First, Thanks for the clean up Fred. I wanted to post again but things were heated enough that I didn't want to risk inflaming them further. I will do that (post that, is hopefully not inflame) now that things are cleaned up a bit.
To Staehpj1.....your point about being more recognizable as a touring cyclist is a good one. But I believe that riding a bike loaded with panniers would serve the same purpose.
I was actually referring to when off the bike in a store, diner, pizza joint or whatever.
I know that one of the nicest hosts we had was a couple who only recognized us because we were in bike clothes. We were camped in a nearby small town park and walked to the town pizza joint. This super nice couple invited us to drop in on them for dinner the next day when we would be in their town.
When we got there they had the grill already fired up and a couple chickens roasting. We had wine and cheese and great conversation before dinner, then a delicious meal. They had offered to let us camp in their orchard, but when we got there they put us up in a really nice little house they run as a B&B or rental unit.
In the morning they fed us again and sent us on our way with a lot of local knowledge. We wanted to go whitewater rafting and as it turns out he had worked for some of the local rafting companies and sent us to the best one.
We would have missed all of that if we hand not been easily recognizable as cyclists.
BTW, meeting folks like this couple is also the reason why I prefer to camp in the open in town parks, church yards, or what ever (with permission when necessary) rather than "stealth" camp. We still manage to camp for free a good percentage of the time and it almost never requires stealth.