OT: Masks NOT required while biking

[Seth Kirby]

Megan and I got called out on a ride today (by a random) for not having one. Just in case others are equally unsure:

From https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-policy-face-coverings:

Face coverings are not required to be worn when by people who are:

• Outdoors, walking, hiking, bicycling, or running. However, people are recommended to have a face covering with them and readily accessible when exercising, even if they’re not wearing it at that moment.

On the flip side: I'm not saying "don't wear a mask while biking". Some trails, roads, bike paths, etc are crazy right now and you should make that call for yourself. We all bear the burden of keeping our communities safe and being good citizens to keep our trails and opportunities to exercise open.

I am saying that if your idea of fun is biking down Bayway until you get bored and then turning around... then you are probably the only idiot on that route anyway (but wave to me when you see me doing the same thing).

[Brett Lider]

I haven't been riding my bike much since COVID but I have been running a lot. And I do see bikers interacting with pedestrians at intersections and along bike/pedestrian paths.

My take: 

1) In consideration of others, have a mask around your neck and therefore accessible at any time.

2) Try to avoid high congestion areas where possible

3) If you can avoid congestion/close proximity to others, do so. This includes: slowing, stopping, changing direction

4) If getting close to people isn't avoidable, pull your mask up around your nose and mouth

That's been my MO for the last several weeks as a long distance runner. I think the above would apply equally well to cycling.

- Brett

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[Yuanyu Chen]

Yes and no, depending on if you're only going to follow health orders that spell it out for you.

San Mateo county, for example, does make this explicit (via https://www.smcgov.org/covid19-face-covering):

DO I NEED TO WEAR A FACE COVERING WHEN WALKING DOWN THE STREET OR HIKING?

Generally, no, but sometimes you should if you cannot maintain six feet or more of distance between you and others on the sidewalk or the hiking area. When social distancing is not possible, you should put on your face covering.

DO I NEED TO WEAR A FACE COVERING WHEN RUNNING OR BICYCLING OUTSIDE?

The Order recommends that you take steps to limit the droplets that you spread when exercising. When running, biking, or doing other activities outside, you may spread droplets farther than normal. This makes the 6-foot physical distance less adequate. You should avoid running or riding directly in front of or behind people or through groups of people so you don’t expose yourself or others to droplets. You should have a face covering on you and wear it when you may be too close to others while engaged in these activities.

and from https://www.smcgov.org/shelter-place-faqs

THE ORDER PROHIBITS NON-ESSENTIAL TRAVEL ON FOOT OR BIKE – CAN I STILL GO ON A WALK OR TAKE A BIKE RIDE?

Yes, if within 5 miles of your residence. Social Distancing Requirements must be followed.

you could decide that this is *technically* directed at SMC *residents*, of which you are not a part of... but IMO following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law at this time will probably not make you popular with other trail/path users if you're passing <6' without a mask, regardless of which county you're in. Rolling Bayway (let's say >5mi south of Bayshore Caltrain) also puts you at risk of getting stopped by SMC cops should they ever decide to enforce that detail of the order.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 12:34 PM Seth Kirby <mr.set...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Yuanyu Chen

[Seth Kirby]

Re: 5 miles: Yeah my example is outdated there, sorry. I've actually been doing Bayway to Guadalupe Canyon now but that route is actually pretty good so it was a bad example of "things no one else bikes on". Maybe "Tunnel of Pain" intervals would have been a better example 😊

In this case we were on Cambridge St near Felton (read: middle of nowhere SF) and someone flagged us down from the sidewalk to tell us we should be wearing masks. I wanted to make sure others were aware of the actual law in case they find themselves in a similar situation. Ideally also London Breed's quote: "If you're not a police officer, don't act like one".

Seth

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:18:23 PM UTC-7, Yuanyu Chen wrote:

Yes and no, depending on if you're only going to follow health orders that spell it out for you.

San Mateo county, for example, does make this explicit (via https://www.smcgov.org/covid19-face-covering):

DO I NEED TO WEAR A FACE COVERING WHEN WALKING DOWN THE STREET OR HIKING?

Generally, no, but sometimes you should if you cannot maintain six feet or more of distance between you and others on the sidewalk or the hiking area. When social distancing is not possible, you should put on your face covering.

DO I NEED TO WEAR A FACE COVERING WHEN RUNNING OR BICYCLING OUTSIDE?

