I did not ….

Slice of life.  Humor me.  

Riding bikes, dirt roads, winter. It is cold so we have our ‘route’. It is a ‘crows foot’, maybe a crows foot after it was eaten by an alligator and spit back up, but you know what I mean.  

We leave at one point, we take every left turn unless we hit pavement, at pavement turn around. End result is that you end up at the same place you started. A great little route.  

Usually we ride together, but we verbalize this so that if someone is feeling like superman, they can go and be superman today. No need to miss an opportunity to be superman. The longer you live the less frequent those opportunities arise.

More often we ride together.  

Today we have a new person. Well, not new at all. We raced together for many years and ride together often, he is a part of the group and has been for decades. It is just that he does not often show up for this ride. We will call him old/new guy. 

We depart. About a half hour into the ride, we stop at pavement and turn around. It is cold; so we never really stop. We hesitate long enough for people to catch-up, sip, snack, whatever but we usually keep rolling to keep consistent body temperature.  

At this point old/new guy pulls out his phone. He is talking away. We wait. Time goes by. I say to him, we are going to roll. I restate the earlier instruction –  just take every left turn and turn completely around at pavement. We will see you on this next section. 

I know the next section is a fairly long out and back. I know that we will see him soon after the next turn around and he can rejoin us. We never see him again. We do not worry about him since we pass each road twice. He is also an adult, so we assume he went home. We get back to the cars and his is gone. OK, maybe the call required him to go home early.  

That night we are at the brewery. Most of the people on that ride, but also a few that ride with us frequently but were not on that ride. We all know each other really well – many for decades.  

So, old/new guy pipes up at a random moment and announces/speaks to no one in particular, ‘I did not show up to a group ride to ride alone’.  Not at anyone, but in general. He is voicing his frustration in a way that will not solve anything. Talk to us if you have a problem, but announce it to a table of people where only half were on the ride? I usually do not take the bait, but knew I needed to address this.  

Nope. Before I can respond another person in our group that was NOT on this ride speaks up. It is obvious to me that someone has told him about our ride and the phone call. He says. “they did not show up to a group ride just to sit around in the cold and listen to you talk on the phone’. Silence.  

Wow. That was a best outcome. Point made. Counter point made. Resolution? As you might guess, the guy that chose to make the announcement rather than talking to us did not respond. He grunted just loud enough to be heard and did not pursue it. There were low level smiles/smirks in the group. We all know each other well – the good and the bad.  

Solved.  

I know, this might sound harsh to you, but remember, these are people that have been riding together for almost 40 years. We are close. Maybe not all best friends, but we all know each other well. If one starts telling a story they better get it right, because we were all there and you will be corrected.  

How does your group work? How long have you been riding with that group? Is it pure riding or do you do other social activities together?