Swami, I just moved to Lake County about 2 years ago from Wisconsin. Why is it that everyday bike riders here ride so dangerously? They ride against traffic. All the other Lance Armstrong wannabe's you see in their herds ride the right way, with traffic. Am I wrong, or are they teaching it wrong down here, or do people just not care?
Swami believes there is no need to think too hard about this one.
Here’s a Swami Insight into the Profound: Some schools would do a better job if the kids were just smarter.
Sometimes it’s not bad schools or bad teachers; it’s just dumb students. On the other hand, Cheeseheads shouldn’t get too carried with away with a sense of superiority about Flatlander bikers.
True, there usually are 25 bike fatalities in Illinois a year, and only 17 in Wisconsin last year, though the numbers there have been going up. But Illinois has 12.8 million people and Wisconsin has only 5.5 million. If the numbers were proportionally balanced, Wisconsin would have barely 12 fatalities a year.
This proves what we all know. Illini natives are innately smarter than Wisconsinites.
However, this doesn’t speak directly to your experience. It may well be that most everyday Illinois riders don’t receive any instruction in road awareness. We just send them out to pedal to their heart’s content, and let Natural Selection (one of the Swami’s favorite examples of cosmic orderliness) have its way with the more poorly equipped denizens.
Bad things happen to the unprepared. It's just the Almighty's way of saying, "Check, Please."
While the Swami was channeling Jeff Foxworthy last night , we came acorss this:
You might be from Wisconsin if...
You define summer as three months of bad sledding.
Your definition of a small town is one that only has one bar.
You can make sense out of the words "UPNORT" and "BATREE".
Your have ever gotten frostbitten and sunburned in the same week.
You can identify a Michigan accent.
You know what "cow-tipping" is.
You learned to drive a tractor before the training wheels were off your bike.
"Down south" to you means Chicago.
Traveling coast to coast means going from Superior to Milwaukee.
The "big three" means Miller, Old Milwaukee and PBR.
You consider Madison "exotic".
You've seen a hodag.
You used to think Deer Season was included as an official school holiday.
You know what a bubbler is.
The snow on your roof in August weighs more than you do.
Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a cow next to your blue spruce.
Your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new machine shed.
Your Friday night out is taking your girlfriend shining for deer.
Ya-shure.
Question- if Illinois natives are inherently smarter than Wisconsin natives, who is smarter if they transfer to the other's state? Illinois to Wisconsin citizen or Wisconsin resident becoming a "Flatlander"? Just wondering.
As far as the bicycle rules go, when someone is involved in a sport, rules are followed much closely than a person just tooling around on an old bike in this summer. Your statistics are not pertinent by just comparing who has more people in their state. I think it depends on how many bicycle riders there are in each state and not population totals. Do you have numbers of actual bicyclists in either state to see who has the highest number of accidents based on the narrower criteria?
Okay, I liked the cute Foxworthy-type list, but did you know that Wisconsin schools do not celebrate Martin Luther King Day with a day off from school, but they take a day off for snowmobiling way up in the Northwoods at the height of the season?
You, betcha, howdi, Swami Man!!