Sounds like fun, and I think the poster is nice.

How much fun would it be to show up at one of these riding an Electra Townie in long pants, bicycle-toe sneakers, an electric-yellow rain jacket, and a Bell Metro helmet complete with rear-view mirror and a flashing light clipped on the back?

This ugly fella (or gal) gallumphed down the bank on the right side of the road, barely made it across in front of me, then stopped by the curb to watch me pass. (For those of you in Lexington, it was behind Central Baptist Hospital.)

If you have never seen an opossum in action, you are missing out. His top gear approximates the walking speed of a three-legged dog. Good thing for him that it’s not survival of the fastest.

Check this out if you are nervous about riding with children in traffic. I will post later about the route we took, which is my favorite urban ride here in Lexington, Ky.

The 6-year-old rode his Huffy single-speed dirt bike. We put some longhorn-type handlebars on it before starting out, so he was pretty excited. Also, I showed him the old using-hairspray-to-get-the-handgrips-on trick. More about this later, it will be worth watching for the post if you have not heard of this.

The 8-year-old rode his Bridgestone MB-6 mountain bike ($2.50 from a yard sale!). I rode my Breezer Uptown 8.

We rode on some pretty busy roads. Our route took us onto Harrodsburg Road, which is 5 lanes, for several blocks where it crosses under New Circle Road (a 4-lane divided highway). We also rode for several blocks on Lane Allen Road and on Clays Mill Road; both are narrow two-lanes that are fairly heavily traveled.

The boys are not rookies: We do a decent amount of riding around our neighborhood, which has little traffic. And they have ridden with me to church on several Sunday mornings, when not many cars are on the road.

I wouldn’t advise taking inexperienced young riders onto the roads we took that morning.

On the other hand, if a child is fairly confident and follows directions well, there is no reason to avoid such roads. Within reason, of course. Here are a couple of things we keep in mind when riding together:

• Ride in single file. I go first, with the 6-year-old behind me and the 8-year-old behind him. I keep an eye on them with a rearview mirror that clips to my helmet. I advise using a rearview mirror if you are riding with children. I especially recommend the Bell Metro helmet. Bike Nashbar is blowing these out at great prices right now (check here, here and here). If you need a helmet at all, or if you do much commuter riding at all, get one. You can buy a rearview mirror designed for this helmet. It is worth it as well.
• Stay together, but not too close together. The boys learned by experience to leave enough room so that they don’t crash into each other if someone has to slow down suddenly. When someone gets too far behind, I wait for them. This means I go a lot slower than normal. This is not a big deal.
• Take as much of the lane as you need. I tell the boys not to ride right on the edge of the road, because if they lose their balance a little they could go off the edge. When we are going past a parked car, or at any other time when I don’t want cars trying to squeeze past us, I tell the boys to “take the lane.” That means we ease out toward the center line, yielding no room to pass. Then we ease back over to the side of the road.
• Ride at a normal speed in a straight line. When a car slows down and stays behind you, you might feel the need to ride faster, or pull over farther to give the car more of the road. I advise the boys not to do these things. Since we have a right to the road, there is no need to “ride scared.” We try to keep our riding predictable, and the cars will eventually pass.
• Signal your intentions. The boys know the arm signals for left turn, right turn, and stop. This helps me communicate with them during the ride without having to holler over my shoulder, and it helps all three of us communicate with drivers who might know what the arm signals mean.
• Let the children know the route in advance. If they have some idea of the “big picture,” they can ride with more confidence. I stop from time to time to let them know what’s coming up next. (“OK, guys, we are going to take this bike path behind the houses, then we are going to turn right and go through the park.”)

One great thing about riding with youngsters is that it makes you analyze what you are doing, so you can explain it. This will help you find weak spots in your technique, and in your communication skills.

Is riding with children in a little traffic labor-intensive? Yes.

Is it worth it? Yes.

RESPONSE: I have found drivers to be polite, overall. Occasionally someone will honk, or a driver will holler at me to get off the road, but even that is rare.

In 6-plus years of bicycle commuting I have had two serious incidents, and one that was scary and could have been serious. All three of them happened on the University of Kentucky campus.

The scary one happened on Shawneetown Drive. A Lextran bus nearly ran me down from behind — the driver just barely missed clipping the edge of my handlebar. I caught up with him at the stop sign at Shawneetown and Alumni Drive, and yelled at him to watch it. He yelled back something to the effect of YOU watch it. While I was writing down his bus number and route, he hollered something else at me. I wrote a letter to Lextran, then received a nice reply stating that the driver basically denied my version of events. I hope my letter is still in his file.

