The Biker Wave

I spent today in Ohio, the roundest state in the country. It looks like a circle that somebody just sat on and smushed the top. Maybe someone wanted to take a dump on Cleveland. Why not? Everybody else does. (Sorry Barry - it needed to be said). Rumor has it that they wanted to name the state Oooo, but wiser heads prevailed after careful consideration of the potential for derogatory remarks. The compromise was to instead put a welcoming “hi” in the middle. On the advice of the aforementioned Barry Duerk, a too-proud Ohio State alum - along with his wife Lisa and their two daughters - I left my Michigan shirt in the bag. Today was just about logging some miles. It had been 5 weeks since my last ride over 60 miles so I did a nice out and back on a rail trail to get back in the groove. For once, it didn’t rain, although evidence of the recent biblical downpours was strewn all over the trail.

Tonight I want to explain the biker wave. Probably since humans started walking upright, they have used hand gestures to communicate. They hold up fingers to indicate quantity (or displeasure), they point to indicate direction or to refer to someone or something, they high five or fist bump to congratulate and, of course, they wave to one another in greeting. There’s everything from the Royal wave - wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow - to the sheepish wave like “yeah, sorry, that was my fault”. But there’s nothing quite like the biker wave. There’s a range of such waves and if you’ve ever ridden a bike and passed a rider coming the other way, you know what I’m talking about. Spending 5 hours on a trail specifically designed for bikes, you start to notice trends. Let’s start with the beginner move. Since, in this country, we ride on the right hand side, oncoming cyclists virtually always pass on the left. Feeling a brief moment of excitement that another human shares your passion or interest in riding, you rise up in your seat a bit, take your left hand off the handlebar, and raise it up. There is no back and forth or side to side motion. A more complex move is the crossover, where the steps are the same, but you use your right hand. In this move, the arm and hand don’t get all the way to vertical. The experienced cyclist will NEVER return these greeting in the same fashion. They instead use a much more complicated move. This involves two elements. A slight tilt of the head to make eye contact, and then the coup de grâce, a raising of just the left index and middle fingers off the handlebar. The motion is so subtle that it moves less air than the proverbial butterfly flapping it’s wings. These riders are clearly better than you and don’t want to acknowledge you, but since they made eye contact, they feel compelled. The true expert move, however, involves no hands at all. Instead, it is an imperceptible head nod so hard to discern that you’re not sure it actually happened. Trying to spot it is like trying to find a specific star in a distant galaxy using the plastic telescope that you got out of the Cap’n Crunch box. Any other gesture would clearly adversely impact the rider’s split times or wattage output, which is completely unacceptable. Remember, these people think bike shorts look good (more on that another day).

A monument to the highest point on the Ohio to Erie bike path. This is Ohio. This is as good as it gets, people.

A sweet ride, wasted hanging on the wall at the South Side Diner in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

An even sweeter ride that Kelly and the girls saw in Amsterdam the other day. In that town, there are bound to be some classics.

The ego-crushing aftermath of an e-bike pass by the Wicked Witch of the Midwest, complete with a massive backpack and flip flops on.