cyclists gave me the finger wrote:
The other day two cyclists were going side-by-FREAKIN-side on a fairly busy road holding up traffic. The guy driving the car in front of me almost hit the rider on the left. When I passed I honked at them, and yelled "ride single file" out the window. In appreciation, they gave me the finger.
LOL, you Americans are such amateurs at this stuff.
Here in The Netherlands everybody knows how to ride a bike, and the other traffic knows how to navigate around all that.
There's kids and older youth, riding 3 or 4 next to each other on the road (2 is the maximum allowed, but most people don't really care too much). Nobody wears a helmet (only people who ride for pleasure do that, mountainbiking and race cycling etc.), people sit on the luggage rack as passengers, grocery bags hang from the steering bar. People wear headsets, call while riding, or use social media.
In inner cities traffic lights are mostly used as guidence, but if you manage to sneak through without really disturbing traffic too much nobody really cares. People take the shortest route, against traffic in one way streets, through parks etc.
And you know what? It's great! Everybody expects this behavior and therefor takes care to drive cautiously. Hardly anybody gets hurt.
So I guess I should say: keep practicing, guys! :-)