{"id":8122,"date":"2017-04-20T11:39:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T17:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=8122"},"modified":"2017-04-16T11:41:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T17:41:10","slug":"hey-dude-back-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/hey-dude-back-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey Dude, Back Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8124\" style=\"width: 507px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/StaggeredFormation.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8124\" src=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/StaggeredFormation.jpg\" vspace=\"10\" alt=\"Motorcycles on the road\" width=\"497\" height=\"322\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8124\" srcset=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/StaggeredFormation.jpg 497w, http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/StaggeredFormation-300x194.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8124\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong><em>Be a nice person; don&#8217;t crowd the guy in front of you.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Riding with your buddies is one of the great joys of motorcycling but there are times when you just wish someone wasn&#8217;t with you. That happened to me recently.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve ridden with this one guy a number of times and he was along this one day in a group. Initially I was in the two spot and he was third, behind me. For convenience I&#8217;ll call him Joe. While I don&#8217;t spend all my time looking in the mirror, I do check it periodically and I was a bit perturbed on several occasions to take a glance and find Joe really close&#8211;too close for my taste.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;ll give Joe credit that he was in staggered formation, so even though he was close he was not right on my tail. I&#8217;ve ridden with guys who get close AND get right up behind you. I totally hate that!<\/p>\n<p>It was not a big deal, although there was one time when the leader moved into the lane to the left and as I threw out my left arm to signal I also looked back (like any smart person ought to do). There was Joe, staggered to my left but almost right up with me. I hesitated a moment and he dropped back and I safely changed lanes. That should not have happened. He shouldn&#8217;t have been there.<\/p>\n<p>Later we were in a different order. Joe was in the two spot and I was third. Now I had the opportunity to really observe.<\/p>\n<p>I had to feel for the leader. Joe stuck tight behind him, but now the road was more curvy that it had been earlier. And in the curves you don&#8217;t necessarily stay in staggered formation; you follow the curve where the line leads you.<\/p>\n<p>What I saw was not pretty. Any number of times I saw Joe touching his brake because the leader was moving over in the lane on a curve and Joe was too close. Other times, Joe actually ran off onto the shoulder a little to avoid the leader as the curve carried him to the center of the road.<\/p>\n<p>Come on dude, if you&#8217;re hitting you brake and running off on the shoulder in order to avoid the guy in front of you, you&#8217;re too dang close!! Back the heck off!! What&#8217;s going on in your head?<\/p>\n<h3>Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n<p>How are the brakes? Don&#8217;t know, I never touched them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Riding with your buddies is one of the great joys of motorcycling but there are times when you just wish someone wasn&#8217;t with you. That happened to me recently. I&#8217;ve ridden with this one guy a number of times and he was along this one day in a group. Initially I was in the two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,25],"tags":[845],"class_list":["post-8122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biker-issues","category-safety","tag-riding-too-close"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8126,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122\/revisions\/8126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}