ILL-FATED, MISERABLE RIDE REPORT, PART 2: DO WE REALLY MEAN IT WHEN WE PASS A STRANDED RIDER AND ASK IF THEY NEED HELP?

If you were a roadie, riding along Mulholland just north of Kanan a couple Sundays ago and you saw a guy in a Ritte Van Vlaanderen jersey pushing a silver Niner with one flat tire, why didn’t you at least act like you wanted to lend me a hand?

I had run out of tubes, run out of CO2 cartridges and was genuinely stranded. This is something that I KNOW we all fear as cyclists.

This goes a step beyond Universal Truth Of Cycling #14 (two kinds of cyclists: ones who say “Hello” and ones who don’t). I wasn’t just toodling along, hoping for a greeting, I was asking for help. I did get a few that asked if I was okay but really didn’t want to stop because they didn’t wait for my response.

Bottom line is that the roadies acted like…roadies.

Except for one.

A French roadie stopped and asked if I needed anything but then said he had nothing to offer me and wondered what he would do if the same flat situation happened to him. Still, he stopped.

Merci, sir.

THE STATS:

32 roadies ignored me.

5 roadies asked if I was okay but then spun right by.

1 French Roadie stopped and commiserated.

Just saying.

Say hello, friends. And oh, carry a pump everyone.

- Rhys