A friendly word...

gpriatko said:

artmichalek,

You seemed to have missed all those instances of the feminine pronoun.

And much of my 'rant' is about what she does know.

And it's not about getting hurt and having difficult recoveries. I told you, there is no cure.

And it's not about not accepting being part of a community. I wrote about being part of that community.

DiabloScott summed it up nicely.

You seem to have a bit of a reading problem. I was referring to the person who made the comment. You're presuming that they were supposed to just magically know exactly how many times your friend had been up that hill, and exactly what she's going through. You don't know a single thing about the person that passed by you except that they tried to be nice to someone they didn't know.

janiejones,

Thanks for understanding.

Cycling is a gateway for us. You jump on the bike, head out over the Golden Gate bridge and every trip is special.

There is so much more to these rides than just riding. It reconnects us with the world. If you ride with your eyes wide open you can see the most amazing things.

OK, maybe other people aren't so amazed but there's so much beauty and so much to be interested in.

Many times we'll come back from a ride and spend hours looking up the names of the wild flowers that we saw. Or reading about the geology (a big favorite), or about raptors, or ravens and animal intelligence. When you spend two hours each day riding through the places like this you have time to think about what you're seeing and what wonder what it means.

In the fall there are thousands of hawks that fly over Hawk Hill. It's one of the two most active migration routes in North America. We spend hours just sitting there watching them. Some days we can talk to the researchers. They'll have a live hawk out for banding. You'll be standing there, talking to some one who's holding a live Redtailed Hawk, looking into its eyes, wonding what it's thinking... I had no idea that this was happening until I got on my bike and started riding. Sometimes we joke about how oblivious we were.

In the fall, you can hear coyote clans calling to each other as they work their way up the trails along the valley. It's an amazing feeling to stand there, out in an open space and listen to them howling to each other.

I was literaly 15 foot away from a wildcat. They're so shy. In normal conditions they'll bolt if you get within 50 feet of them. She was hunting. It's spring, she probably has kittens. For less than a minute I was closer to a wildcat then I may ever be again in my life. A little piece of magic that happens because you're out of your car and you're moving silently through a wildlife preserve in the early evening.

There's a lot of emotion wrapped up with this.

mikesbytes said:

Diablo, aggree with you, but we shouldn't convict this person for trying to do the right thing. None of us are perfect, me in particular.

This isn't about convicting anybody, it's about etiquette. If you don't know what proper etiquette is, you won't know when you've violated it. Gpriatko's experience is just an example of how you can have good intentions and still come off as rude and condescending.

artmichalek said:

You seem to have a bit of a reading problem. I was referring to the person who made the comment. All of those things contributed to my not catching who 'he' was in your post.

Yes I did, in this case.

I'd just read a couple of postings where other people had referred to my friend as 'he' rather than 'she'.

FWIW, the person who made the comment was a woman. I didn't think that that was important so I didn't say so.

And to be fair, I was 'ranting' about what my friend does and doesn't know.

Not too surprising that I might misinterpret your use of 'he'.

Quoted post said:

You're presuming that they were supposed to just magically know exactly how many times your friend had been up that hill, and exactly what she's going through.

Not at all.

My point was that they have no way of having that information and that they have no way of knowing how their well intentioned comment is going to come across to some one else.

Sometimes what works for them is going to be exactly the wrong word at exactly the wrong time for some one else.

Children often go about blurting out things that make sense to them. Adults learn, well, hopefully the learn to be adult.

Quoted post said:

You don't know a single thing about the person that passed by you except that they tried to be nice to someone they didn't know.

Again, that's not the point.

I've been on the recieving end of such well meaning comments. I am not a ten-tenths rider. Not even a 9/10ths. I get tired and sore after 25-30 miles. And I do tend to resent those comments. I have different priorities, different styles and different goals. I heartily salute those who can immerse themselves in cycling. But I don't know them nor their story. I've chewed on my shoes enough to realize that a closed mouth gathers no foot. I will wave, and I will stop if I see signs of distress. But I will not urge someone on. It is their body, and their life. And I am not my brothers/sisters keeper. Hell, I can't even keep track of my socks.......

i dunno i'm just not comfortable with this sort of preemptive guardedness about what we say to other people, just in case.

it struck me yesterday that mothers day sales and card shouting at us from every direction in the grocery store could be really hurtful to people who dont have a mother. should we just never say anything to anyone... jsut in case?

or should people maybe learn to suck it up and not take it personally and accept that even if it isnt necessary, the encouragement was offered in good faith, and any projection to the contrary is entirely a product of ones own ego.

gpriatko said:

I'd just read a couple of postings where other people had referred to my friend as 'he' rather than 'she'.

Despite equal opportunity, many of us do tend to talk differently, depending on their gender.

Unless there is a considerable difference in pace, I find it a bit rude to just go past without giving some sort of basic communication, usually a simple "Morning" or the like. I must admit, that I can't resist the temptation for a simple joke, for example a rider on an identical bike will get a "Nice Bike".

