I was coming off my gravel ride today and heading to work when I saw a roadie ahead of me, and so I put my head down and tried to close the gap for a bit of an interval effort. He was really moving, so I had to really work for it, but I did get on his wheel eventually. After I’d had a chance to catch my breath, I came up next to him and said something like “hope you didn’t mind me catching a wheel for a second there,” which he didn’t.
Then he commented on my dirty gravel bike and asked what the trail conditions are like in the area, because he’d been just on the road for a few months and hadn’t hit the dirt in a while, and so I filled him in. He thanked me, we complimented each other’s bikes, and then our routes split and we went our separate ways.
It was just a nice, friendly interaction of the type that you can’t have on a freeway. And imagine, if bike commuting was commonplace, we could all be having those kinds of interactions all the time. Instead, we’re all isolated from each other in metal boxes on wheels, and that sucks.
Even on my car-surrounded commutes to work, I usually manage to have some direct interaction with someone walking or even stopped at a light. It makes up for the occasional jerk who thinks I should be in a non-existent bike lane.