Letting Cars Pass

As a side note to my report of my aborted trans-Ontario trip (see previous post), I had a revelation during my inglorious ride home today. Namely, I value my safety too much to play road games with cars. So today, whenever a car came up behind me in a situation that prevented it from passing (oncoming traffic, hills, windy turns), I just pulled off the road and let it go by. Didn't cost me much time, it was safer than having a car on my tail, and it probably defused the driver's bad thoughts about bike riders.

So as I was planning my route, I picked a stretch that I knew to be just about the worst road and traffic in all of Michigan, if not the known universe. Heavy traffic, no shoulder, no room for a car to squeeze by. But since I only needed to ride about three miles on this road, and since there were no alternative routes if I was going to visit my childhood cottage, I just did it. I probably needed to get off the road ten times, but I didn't care. It allowed me to ride safely on an extremely dangerous road. Obviously, this would have been impossible without a mirror; but what moron rides on busy roads without a mirror?