At least he missed me, and he might have thought he was giving me enough room. I think it was inattentiveness or incompetence, and not malice. I can’t say that about the next two events.

Once while riding on University Drive late at night, after finishing work on second shift, someone threw a box of bottles out a car window and hit me in the back. I knew the car was behind me but did not know something was being thrown. I did not go down.

Another time, in almost the exact same spot, someone leaned out the passenger’s-side window of a van and shoved me in the back, with two hands. I didn’t go down that time either. Having learned from the first experience, I got a partial license-plate number and called it in to campus police. I did not follow up to see what happened.

The fact that I have ridden late at night a lot, due to the second shift, probably has increased my odds of having a run-in with a jerk.

Still, even in broad daylight there have always been, and there will always be, jerks on the road. The only way to avoid them is to not ride (or drive). I refuse to let them run my life.

No, really — it was.

I was riding my Specialized Milano home from checking out a gym (a dive — I didn’t buy a membership.) Since it was pitch black, and raining, and I had no lights, no reflective jacket, nothing but a couple of reflectors on the bike, I was riding on the sidewalk. In the interest of safety.

I was standing up on the pedals when my front tire plunged about a foot into a missing section of sidewalk, then hit the edge of the next section.

The bike stopped dead. I kept going — over the handlebars, somehow still holding onto the handgrips.

If you don’t already know, I hope you never find out that it’s sickening to see the pavement approaching your head at high speed.

I landed squarely on my left shoulder, lay there for a few minutes taking inventory, and hoped for the best.

THE AFTERMATH: The front tire went flat, and I had no patch kit or pump. Besides, since I had no flashlight, it might have been to dark to fix the flat anyway.

However, it wasn’t too dark for several guys in a pickup to see the accident. They pointed at me and laughed pretty hard as they went by.

I walked the bike home. Fortunately, it wasn’t too far.

THE DAMAGE DONE: Nothing but a bruised shoulder, as I recall. It could have been worse.

Much, much worse.

The bike got a couple of scratches.

ANALYSIS: What could I have done to prevent this, or: How can you avoid my fate?

1. Before riding in the dark, get (at least) a headlight and a blinking taillight, so you can ride in traffic with confidence that you will be seen.
2. Ride on the road. There are several excellent reasons to ride on the road rather than on the sidewalk, but for the purposes of this story, suffice it to say that there are a lot of badly paved roads out there, but there are a lot of worse sidewalks. (At least, that’s true here in Lexington, Ky.)
3. Above all: Stay seated while pedaling. When riding for transportation, there’s almost no reason to stand up on the pedals. If it’s too hard to pedal, downshift. When you stand, you are at greater risk of your foot slips off the pedal, and, as I so ably demonstrated, you might fly over the handlebars  after hitting an obstacle. Once you are up in the air, all kinds of bad things can happen — you can land on your head, or in front of oncoming traffic. You can jam or break a wrist, or break an arm. The list goes on.
4. Slow down (boy, do I wish I would have). Make sure you can see the ground far enough in front of you, soon enough, to see and avoid obstacles.
5. Carry a patch kit and a pump. In this case a flashlight would have helped as well. I could have been walking a lot further that night. Self-sufficiency is always best.

Sometimes crashes happen — biking is no different than driving in this regard. But a lot of crashes don’t have to happen. This one certainly didn’t.

This happened shortly before I started bike-commuting regularly — I was still a rookie at riding in the city.

Fortunately, it turned out to be a cheap lesson; the next one was a little more expensive.

By the most obvious route, my commute would go down Nicholasville Road, a five-lane road that’s one of the busiest in Lexington. But one day, a fellow rider showed me a great shortcut. I cut behind Central Baptist Hospital, cross a footbridge, and presto — Nicholasville Road is out of the picture. I can then cut through the University of Kentucky campus to get where I’m going.

This is also a great route to get from downtown to south Lexington.

Here’s a map of the route:

The broad road to destruction that runs from top to bottom on the left is Nicholasville Road. The road intersecting it on the left is Rosemont Garden. The big building is a parking garage at Central Baptist. McDonald Avenue runs right past the hospital’s emergency room entrance. You go in front of a modular building (at the top right of the map), and then you cross the footbridge.

The road running from top to bottom at the right is Shawneetown Drive — it’s a quiet street running past some student housing.

Cross over Alumni Drive, go past the football stadium, cross over Cooper Drive, and you’re in the middle of campus.

Reverse this route to get from downtown to south Lexington.

Here is a wider view: