OCT 24, 2008 – 12:00AM

The other day, as the family and I finished up a short bike ride around the ‘hood, my 10-year-old daughter, Carlyn, announced she was signaling a right turn.

Her left arm was out, her hand pointing down.

I pointed out that, technically, she was signaling for a stop.

She asked how to signal a right turn, and I said the driver’s handbook says it’s a left arm out, hand pointing up, but I told her I usually just point with my right arm.

”I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t take my right hand off my handlebars.”

Coincidentally, that same night I received an e-mail from a co-worker who said on his way to work he was behind a cyclist who was “doing rather crazy gestures, and I had absolutely no idea what he meant by any of them.” He wondered if signaling from the saddle was a potential blog topic.

Given the coincidence of my little talk with my daughter and that e-mail, I figure it was a, ahem, sign I needed to blog about signaling.

Now, I have to admit I’m a bit of a signalholic.

I signal just about every turn on my bike. I signal in broad daylight and in the middle of the night. I signal in traffic and when there’s not a car within miles. Sometimes, when I catch myself signaling a left turn at 1:30 a.m. with not a car in sight, I feel kinda silly, but not nearly as silly as when I space off and signal a turn while pushing a cart in the grocery store.

Heck, I sometimes even signal when I run.

But I’m not a by-the-book signaler.

First of all, I haven’t, in all my adult cycling life, signaled a stop. I stop, mind you. I just don’t signal that I’m stopping.

I know plenty of cyclists do neither.

But I stop, even in the dead of night with no one around.

When it comes to signaling a stop, however, I just figure the stop sign or traffic light should serve sufficient notice that I’m coming to a halt.

When it comes to signaling turns, I learned in driver’s ed about the left-arm signals, and even then I confused stop with right turn.

Of course, in a car, it doesn’t do much good to signal with the right hand, unless you want the person in the passenger seat you just whacked to know you’re turning right. Hence, the left-hand signals.

On my bike, however, I point left to go left and right to go right.

Sometimes I just make a subtle little wag of the fingers.

And I’ve even signaled with a nod of the head.

As far as I know, no one ever has misunderstood one of my signals.

And I’ve never been ripped (again, that I know of) for failure to signal.

But I have, interestingly, been yelled at for signaling.

I was headed south on Vermont, between Sixth and Seventh streets. Because I wanted to make a left at Seventh, I looked over my shoulder before changing into the left-turn lane.

A car was coming up, so I slowed down, thinking I’d let him pass before changing lanes behind him.

I waited.

And waited.

But the car wouldn’t pass.

So I sped up, signaled a left turn and pulled in front of the car, at least three car lengths ahead.

As I came to a stop at the red light at Seventh, the car pulled alongside on my right, the window went down, and the driver started to criticize my riding.

”I didn’t know what you were going to do,” he said.

“I waited for you to pass. You didn’t pass. So I signaled and changed lanes,” I replied.

”But I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

”Did you see my signal?”

”Yes, but I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

”Well, a left-turn signal generally means somebody’s about to – I dunno – turn left?”

The driver then told me how many thousands of miles he rides his bike every year, and I’d be smart to listen to him.

Fortunately, the light changed before I had to get so smart, and I turned onto Seventh as the driver turned the opposite direction.

I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have his turn signal on.