Look around. Keep a clear picture of the road ahead while you check out the space immediately beside you. Sneak regular peeks back. Chat with your riding companions. Drink enough water so that nature forces you off your bike every hour or two to stretch. When you're weary, it's awfully easy to stare at your rotating front tire. Instead, sit up and take a deep breath. Glance at your cyclometer if you really want to know your speed or the distance you've trav eled, but those numbers aren't going to change very fast.
There are cyclists who zoned out and rode in a perfectly straight line right into the back of a parked bright yellow truck, and U.S. senators have been known to collide with parked cars. There are folks who ride slowly off the road into the bushes, totally unaware of what they were doing until far too late.
If you keep your wits about you, you won't have a speck of trouble. That said, you should be aware that hazards exist. Be aware of them, stand clear, and enjoy the day.
Edge of the Road
Be wary of the edge of an asphalt or blacktop road. For some reason construc tion crews like to lay down a nice broad base course when first constructing a road. But they sometimes don't apply a second layer quite as wide, and the third layer can be narrower yet. We're only talking an inch or so difference on each layer, yet the result is a steep stair step from the road surface to the shoulder. If you absentmindedly ride off the edge, the jarring you take will clash your teeth together. There's a terrible inclination to turn back into the edge as you try to regain the road. Don't. Slow down and gauge a safe spot to climb back up. It is so easy to lose control on those narrow ledges and have your wheels kick sideways from underneath you. It hurts when it happens.
Many urban and suburban streets are built with an asphalt roadway butted up to a concrete curb and gutter. The joint between the two surfaces erodes and can form an irregular nasty rut, spreading out into the odd pothole. We all know we should ride on the right, as far over as safe and practicable. That doesn't mean bumping down the rough gutter. Ride on the right side of the lane, but stay on the roadway.
Storm drains that have a rectangular metal plate with long and narrow slots running parallel to the roadway are trouble. A wheel can fall into those slots, with painful and damaging results. Vertical drains cut into the face of the curb are often married to a deep indentation that channels water from the gutter sideways into the drain hole. Hitting that depression is almost as bad as a pothole, often with upset ting consequences. The safest drain for bikers is a metal plate with its slots cut at a right angle to the road surface. You'll roll easily over these, unless debris is sticking up. The safest bet is to ride slightly to the left of storm drains.
Leaves are pretty on trees, but when they've flooded a gutter or mounded up in a comer, they're often slick. They can also conceal all sorts of nasties. Simply stay out of them.
Some rural roads conceal water bars—small ridges, maybe just an inch or so high, angling diagonally across a road on a hill. They channel draining water across the roadway like an aboveground culvert. As a hazard they are rare and small, but if unexpected they can toss you around.
Oil
Keep your eye peeled for oil. On dry pavement you'll see a light gray smear on the concrete. On asphalt oil will show as a long smooth dark streak. In the wet you'll see a shimmering multicolor wash faintly over the pavement. If you've been riding in the dry for a long spell and are then caught out in a sudden rain, oil that had soaked into the pavement will rise to the surface. In any case, avoid the oil if you can, because it's wicked slick. If you jam on the brakes or abruptly turn, you might find yourself in an uncontrolled skid. Braking dis tances can unexpectedly increase.
Riding through an oil patch on the straight is not a good idea. You're going to come to a corner, and oil on your tire tread is little better than oil on the ground when you lean for the turn. Ride loose; no sharp turns, no sudden acceleration, no abrupt stops.
Bridges
Riding narrow roads in rural areas means crossing bridges with wooden deck ing. They're cute, but they're also slippery when wet or frosty. Slow down before you get to the bridge, and don't make any abrupt moves when condi tions are questionable.
In most cases cyclists are shunted onto a narrow metal sidewalk that is often slick, debris-laden, and bumpy. The slipstream from passing vehicles will buffet you along the narrowed roadway. Some sidewalks are even interrupted by stairs. So you're on a narrow, cluttered path blasted by noise and wind— climbing when you start the bridge and on your brakes as you ease down the far side. Deliberately relax the knot in your shoulders, shift into a comfortable gear, and just twiddle across, minding your own business. If you're anxious, get off and walk. In fact, if you're crossing wet metal, definitely walk it.
Railroad Crossings
Most riders like trains but hate rail crossings. They are slippery, rough, and inhabited by big things that go fast. And there is no easy way to ride around most rail cross ings.
When you come to a rail crossing, slow down. There is a gap beside each rail and often broken pavement between the rails. Bang into this minefield and you can pinch your tube between tire and rim. That's a quick way of learning how to patch the twin holes of a snakebite flat. You can also pop some spokes as well as ding a rim—even if you don't fall down.
Bring most of your weight off the saddle and onto your feet and arms. Your elbows and knees work like shock absorbers, and you'll take much of the impact off your bike. Be at right angles to the track when you cross over. Many times the rails cross the road diagonally, and if you ride straight along the road you face the horrid possibility of having your front wheel twisted out from underneath you as it passes over the rail and dips into the gap beyond. Creep up to the rails, and then turn to cross at a right angle at the last moment so that you don't swerve far out onto the roadway.
Wet tracks are god-awful! There were once five tandems riding together all wreck on the same wet rail crossing with the rails slanting diagonally across the road way. Slow down, get your weight off the saddle, rides straight and smooth, and don't panic—you'll be just fine.
Cattle guards, more com mon in the West, have a dozen or so rails spaced closely together spanning the road at a right angle to keep cattle from crossing. Cross them slowly and you'll jounce around; cross them fast with your weight up and off your saddle, and you'll feel and hear a whirring from your tires. And cattle crossings always seem to be at the bottom of a steep dip. You brake on the descent as you scope one out, then sweat up the climb with no speed to help.
Paint
Lane markers between the roadway proper and the shoul der, crosswalks, even those big warning signs painted on the roadway itself pose a spe cial hazard when you're on two wheels. The paint fills in the road surface and creates a slick spot in dry weather and a potential skating rink during a drizzle. Newer paint is brighter than old paint and slicker. The easy solution is simply not to ride on the lines. If you are on a line, just ride easy without sharp braking until you can gently move onto real pavement.
Many roads today are marked with little flat reflectors along the lane and fog lines. Unexpectedly nudging one of these can be an eye-opener. They are easy to avoid and are unlikely to cause you to wreck, but you may still kiss the pavement if everything goes wrong.
Gravel
Gravel contains sharp rocks, it can slide out from under your tires in a turn, it increases your stopping distance when you're braking, and it can unexpectedly and sharply bog down your forward motion. You'll find gravel lurking on the outside of corners and where one road connects with another. Cars keep gravel off the roadway, but shoulders can be coated with the small rocks. Just be aware of where gravel accumulates and skirt the worst of it.
Blind Spot
Sitting high on conventional bikes gives us one great advantage—we can see over most cars as we watch for approaching hazards. That's also a great disad vantage, because we grow to rely on our vantage point, despite the fact that we can't see over oncoming trucks, buses, and motor homes. Lurking tight in behind them, right in a moving blind spot, could be a car. Just as we can't see behind that bus, whatever is back there can't see us. If that vehicle pulls out to pass just as it comes to us, we're both in for a nasty shock.
There's another blind spot, less obvious but just as hazardous. Hardly any one driving a motor home knows how wide that vehicle is. Some drivers will pull clear to the other side of the road just to pass a bike, while others lumber right up the shoulder. There are riders who have been clipped by mirrors or who bailed into the brush at the last second. An automobile driver, whether or not on a cell phone, can be just as inattentive to your presence.
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