DiabloScott said:

This isn't about convicting anybody, it's about etiquette. If you don't know what proper etiquette is, you won't know when you've violated it. Gpriatko's experience is just an example of how you can have good intentions and still come off as rude and condescending.

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I'll go back to not saying anything and avoiding eye contact to avoid offending anyone when I'm out pedaling. Motorcyclists usually wave or nod to each other when we're riding, and I've never heard of a fellow biker being offended because they got waved/noded at, I wonder what I've been missing there?

nomotornozen said:

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I'll go back to not saying anything and avoiding eye contact to avoid offending anyone when I'm out pedaling. Motorcyclists usually wave or nod to each other when we're riding, and I've never heard of a fellow biker being offended because they got waved/noded at, I wonder what I've been missing there?

Bad analogy - no one here said we shouldn't wave and say "hi". You can't be that daft - even if you do ride a motorcycle 😉

DiabloScott said:

Gpriatko's experience is just an example of how you can have good intentions and still come off as rude and condescending.

This reminds me of the time I asked a co-worker (good friend) that I hadn't seen for 5 months or so when the baby was due. She said, "I'm not pregnant !".

I'm serious, I thought she was pregnant, she looked pregnant. I found out shortly there after that she was recently diagnosed with Diabetes. Some diabetics put on large amounts of abdominal fat. :o

I'm telling you, I felt pretty bad that day but I felt even worse for her.

DiabloScott said:

Bad analogy - no one here said we shouldn't wave and say "hi". You can't be that daft - even if you do ride a motorcycle 😉

Well if a well intentioned friendly verbal greeting can be misconstrued like that, why not a nonverbal one? The internet is a great place to have things taken out of context because the nonverbal cues are missing here that would change the emphasis, and it sounds like a few of the bicyclists here would rather not have any contact with fellow bicyclists while pedaling. I'll stick to waving at bikers and on your left for the rare bicyclist that I pass going the same dirction.

I've noticed over the years I've been riding motorcycles that most bikers are friendly and will nod or wave in return, and realized in the short time I've been bicycling that the other bicyclists I've seen aren't that friendly. This morning I pedaled around the forest preserve by my house, and passed about the same number of joggers, walkers and bicyclists. All of the jogger and walkers returned my greetings and smiled (even the ones lost in thought) except for one, and only one of the bicyclists did. I'm going to try this again sometime, but wouldn't be surprised to find similar results.

gpriatko said:

Just don't assume that what you would find encouraging is the right thing for someone else.

I think that there are two issues,

1) Newbie's and Old Timers

2) Personally dealing with losing something that you love

The first one's easier. Invariably it's been a newbie who comes out with this kind of thing. They're trying to be nice but really, once you've been up that hill a few thousand times you sort of know where the top is. It's kind of like you go to your favorite restaurant and you spill some water out of your water glass. So you mop up the water, you pick up your glass, move it towards your mouth and some newbie at the next table looks at you and says, good job, you're almost there.

No [censored] Sherlock.

And maybe I would just have felt like laughing about it, if it wasn't for thing #2.

Maybe my friend isn't going to make it back. Maybe my friend has lost one of the things that she dearly loves.

It's not a matter of lack of training. She's been a athlete her whole life.

It's not a matter of lack of will. Stanford has a great Sports Medicine program and they've got great Neurologists. And those nice people say there is no cure. They say take drugs that twist your neural transmitters into knots and stop riding. Maybe the pain will be manageable. But she says, I want to ride.

And then there are the injuries that Sports Med folks say aren't repairable.

And then there's tomorrow's MRI. Maybe the thing that knocked the legs out from under her mother, and that's doing the same to some of her sisters, is about to do it to her.

Maybe it's not just riding that's not going to be an option.

Sometimes you just want to get on your bike and ride. You want to feel that freedom of motion. You want to feel alive and well. And you don't want someone who doesn't know a damned thing about you telling you "you're going to make it". Because the truth is, maybe you're not.

Don't assume that when you see someone struggling on a climb that they need your encouragement. That climb may be a act of courage that a relatively healthy person can barely imagine.

Sure, be friendly, smile, say hello. But I can tell you, as someone who's been in a similar postion. As someone who was damned sure that he was going to make it that day but didn't know if he'd be around a few months later; I can tell you, that the last thing I wanted to hear was "you're going to make it".

Sometimes you need the option to enjoy what you can of what life you have left; and to detach from what you're losing. And you don't want to be pulled back into the reality. You just want to finish your ride on your own terms.

When you get to the top, maybe you'll want to talk about the weather, or the view, or maybe you'll just want to say, yeah, I'm not feeling my best today.

Just don't assume that what you would find encouraging is the right thing for someone else.

So wear a sign on your back that says "I'm really a great rider, i'm riding slow through choice, please no patronising remarks". Simple really.