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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.