Am I Being Unreasonable? MTB Court now in session!

Some people’s lives just aren’t straightforward, for all sorts of reasons. The ride they get to (eventually) might be the thing keeping them together in the rest of their life.

Club I used to ride with has 4 or 5 different meeting places.

Must of them have plenty of little loops in the forest nearby.

So as long as they know there’s still someone on their way, they’ll just go and try some of the local loops for 20 minutes.

If they don’t know you’re coming, they won’t wait. 6pm and gone.

Or if you’re a dick about it, they’re gone.

Some people’s lives just aren’t straightforward, for all sorts of reasons. The ride they get to (eventually) might be the thing keeping them together in the rest of their life.

Comes down to the “do you think your time is more valuable than the persons your wasting” point though.

Whatabout if they’re really looking forward to that ride, and now it’s half an hour shorter.

Whatabout if the thing that’s holding their life together is straight after the ride and now they’re missing it because someone didn’t get organized.

And let’s be honest, their life isn’t falling apart, they’ve just hit snooze for the 8th time and didn’t check their tyre pressure the night before.

Like a few have said, one off / infrequent / due to circumstances outside their control* – shit happens.

Frequent / habitual lateness – let them know it’s not on if they’re a mate. If they’re a random or just an acquaintence then just let them know that you’ll not be waiting around or dont arrange to ride with them when you want to be leaving on time.
I no longer arrange rides with a couple of mates (yes, I do consider them to be mates) due to their inability to be remotely on time (record was over an hour late – they kept messaging to say they were only 20 mins away, then 15 mins, then still 15 mins, nearly there, etc).
I’ll still ride with the if they arrange something but I dont invite them on rides any more.

Alternative option for me is to meet at my house for the start of a ride. Then I’m not stood around getting bored / frustrated waiting for them and can maybe do something useful (or just sit having a cuppa and reading a book) until they turn up.

“It’s only a few minutes, who cares?” A few minutes isn’t what we’re talking about – it’s the “few minutes” that are actually 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. I’ve got plenty of other stuff I need (not want!) to do with my time and my riding (or walking or whatever) time is valuable to me – don’t be so selfish as to waste that for me.

I wonder if those that are happy to be late or happy to put up with lateness by others have less going on (maybe retired, part time / flexible workers) and dont have the time pressures that some do?

* by “outside their control” I dont mean being too feckless to set off on time when you KNOW the journey will take you longer due to time of day, or having ignored the vital maintenance on the bike that they know needed to be done before the next ride then expecting people to wait for them to fix stuff in the carpark.

Maybe all this makes me a time-nazi as far as some are concerned. I genuinelyt dont care – as the people that feel that way clearly have no respect for other people’s time which IS rude AND thoughtless.

Said, I was gonna take some flowers to my neighbor
But I ran out of time
Didn’t wanna show up to the party empty-handed
But I ran out of time
Said, I’ll walk the dog a little further than the driveway tonight
The extra mile
Thought I’d send a card with my condolences
But damn, I just ran out of time
Intentions only get you so far

What if I’m just a selfish prick?

No regard
I’m always running out of time
I’m always running out of time
Nevermind, I hit the snooze on my alarm 20 times
I was just so tired

For any reasonable sized group ride there are those who need to leave by a certain time.

We have seperate threads for group rides and chat… so of you end up delayed you’re meant to inform the ride planning chat.
This allows everyone the same courtesy, we know who’s meant to turn up and who just changed their mind etc. … and allows other planning if needed. It used to be “does anyone know if xxx is actually coming or not”… then after waiting 1/2 hour after wheels rolling they had changed there mind…

Strangely perhaps?? the habitually late ones refuse to use the Ride Planning Chat… then complain when we leave without them.

We have one rider who occasionally joins us who is habitually late. He’ll often still be at home when the ride is due to start, and he lives 40 minutes drive away. Fortunately, we all have mobile phones so we start riding and tell him where we are, or where to meet us when he finally arrives. (More of a problem if we aren’t local, but normally not a huge problem.)

Can’t your wife/partner attend to this?

Depends. If my partner had had a sh11ty day and our child had done an explosive poo just before I was disappearing to have a nice time with my mates, I’d have at least dealt with it before I left. On other occasions she’d have kicked me out of the door and told me to have a nice time.

Me and my wife are slightly late for almost everything. We are always trying to fit ‘one more job’ in… People just tell us an earlier time now so it generally works out just fine.

I’m not late for rides though but I am mostly just in time…

All you Jonny come latelys, do you have this lackadaisical attitude to timekeeping in all areas of your lives?

Work, meetings, weddings, funerals?

yes @imnotverygood:

How does this work then? The child is to young to poo on their own, but you are about to go out & leave them alone while you are riding a bike? Can’t your wife/partner attend to this?

Came to say just this.  If your kid is at “help to poo” age then that’s your partner’s job that one night.

for every person who makes the start late, there will be more people who need the ride to end on time.

if you can’t make it, you can’t make it. assuming that the start can’t be changed.

i usually ride alone. group rides are fun but the panic mechanics annoy me. mainly because they leave it to the last minute so that someone else will do it for them. which i would, if they’d arrived on time.

I ride with a group of people for whom I think time runs differently.

There are never on time. I will now only plan rides where there are fun things within a few minutes of the start point so I can go and session a trail or something while I wait. Or if we are meeting at some woods, I just turn up and ride, then go meet them when they arrive.

Unsuprisingly, my riding is progressing much quicker and I am fitter too.

Me and my wife are slightly late for almost everything. We are always trying to fit ‘one more job’ in…

I have a friend who used to be like this. I refer to him as a time optimist.
He would work everything back from the meeting time and realise he could ‘just do X’ before getting ready to meet. The know X took a certain amount of time, but that time did not include getting stuff out/putting away. His journeys were always calculated in optimial conditions. Therefore he would always be late – between 10 and 30 minutes consistently.

@chickenman – I’m guilty of this*. However – it’s something I do to myself rather than something I do to others so I’m OK with it.

* I do tend to aim for minutes worth of earliness, not tens of so it’s a few minutes of kicking around waiting.

Also – social anxiety means I really, REALLY hate turning up to a pub / bar etc early and being the first one. So I intentionally arrive a little late. The internal conflict that this causes is quite amusing, even to myself.

For a midweek local group ride then five minutes wait max.

A weekend ride where people have had to travel there is different. 15 minutes unless prior warning that someone is running late.

Sorry but some people will always be late and everyone else has managed to get there on time.

Consistent tardiness is just disrespectful and plain rude.

If someone wants to talk shit for 20 minutes before a ride starts then arrive 20 minutes earlier 😕

I’m only late for stuff I hate doing like work and the dentist. For a ride I’m champing at the bit, I’m so excited. I’d ride my bike all day, everyday if I could.

If you’re getting all upset about it and dare one say ‘snowflaky’ then ride yourself, or set an earlier time, or even add a set leeway. Here for 7, ride at 7.30.

that drives me crackers.  If its that then the ride time is 7.30.  I’ll turn up at 7:25 ready to go.  the eternally late will still turn up at 7:45

Wait 5 minutes for general greetings and chat.

Turn on a tracker.

See you in the pub 🙂

They then have to hang about for ages waiting for the event to start. Really they are just doing to themselves what latecomers in the OP’s scenario do to them. They don’t appear to mind.

Difference there is the inconvenience is only to them.

If I’m running late then I expect to ride alone but I agree with the Germans that one cannot be a ‘little late’. There again I plan meeting people in car parks to hand over bikes for a living and being late is unforgivable to paying customers. Strangely I don’t plan anything for others during my leisure time.