Please Share the Road by Ray Muth

Please Share the Road
by
Ray Muth

When I visited the San Diego area for the first time last year, I came away with three questions. First, why do I live in the Kiski Valley when I could be living there? Second, if that great tasting stuff was orange juice what have I been drinking all these years? Third, as everyone across the country becomes more health-conscious, why can't our area begin to be as pedestrian and bicycle friendly as them?

Amazingly, posted all around San Diego were billboards encouraging workers including executives to ride their bicycles to work. True, San Diego's temperate climate made cycling to work a year-round option and all their roadways seem to have been designed with cyclists in mind but there was something else noticeable. Cyclists and pedestrians were given a certain kind of courtesy that we sometimes forget here.

Now that the days are growing longer and spring beckons, outdoor enthusiasts who have been waiting out the winter season will soon be back on the roads walking, running and cycling. If you are a driver, please share the road.

As a runner, I know I have a responsibility to avoid placing myself and drivers in hazardous situations. Most of us do our best to find those out-of-the-way places in our neighborhoods because driving to a park isn't always an available option. Usually that means developing that mountain goat mentality, running into the rocky ditches and other rugged terrain whenever we run where cars come by. Likewise cyclists have a responsibility to follow the rules of the road, riding with traffic and especially remembering to signal demonstratively whenever turning.

In my high school Drivers Ed class, I remember my teacher impressing upon all of us a couple of important points. I learned that driving was a privilege and not a right. Also, we were taught to share the road.

I know there is nothing more annoying than sitting in a line of traffic waiting to get past a cyclist that has decided to ride his/her
bike on your route home from work. But please don't take it personal. He/she is not trying to ruin your day. Getting home a few seconds later is not a matter of life or death for you but it could very well be a matter of life or death for the cyclist if you decide to become careless or discourteous, accidentally squeezing him/her off the road in your haste to get past.

I enjoy riding my bicycle down at the Roaring Run trail. Because parking is limited at Roaring Run, I ride my bicycle down from my house to the trail which is only a couple miles away.

Ninety nine percent of all automobile and truck drivers are extremely courteous and share the road. However there are those idiots in life who use their vehicle as an angry extension of their disordered lives. Last year as I was navigating along the thin white line on the side of the road for a very short distance, peddling as swiftly as possible, I could feel the heat coming off the engine of the semi that had pulled up along side me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was only inches from my left shoulder. As his engine began to move out ahead of me, he blared his horn and squeezed me off the road, driving me into a ditch. It was there looking up at stars that I realized the helmet was my friend.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only cyclist that has had narrow escapes from serious injury. And I know there are probably some irresponsible outdoor enthusiasts out there. Both driver and cyclist have a responsibility to be careful.

The Kiski Valley might not have San Diego's climate but San Diego doesn't have the Kiski Valley's people. And drinking that store-bought orange juice isn't so bad. Therefore I think I'll stay where I live. But let's use a little caution whenever we see those people that are self-actualizing outdoors.

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