The Order recommends that you take steps to limit the droplets that you spread when exercising. When running, biking, or doing other activities outside, you may spread droplets farther than normal. This makes the 6-foot physical distance less adequate. You should avoid running or riding directly in front of or behind people or through groups of people so you don’t expose yourself or others to droplets. You should have a face covering on you and wear it when you may be too close to others while engaged in these activities.

and from https://www.smcgov.org/shelter-place-faqs

THE ORDER PROHIBITS NON-ESSENTIAL TRAVEL ON FOOT OR BIKE – CAN I STILL GO ON A WALK OR TAKE A BIKE RIDE?

Yes, if within 5 miles of your residence. Social Distancing Requirements must be followed.

you could decide that this is *technically* directed at SMC *residents*, of which you are not a part of... but IMO following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law at this time will probably not make you popular with other trail/path users if you're passing <6' without a mask, regardless of which county you're in. Rolling Bayway (let's say >5mi south of Bayshore Caltrain) also puts you at risk of getting stopped by SMC cops should they ever decide to enforce that detail of the order.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 12:34 PM Seth Kirby <mr.se...@gmail.com> wrote:

Megan and I got called out on a ride today (by a random) for not having one. Just in case others are equally unsure:

From https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-policy-face-coverings:

Face coverings are not required to be worn when by people who are:

• Outdoors, walking, hiking, bicycling, or running. However, people are recommended to have a face covering with them and readily accessible when exercising, even if they’re not wearing it at that moment.

On the flip side: I'm not saying "don't wear a mask while biking". Some trails, roads, bike paths, etc are crazy right now and you should make that call for yourself. We all bear the burden of keeping our communities safe and being good citizens to keep our trails and opportunities to exercise open.

I am saying that if your idea of fun is biking down Bayway until you get bored and then turning around... then you are probably the only idiot on that route anyway (but wave to me when you see me doing the same thing).

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Yuanyu Chen

[Matthew Hiller]

Also more in the context of running, here's my 2c on the mask/gaiter around your neck thing, pulling it up if required. For, like, a good 2-3 week period I wasn't crazy about seeing others do it, because this is in the category of touching one's face again and again. But, someone pointed out to me on Reddit that if a runner's hands are clean -- they washed up before leaving home, and they haven't been touching things unnecessarily while out on the run (and in 90+% of cases, really, why would they?) this isn't the sort of touching one's face that'd be substantially dangerous.

(I mean, maybe someone contagious breathed/sneezed/coughed on you early in the run, but the virus load stayed on the outside of the mask, and in manipulating it later a few times you get it into your airway, but this is getting to be pretty remote. A cloth barrier is not going to tend to keep the contamination on the outside all that well anyhow.)

On the flip side, I've also read that the antimicrobial effectiveness of these non-medical barriers becomes near-zero once they're wet. If I'm running a substantial amount of time, anything I'm wearing around my neck (even if not on my face very much time) is gonna get pretty wet pretty quickly. So maybe flipping the gaiter up if I get close to people will make them _feel_ better, but fundamentally it's just pandemic theater. IMO. Also here in New York we've mostly had an unseasonably cool April, but we'll be in the hot sticky dog days of late spring and summer soon enough. In that weather anything extra on your face or neck is gonna get mad uncomfortable very quickly.

So overall, I still take the attitude that I'm not going to wear a mask, and just be really diligent about giving as much distance as possible to others (and in no cases less than 6 feet.) If I choose a route/time of day where it was impossible to give the 6 feet, I should abort, go home, and do better next time.

Other runners can choose to wear a mask for the duration of the run, or do the flip up-and-down thing (so long as keeping hands clean), that's fine too. No judgment on that, none of this seems actively harmful, certainly. :)

The only thing I'll judge you for is if you're wearing a mask, but it only covers your mouth, not your nose. Then I'll just assume you're a complete bozo.

Or if you flip your gaiter up *instead* of sliding over to give full social distance when you have ample space to do so. Gah, no! So wow, much suck! (That happened on our Tuesday run.)

--

My wife and I did get a "wear a mask!" imprecation on our morning run today. This was with us running *on the roadway*, facing (the smattering of) traffic on Riverside Drive northbound in the West 100s, we're we've generally been running instead of the (actually pretty wide) park paths alongside the drive. There are just too many people out for walks on those paths, and not being especially disciplined about staying right, walking single file if anyone else is around, etc.; it's just generally less agita to opt out of that and run on the road.

So of course in this one instance a couple of people out walking side-by-side in the with-traffic direction popped out from behind a badly-parked SUV and we ended up giving them less room than we would have liked (still more than 6 feet, but probably under 10.) Honestly even if we were doing the gaiter thing we wouldn't have had real time to react and put the masks up. Then we got bitched at. Yeah, obviously we're the problem here, us obeying the terms of Cuomo's mask directive to the letter, running out in the road to avoid the walkers on the park path as much as possible, with us facing the direction of traffic and you with it. smh

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:41:50 PM UTC-4, Brett Lider wrote:

I haven't been riding my bike much since COVID but I have been running a lot. And I do see bikers interacting with pedestrians at intersections and along bike/pedestrian paths.

