy papers to academic journals, receive a well-thought-out critique of their work, with lots of specific suggestions about what to change AND references, who then take the opportunity to resubmit the paper, but don't incorporate the most important criticisms of the paper.

I usually hate telling editors to reject papers, but I took some relish in shredding this one.

[csb]

my left knee, riverdance, + cirque du soleil

[Keith A]

My right knee (ACL reconstruction) and the way my nose drips when it is cooler outside.

[weisan]

Nothing bugs me. Nothing really.....everything's perfect and round. :p

[PanTerra]

Leaving your front wheel leaning against your car's rear quarter panel after putting your bike on the rack and then backing out. Only had to do that once. Now, on a couple of occasions, including last night, of just forgetting to put the wheel in the trunk (leaving it hanging in the garage) when leaving for a ride, only discovering it upon arrival at the ride start. :crap:

[Keith A]

On a related note...A friend of mine recently left his nice Zipp carbon front wheel leaning against his rear bumper. As I start riding off towards home, I hear this very loud crunching and popping sound. I loop back around to find out what the noise was and there lies his crumpled wheel on the ground. The sad (and a bit humorous) thing was that his rear object detection alarm was going off. Since he couldn't see anything, he just ignored the warning and backed up. :crap:

[PanTerra]

While my experience may have been traumatic (I thought at the time) it was the wheel that came on my '87 Peugeot: a Mavic MA40/Shimano 600 wheel. It cost me about $150 to replace with a MATRIX ISO-CII wheel. 1990 dollars, of course.

[csb]

... not enough deviled eggs

[Skrawny]

Those little "no-see-ems"
I snarfed one yesterday. Inhaled it way up in my nasal passageway, right next to my brain.

Poor little bugger didn't go down without a fight. He must have been stuck up there wiggling his little buggy butt, because my body started freaking out.

Everything that could secrete, secreted.
Everything that could excrete, excreted.

I pulled over with tears in my eyes, sneezing, coughing, salivating, sweating, and hiccuping.
I couldn't see, speak, or breathe.

By the time that the little dude got ejected or injested I was in a sorry state. I had to sit down at the road side for a while to collect myself.
All in all, though, I think I got off better than the bug
-s

PS-Shino: unglazed tile as a pizza stone (6"x6" or 4"x4"). It is cheeper (found at Home Depo, etc) and more flexible to fit many size ovens. Wrks just as well, too. The cracks between tiles are not an issue with the dough.

[OldDog]

In this world there way too much that can bug you if you let it. I try not to get bugged, especially by the little simple silly stuff. Life is too short. Grin like an idiot and deal with it. If you can't, walk away.