Lake Worth Community Bike Ride

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margin-bottom: 10px;” title=”Lake Worth Community Bike Ride 05-26-2010″ src=”http://www.palmbeachbiketours.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Lake-Worth-Community-Bike-Ride-05-26-2010_5282-500×328.jpg” alt=”” width=”500″ height=”328″ />I’m not very good at keeping up with Event invitations that come into my Facebook account. Most of them are for things I have no interest in going to. That’s why I didn’t notice one for the Lake Worth Community Bike Ride and Bicycle Safety event until about two hours before it was going to start.

Last year’s bike rodeo was fun

I had a good time covering the city’s bike rodeo last May, so I got my act together and made it down to Lake Worth just as the event was getting started.

Sheriff’s deputies offered safety tips

To be honest, I thought there was a bit too much emphasis on wearing helmets and too little emphasis on vehicular cycling. Deputy Rafael Duran DID mention that it’s important not to ride against traffic, but I would like to have had some other topics mentioned:

  • Taking the lane when the roadway is too narrow for a vehicle to pass you safely without crossing the center line.
  • The legal and practical reason for equipping your bike with lights and reflectors.
  • The importance of being predictable: riding in a straight line; signaling turns and obeying traffic control devices.
  • How to properly position yourself on the roadway.

In fairness, they did provide Bicyclists Must Think Like Drivers, an excellent brochure by the Florida’s Pedestrian & Bicycling Safety Resource Center, that covered all those subjects and more.

For the record, I’m not anti-helmet. You can hear me toward the end of the video recounting the experience my riding partner had when she crashed without a helmet on the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail. You can read about her crash here and track her progress three years later here.

A stop at a Ghost Bike

Sgt. Enrique Ponce told everyone at the start, “It’s gonna be a fun ride.” He was right, but there was one somber moment when the group stopped at a white-painted Ghost Bike to place flowers on the memorial to a cyclist who was killed at that intersection.

Video of Lake Worth Community Bike Ride

It was a ride worth doing. I’ll have to watch my Facebook events a little closer in the future.