My take: 

1) In consideration of others, have a mask around your neck and therefore accessible at any time.

2) Try to avoid high congestion areas where possible

3) If you can avoid congestion/close proximity to others, do so. This includes: slowing, stopping, changing direction

4) If getting close to people isn't avoidable, pull your mask up around your nose and mouth

That's been my MO for the last several weeks as a long distance runner. I think the above would apply equally well to cycling.

- Brett

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 12:34 PM Seth Kirby <mr.se...@gmail.com> wrote:

Megan and I got called out on a ride today (by a random) for not having one. Just in case others are equally unsure:

From https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-policy-face-coverings:

Face coverings are not required to be worn when by people who are:

• Outdoors, walking, hiking, bicycling, or running. However, people are recommended to have a face covering with them and readily accessible when exercising, even if they’re not wearing it at that moment.

On the flip side: I'm not saying "don't wear a mask while biking". Some trails, roads, bike paths, etc are crazy right now and you should make that call for yourself. We all bear the burden of keeping our communities safe and being good citizens to keep our trails and opportunities to exercise open.

I am saying that if your idea of fun is biking down Bayway until you get bored and then turning around... then you are probably the only idiot on that route anyway (but wave to me when you see me doing the same thing).

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[Alexandre Passos]

I don't know about y'all but when riding or running I breathe very hard and I think any soft barrier probably reduces the radius of droplets around me (if anything my bandanna/t-shirt mask gets harder to breathe through when soaked with sweat). This makes me feel a little better about my chances of infecting someone else if I turn out to be an asymptomatic carrier. In this regard im not really worried about preventing myself from getting infected and more worried about all the potentially vulnerable people I pass on the streets who are also passed by so many other people during the day.

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[Matthew Hiller]

If I'm working hard, the soft barrier quickly becomes too uncomfortable to keep on.

I absolutely don't want to infect others, so I'm just super-diligent about giving people space instead. It seems a fair substitution.

For completeness, I am actually masking/bandana-ing when I'm just out for a neighborhood errand by bike but not working especially hard. And similarly with walking now. There just isn't enough of a downside that it makes sense to opt otherwise, not in those circumstances.

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 10:26:18 AM UTC-4, Alexandre Passos wrote:

I don't know about y'all but when riding or running I breathe very hard and I think any soft barrier probably reduces the radius of droplets around me (if anything my bandanna/t-shirt mask gets harder to breathe through when soaked with sweat). This makes me feel a little better about my chances of infecting someone else if I turn out to be an asymptomatic carrier. In this regard im not really worried about preventing myself from getting infected and more worried about all the potentially vulnerable people I pass on the streets who are also passed by so many other people during the day.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf2g/503b1529-1b5a-469c-9aa2-a95febbc16f6%40googlegroups.com.

[Beckett Madden-Woods]

I've been using a dust mask which I can pop up onto my helmet, then bring down when on Panhandle path or GGB or whatnot, then pop back up again. It's been working well for me (more comfortable & breathable than a neckerchief or something more heavyweight).

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[Brett Lider]

FWIW, I've been using a neck gaiter and using 1 or 2 layers of it depending on how hard I'm breathing. Since I mostly run in the street and away from people, I've only needed to pull it up during 1-2 block stretches of road. I can definitely tolerate breathing through fabric that long. And yes, it starts to get wet as people above have said. But the benefit of a neck gaiter is that you can spin the gaiter around your neck and keep accessing dry patches of fabric. If one is running especially long and/or is especially sweaty and/or it is especially hot out, one could carry a second, dry gaiter in reserve.

I can try to dig up the link but apparently the main benefit of these fabric masks is creating a hyper humid area right in front of your face holes so that droplets that would otherwise disperse instead amalgamate and become bigger droplets that then adhere to the fabric or drop out of the air quickly, So even a wet mast would seem to help with that.

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[Andrew Stadler]

I rode from Noe Valley out to the bridge this morning - it had been mentioned in another thread that it was pretty chill on the weekdays, so my intention was to cross.

Narrator: It was not pretty chill.

There were a zillion cyclists going both ways, and even on the open roads in the Presidio, I was passed closely, multiple times, by unmasked riders.

Then at the south end, I was stopped to take a picture of the bridge, and when I turned around I saw this crew:

None of them were wearing masks. I didn't say anything, but I found myself feeling quite frustrated. Groups like this are going to get the GGB shut down for us.

