On Sep 13, 1:04*pm, "Mike Jacoubowsky"
wrote:
We're seeing an increase in animosity between cyclists and
motorists/residents in our area, and now, faster cyclists vs slower.
Something that recently came up is that, when a very large fast-moving pack
overtakes a slower rider, and the lead part of the pack does a great job of
giving the slower folk room, but by the time the rear of the group comes
around, the message (hand signals, "rider up", whatever) has been lost, and
the slower folk sometimes get clipped or feel like they're being run off the
road.

I'd guess that a pack of 25 riders or less doesn't have this issue; it's the
really large groups where this is more likely to happen. Any ride leaders
out there with solutions to this (other than the r.b.r-standard that slower
folk should get off the friggin road)?

A ride that big should start early enough and ride on roads
empty enough that road hazards - slower riders, parked cars,
garbage bins as DR mentioned, cross traffic, and so on -
are virtually non existent.

This becomes harder and harder to do as creeping
suburbanization overtakes everything and rides also
get too big for their own good. I suspect it's essentially
impossible in most Bay Area ride routes at this point,
at least on the interior side of the mountains (for ex,
on the northeast side of the Santa Cruz mountains).

The other thing is that a giant pack at moderately high
speed is both a pain in the ass and not much training
value. The Santa Cruz Saturday ride, which is the only
really huge training ride I ever went on, had the advantages
of going through near-farmland (since it was farther from
the dense Bay Area) and also alternating between
fairly mellow and hard-enough-to-splinter. That keeps
the pack a little safer.

Fredmaster Ben