Ride etiquette

@Fox - assuming people have been told about follow-the-leader protocol before the ride, then:

• let people go up the road, and that’s fine if they wait in a sensible position once they don’t know where to go (they rarely do, choosing instead to wobble all over the lane looking over their shoulders and generally being hazardous)… unless the ride leader deems it’s having a negative effect on managing the group, in which case they’ll have to tow the line*
  
  

or

• bitch at them constantly for half-wheeling and show-boating, even if they’re not actually doing it (the Buffalo Bill method)
  
  

or

• just fucking drop them, after telling them they can lead the rest of the ride if they’re that desperate to be at the front; either choosing a moment in the route that suits your strengths so you can definitively make them crack, or using your knowledge of the area in order to casually drift to the back of the group and then turn off at some unscheduled point, never to be seen again.
  
  

There are 2 types of considerate rider it’s nice to experience:

i) they quietly approach you before the ride and state they have some personal agenda that involves the odd moment of exertion off the front, but they’ll make sure it doesn’t interfere with the ride as a whole

ii) they quickly realise that they’ve completely misjudged the ride (being either too strong and with an unbending idea of what they want to do, or not strong enough and inexorably bound to drag the rest of the group into a grumpy stupor or dangerous mess) and they politely make their excuses and bail within a few miles or whatever is still a comfortable location from which to find their own way home / carry on solo