The same group passed me heading south. I could hear them coming so I pulled well off the road. They weren't in a paceline but they were in a fairly close procession.

--Andy

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[Matthew Hiller]

Maybe they all live together in a giant Rapha group house?

[Bob Ippolito]

I would imagine that Friday doesn't really count as a weekday anymore, especially when the weather is this nice.

Officially all of the RCC rides are on Zwift these days, they're even hosting races next month https://www.rapha.cc/us/en_US/stories/rcc-x-zwift

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[John Murphy]

We actually had a funny run on facebook up here where there was a giant meltdown over a group ride of like 15 guys with a car following them "NOT SOCIAL DISTANCING". It was a pro team, that does in fact live together.

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[Matthew Hiller]

Andy, I'm sorry all that bullshit happened to you. If it's any consolation, I don't think the chances of transmission for someone momentarily piercing your 6 foot barrier, for the amount of time it takes to pass or fly by in the opposite direction, is really that likely to cause an infection. (Indeed it seems vanishingly few cases at all have been traced to outdoor exposure outside the context of major crowds.)

Also, I think the lack of masks is a bit of a red herring here. Lack of observance of social distance is the problem here, really; if someone is doing that in a context where it can be avoided, wearing a mask doesn't make it okay. The mask-wearing is just better than doing absolutely nothing in a situation where it's truly too difficult to respect distancing.

On Friday, April 24, 2020 at 5:14:49 PM UTC-4, Andy Stadler wrote:

I rode from Noe Valley out to the bridge this morning - it had been mentioned in another thread that it was pretty chill on the weekdays, so my intention was to cross.

Narrator: It was not pretty chill.

There were a zillion cyclists going both ways, and even on the open roads in the Presidio, I was passed closely, multiple times, by unmasked riders.

Then at the south end, I was stopped to take a picture of the bridge, and when I turned around I saw this crew:

None of them were wearing masks. I didn't say anything, but I found myself feeling quite frustrated. Groups like this are going to get the GGB shut down for us.

The same group passed me heading south. I could hear them coming so I pulled well off the road. They weren't in a paceline but they were in a fairly close procession.

--Andy

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 10:14 AM Brett Lider <bli...@gmail.com> wrote:

FWIW, I've been using a neck gaiter and using 1 or 2 layers of it depending on how hard I'm breathing. Since I mostly run in the street and away from people, I've only needed to pull it up during 1-2 block stretches of road. I can definitely tolerate breathing through fabric that long. And yes, it starts to get wet as people above have said. But the benefit of a neck gaiter is that you can spin the gaiter around your neck and keep accessing dry patches of fabric. If one is running especially long and/or is especially sweaty and/or it is especially hot out, one could carry a second, dry gaiter in reserve.

I can try to dig up the link but apparently the main benefit of these fabric masks is creating a hyper humid area right in front of your face holes so that droplets that would otherwise disperse instead amalgamate and become bigger droplets that then adhere to the fabric or drop out of the air quickly, So even a wet mast would seem to help with that.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 9:55 AM Beckett Madden-Woods <bec...@beckettmw.com> wrote:

I've been using a dust mask which I can pop up onto my helmet, then bring down when on Panhandle path or GGB or whatnot, then pop back up again. It's been working well for me (more comfortable & breathable than a neckerchief or something more heavyweight).

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf2g/f00080c6-3554-4a35-a9f8-8dce7987ef98%40googlegroups.com.

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[George Lumpkin]

So I did an early-morning bike ride into Marin this morning and the bridge was fine. I crossed at ~6:45am (4 oncoming riders) and ~8:45am (9 oncoming riders, 3 peds). It was foggy and windy which no doubt helped with the situation -- but I was somewhat encouraged that it is feasible to do a ride in Marin. I rode mostly dirt in Headlands with a Miwok stable loop and there were almost no people on the trails there.

[Nathan Dushman]

Limited study suggests your chances of catching coronavirus - or transmitting it to someone else - are very small just from passing by someone else during exercise:

https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/China-study-suggests-outdoor-transmission-of-15229649.php
`Strikingly, only one instance of outdoor transmission — involving two men talking together in the village of Shangqiu, Henan province — was found “among our 7,324 identified cases in China with sufficient descriptions.”`

[Andrew Stadler]

Just to clarify one thing about my own experience, I didn't feel particularly unsafe;  I was annoyed because their very visible / semi-unsafe / rule-flouting behavior was exactly the kind of behavior that I worry could get the bridge shut down entirely for us.

--Andy