);

Call it.

One of my pet peeves in life would be riders not calling it. What I mean by calling it is the mere courtesy of letting riders know which side you’ll be passing. This practice has long been used in road biking, and I remember when I was a young pup riding a road bike, I quickly learned what “Right”, “left” meant. Ok ok for you folks that get all angst about which side you need to pass on, common practice leads us to pass on the left. But in mountain biking, sometimes its ok to pass on the right, but call it!

Anyhow, I’m sure you’re wondering why am I bringing this up. Well a few weeks ago, during our weekly night ride at the Fullerton Loop, I get buzzed by some douche bag passing me on my right. He completely spooked me and caused me to jerk my handle bar which could have ended in a crash. I yell out to the guy in a sarcastic manner, “thanks for letting me know!” He was completely oblivious to my statement as he raced further ahead.

A couple things came to my mind, this guy was probably pretending to be racing and wanted to feel good about himself by passing up people on the trail. Another scenario I could think of was he had the runs and needed to get to a restroom ASAP. But by all means, you a person still needs to call it.

For Pete’s sake (he’s a really cool guy), at all the races we’ve been at during the Shimano Winter Series, the pros and all the way down to the little kids were calling which side they were passing and because of that reason, I can’t figure out why that douche bag or any other douches out on the trails do, or should I say, don’t do that.

By the way, after that chump passed me, two other guys on CycloCross bikes came up from behind, called left, and as they passed by they asked me if I knew (in their own words) “who that ass was?” I said no and the CX riders just shook their head and said, “what a punk” (anger directed to the douche). We eventually caught up to some trail runners and they asked Priscilla and I if we knew who that guy in the orange (local bike club) jersey was. We said no, and the runners mentioned that they want to give that guy a stern talking since they too, were buzzed by without warning.

By the time we finished our ride, I felt really tough and I scanned the parking lot to see if I could spot the guy…no luck. But if I did, I would have kicked his ass! Jk, no I would have talked to him and ask him to start calling it. Not only is it important for safety, but if you act like a douche on the trail, people such as hikers, walkers, runners, and equestrians will start to stereotype mountain bikers as rude people…