[derekp7]

Where I live, there are some bicycle-friendly roads, but if you need to commute by bicycle you are probably going to get some road segments with absolutely no paved shoulder. So the smart thing to do then is to have a mirror, and if a car is coming up behind you and another one is oncoming (two-lane road), your best bet is to hit the gravel.

Also, there are some stretches of road where bicycle clubs seem to frequent. What they do is get a large pack of people, and end up blocking traffic on a 5-mile stretch (they purposely take up the whole lane, probably safer that way I guess, and when there is a bottleneck instead of moving right they take up both lanes). This ends up instilling a large amount of hostility in drivers, so when they see a loan bicycle they tend to be very aggressive (I've had water balloons, even beer bottles thrown at me before, even though I was far right of the white line).