I wave at everything from other riders/runners/walkers to farm implement operators and anyone that so much as looks in my direction, even along with an occasional “Howdy!” as well. In my experiences, I’ve found that no one has threatend me with physical harm for greeting them, meaning you have nothing to worry about from waving.

Eons ago, I was riding my friend’s mom’s mountain bike (this already puts my style points in the red, I’m sure) and had gotten behind him on a big root. He was waiting for me to catch up at this big open spot of dirt under some trees. I could see him ahead and figured I’d be “all cool-like” and come flying up and skid/fishtail to a stop right in front of him (for STYLE, just like you said!). As I come riding up, I simultaneously squeeze the right brake lever and turn the bars to the left in an attempt to initiate the skid. Well, as I immediately found out, the brake levers were backwards compared to how they’re supposed to be as the front wheel locked up instead of the rear and given that I had turned it to the left, the bike instantly took a nose dive. To make it worse, I had completely failed to realize that the combination of the aforementioned “dirt spot” being under a deep canopy of trees plus rain the past few days meant it had become a “mud spot” despite the trail having already dried. This realization nullified any hope of recovering the slide in the slippery goo, and invoked visions of me covered head to toe in mud and muck in the very near future.

Needless to say, I fortunately (I think?) halfway caught myself as I went down, making for a very slow and awkward fall. I knew I was going down, but managed to position myself to land right squarely on my ass. In the mud. All this played out directly in front of him. I hear it was a pretty good show.

This was the beginning of our ride, so the rest of the day my ass was covered by a wonderful big bunch o’ brown, standing out nicely on my yellow shorts. Pretty sure I was the envy of everyone we passed.

And yes, I can recall at least 3 people I didn’t know making poop jokes at my expense.

How’s that for style?