Thursday, September 18, 2014

Good Morning! and Sharing the Road

Sometimes the cyclists and the runners at White Rock Lake, here in Dallas, can get on each other's nerves.  Although I'm a runner 90% of the time I'm out there, I'm also the occasional cyclist, so I can sort of understand
both sides.  Cyclist tend to zoom by us runners dangerously close at time, not seeming like they really want to share the road.  But, like I said, every now and then, I'm on the other side of things, and the runners sometimes run in groups of 3 or more, making it really difficult for cyclists to safely get around them.

When I'm running, lots of cyclist pass without a word, some ring bells of
warning, and others just yell out "Left!", as in "Passing on your left."  None of that is rude at all, but I don't think of it as all too friendly either.

But today on my run, a large group of cyclist, maybe 15 or more, passed me.  And as they did, the first one said, "Good morning, big group of us will be passing on your left", and then the next one said, "Hi!  Have a great day!"  and then about 10 more "Good Mornings!" to me followed.  I ended up saying my "hi's"and "good mornings" back, and it put a huge smile on my face because it was really funny.  Friendly cyclist overload! Every single one of them said something nice to me.  And what a difference it made.  I thought those cyclist were such friendly people just from that teeny little gesture.

Saying "Good Morning!" really took no additional time than "Left" does, but it was such a nicer way to get me to happily move over, to share the road with others needing more room.

In light of that awesome morning greeting I got earlier today, I'm putting up this video taken from "Singin' in the Rain"- with one of my favorites of all time, Gene Kelly.  Good Morning!

1 comment:

Elaine said...

I love that! We do have a friendly lake community, don't we! We are very fortunate that we work together to keep it a safe and clean place.