There's nice, and there's too nice.

Oregonians are sometimes irritatingly nice.

Typically, when we're approaching a 4 way stop on the bike/tag-a-long/trailer combination at the same time as another car, we'll slow down so the car gets there first, stops, and goes through the intersection before we get to the stop sign. This eliminates the need for me to take a foot (or two) out of the two clips (to hold us up while stopped) and then getting it back in the toe-clips after we're underway again. Basically, stopping is much less convenient then simply slowing down and speeding back up.

However, here in Oregon City that doesn't seem to work as well as it should. Typically, we'll slow down, and the car will too. And the car will then come to a complete stop, forcing us to do the same. After we come to a complete stop, the driver of the car will then wave us through ahead of him or her, even though he was clearly there first. The driver is apparently trying to be nice, but in reality it would be better if he just did what he's supposed to do.

And yesterday when taking the kids to and from school this was taken to an extreme. In two cases, I approached an intersection where I had a stop sign and the cross-traffic did NOT have a stop sign, and cars coming down the road stopped anyway (!) to allow me to proceed, even though I was already stopped and waiting for them to pass.

We think it's the presence of the kid trailer (as we haven't seen any other bike trailers in Oregon City), although for all I know Travis is back there waving his arms around like a crazy lunatic. Either way, it's nice that they're nice, but it'd be nicer if they just followed the rules of the road.