Sunshine Bikes Blog

Didn’t they try that once before? I remember, on two occasions, seeing the rangers doing that while I was riding uphill, so I continued up a little ways further, stopped my bike and started to warn cyclists going down. The first time I got yelled at by the “bad cop” ranger. He threatened to arrest me. I argued that there were no “speed checked by radar” signs along with the posted speed limit, so how was radar supposed to be a deterrent? Anyway, I resigned from the BTC bicycle patrol the next day. The ranger apologized to me later for being so threatening. A year or so later I did the same thing again but rode further up before warning people. There were still no “speed checked by radar” signs. I think they were trying to get as many tickets as possible as a justification for banning bicycles – just my opinion. In both cases it was a straight stretch of Railroad Grade with a lot of visibility – easy to lose track of how fast you are going. They should have set up sped traps where excess speed would be a problem, like blind corners and such. I think, at the time, on any road in California they had to put up “speed checked by radar” signs if they were going to enforce speed limits that way. That was the main point of my protest. I hope they have those signs now in MMWD.

To heck with it. I moved to Idaho where there are fewer people and tons more trails to ride. The only thing I had to do was learn to ski because the trails are under snow for half the year. There are no radar speed traps, no hikers giving you dirty looks. Everyone says hello and smiles. Marin, where I grew up, is too crowded with too few trails.