Month End

First, is the last weekend in May designated as national harass and (try to) intimidate cyclists weekend, or were they just out for me? In the past five years I have never had so many cars come so close to hitting me, blow their horns at me, drivers yell at me to get off the road, or intentionally attempt to run me off the road as I did the past two days. It was crazy out there. One, a gentleman in white Chevy pickup - NC plate SSA 2349, has been reported to both the Randolph County Sheriff's Department and the Liberty police for trying to squeeze me off the road, then slamming on his brakes to see if I would run into the back of his truck. All it did was give me time to get the plate number. Hopefully someone will speak to him. Here in North Carolina, a bicycle is entitled to the WHOLE lane. There is no requirement to keep as far right as practical, like in a lot of other states. We all ride to the right to make it easy and cooperate. I tend to ride about eighteen inches into the lane to keep people from trying to squeeze between me and oncoming traffic. They have to go into the other lane to get by, and most of the time it isn't a problem, this weekend, for some reason, it was.

Yesterday's ride started out as just the regular Saturday loop, but partway through I changed the route to take me out Old Liberty Road to Rt.22, then followed that into Climax, riding about thirty miles to there. There is a store there, so I stopped and bought two bottles of water. From there it would be about fifteen miles back to Liberty, then another ten home. That would be fifty five miles, it was a nice day, so I thought, why not go for a metric century. It would just be another seven miles. In the end, I just added a couple of short loops through town and ended the ride with 64.36 miles, or 102.9 km. My legs were a little stiff after, but that may have more to do with all the yard work that's getting done than all the riding. I got in 30 miles today, and my legs felt fine. The Tour de Lions 77 miles two weeks ago and yesterday's 64 were my longest rides since last year's Tour de Lions.

Miles in May went up, 637.17 miles. Last May it was 497.41 miles. For some reason it feels like I'm riding less this year, but, obviously, I'm riding more. Total miles for the years is now 1905.02. I might make 4000 again this year.

Wonder what June will bring.