Got called a "cheater" by a road bike rider for the first time ever on my commute home this evening.
I was riding home and rolling to a stop at a stop sign. There were cars at the four-way stop. One was there before me, so I'm not rolling this stop. As I was rolling up, I saw group of 4-5 roadies turning right from the intersecting road to head up the same direction on the road I was riding. I let the car to my right proceed, checked the other cars and started to go through. But oops. There was a huge (30-40 rider) peloton that hit the intersection 50-75 yards behind that first group. And they just continued on through - freezing all of the traffic already stopped. Never mind that we were there first.
After letting the car to my right proceed, I went on through thinking what a pain it was going to be with maybe 40-50 riders in front of me and a hill to climb. I crossed my fingers that they'd turn at the next intersection. No such luck.
I easily caught up to the back of this peloton and watched as they they all ran the next stop sign (with cars waiting). The peloton acted as though it was one huge (and slow) single vehicle. Everybody goes through. Well, everybody but me. I stopped.
The road starts to climb after this intersection and I was curious about how fast these riders were going to be in climbing it. This was a divided road with one lane each direction and a nice bike lane. (Via Linda heading east after 136th street in Scottsdale, AZ if anybody wants to Google map it.) But this being a roadie peloton, they, of course, had to ride 4-5 bikes across taking up a good part of the road while going maybe 10 miles an hour. It was dusk and cars approached from behind with their headlights on. But the peloton continued to ride 4-5 abreast making it impossible for a couple cars to pass safely or at all.
As we all continued to head up the hill with me riding 20-30 feet behind the last riders in the peloton, I could see that the peloton was beginning to string out. Hills do that. My original intent was that I'd just sit back and not pass these guys. The group was too big to do that safely, I was in no particular rush and I didn't want to pass cyclists riding 4-5 across. But as they strung out, they started to mostly stay in the bike lane and there were lots of gaps. That finally allowed the cars to pass. I was beginning to get annoyed by one rider who had a super-bright blinking tail light on her bike. That light makes a lot of sense in daylight. But at dusk or at night it is almost painful to have to look at. At this point I was running out of patience with this lot, so I decided to just get home at my usual pace since I could now pass safely. And that's when it happened.
After passing about 20 riders I heard someone yell out "cheater." I smiled. Sure. I'm the cheater amongst this group of rude cyclists. I passed about 30 of them and was wondering if the ones still ahead were going to continue on into Fountain Hills, using the Hidden Hills easement and connector. If so, I had more riders to pass.
But no, they were doing a turnaround at the entrance to the Hidden Hills gated community. And, of course, they were blocking two cars from getting home by clogging up the traffic circle at the gate. "Yield the right of way" seems to be a concept that is absent with this group.
Anyway, I continued to "cheat" my way on home, glad to have this group of "up and back" non-cheaters behind me. As I continued home ... now in solitude ... I found myself wondering how many of these riders had driven their bike rack equipped cars to the starting stage of their ride. Silly me. Why should I care?