Hilton Head islanders show 2-wheeled visitors a gentler side

I love islanders.

Especially the ones who love to bloviate on how visitors don’t know how to drive bikes. These are the same people whose actions don’t reflect their words. I know this because I went on my own reconnaissance mission for several weeks and came to the stunning conclusion that most locals are gracious drivers and hosts despite their constant grumblings at the golf club and the local restaurants.

My husband, Johnny D, who hails from a concrete jungle up north, is a cyclist of the kind who wears “gear,” who races past leisure riders on the bike trails (and later dutifully complains about them to his friend, George Paletta), and pauses in his car and waves them through at the main Sea Pines gate on Greenwood Drive. I even heard him once yell at a cautious motorist trying to negotiate the pesky left turn out of Office Park Drive, “Go ahead, the other lane’s clear, too!”

This is an important point, because as locals know, if you don’t clear that turn quickly going from Office Park, left into Sea Pines — and it happens to be a Saturday — you may be stuck until 4 p.m., which is check-in time. At which point, you might as well pitch a tent outside Marley’s and hang it up until Sunday morning.

So, in homage to the drivers of Hilton Head, I am pleased to report that you all rock when it comes to putting on the game face that has a gentle look to it. I even spied Johnny’s friend George one afternoon, pausing in his car to let cycling families cross at that other difficult intersection, Plantation Drive making that odd crosscut across Lighthouse Road.

Have you seen this juncture when families are trying to figure out which way to the beach or Harbour Town? George waved them on, even when he had the right of way.

Most islanders, I observed, are totally careful when a parade of families ride by.

Now, I’m not talking about just a few bicycles, I’m talking about a line of guests riding on bicycles of all shapes and sizes, some built for two, baskets on the front, and the occasional strollers that carry the family dog who is too old to run alongside. Drivers almost expect to see the Music Man’s Robert Preston walking out front wielding a baton and singing “Seventy-Six Trombones…”

It pleases me, as a native islander, to see cars pause — even when they have the right of way — to allow bicyclists to cross the road because guests are usually confused.

Do you remember your first time down here? Wasn’t it just a little confusing? No street lights, brown, wooden signs that blend with pine straw, businesses and restaurants behind trees. I could go on and on about the difficulties inherent to newcomers making their way around Hilton Head. But I won’t, because I wouldn’t want to change a thing.

And as long as we are kind to our visiting drivers and bikers, we won’t ever have to see neon lights or advertisements in front of the trees.

Often my mother and I take Sam the beagle for a walk around the Baynard Cove area, where there is another comedy show called the Baynard Cove Road/Plantation Drive intersection. This one gets really interesting because the bike path crosses over the golf-cart path coming from the 15th green of the Heritage Course across Plantation Drive to the sixteenth tee.

If one is cycling and wants to go to South Beach, one goes straight, after turning left onto Baynard Cove. If instead, one wants to check out Stoney Baynard Ruins, one would hitch a right at this little bike trail fork in the road. Now, if one has never ridden this path before, one might take that right, and wind up at the fourteenth hole, wondering how far away the ruins are.

One might also wonder why the Heritage fore-caddies are madly waving and yelling, “Fore!”

And no, my mother and I don’t laugh at the riders and golf-cart drivers dodging each other.

I wish I could say it’s because we were raised in polite society, but that’s not the reason.

We don’t laugh, because we’re too busy dodging the traffic ourselves while Sam laughs the way beagles do.

This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 6:52 AM with the headline "Hilton Head islanders show 2-wheeled visitors a gentler side."