Last night Amy, Chloe & me went out for a ride, after all the &*^&$^$%#^#&$ rain finally stopped, Jesus... it's gonna be Ark time over here if this rain doesn't let up.
Cool temps-51 degrees, occasional gusts up to 15 mph-not fun when it's in our faces which is often around here with all the bizarre crosswinds coming off of and in between buildings but all in all, nice night for riding other than when we realized-after loads of auto & foot traffic-that it was Friday night. A night typically to be avoided around here for riding... Yuppie males hurrying back to their 1.5 million dollar condos to again hurry out to trendy bars to try to attempt to pick up even trendier Yuppie females: pretty much like every Friday evening is High End-Deep Pocket-Rutting Season around here. Yikes. But anyway, things went well for us.
Amy and Chloe got in 7.53 miles before Chloe insisted on some serious playtime at the Hudson River... she digs kicking her soccer ball around in the courtyard area of the new Goldman/Sachs building [it was built after 9/11 when they lost their offices and nearly all their employees in the Trade Center attacks]. There's this security guard there from Nigeria, barely speaks English, extremely nice cat, who absolutely adores Chloe and he's teaching her some soccer basics. He's a killer soccer player... played for the Nigerian national team, as well as represented his country in the Olympics on the Nigerian team a couple Olympics back. It's a blast watching him teach her... she's all over the place, screaming with joy and he's nothing but smiles, running around in a black suit, windbreaker with "Security" emblazoned on the back, walkie-talkie in hand but still throwing down some serious-assed moves. He's pretty fucking amazing to watch, even in his leather wingtips he can get some shit going on with a soccer ball.
Anyway, they headed over there so Chloe could take a break and play, and I kept riding.
I got in 10.29 miles, and probably would have done more but I had an incident. An interesting incident.
Coming up to an intersection, the cross street had a stop sign, the street I was on didn't. As I'm approaching the intersection I see a beat up Honda Accord coming up to the stop sign and stop. I keep going, I'm almost to the intersection and he starts inching out to check for traffic, cool, no sweat.
I check up a tad just to be sure, maybe a mile per hour drop, certainly not more than that... I make eye contact with him but while he's still looking toward me, he's really looking up the street behind me, so I'm thinking he's still not seeing me, I'm doing about 17mph.
He stops drifting, and comes to another complete stop... past the stop sign, the nose of the Accord about 6 feet out into the intersection, I think to myself, "Ok, he's cool... doesn't look like he's seeing me but he stopped again... " so I go harder through.
As I'm precisely in front of him, with my head completely turned facing him [and yep, he's STILL looking up the street, not at me], he guns it. He smacks his brakes and skids... so close to me I'm no longer illuminated in his headlights, they are BELOW me-at my wheel level, I can see the top of his hood almost like I'm standing on the thing.
No contact, I blow through, nail my brakes and pull a U-turn, he goes through the intersection and continues up the street. No horn, no swearing at me, no apologies from him either.
I'm fucking furious... and I recognized him. He's this really quiet Asian cat who used to deliver our Thai food from this place we ordered from all the time back when we ate meat and blew through tons of bread on takeout. I knew where he was going... the place he used to work for, that we used to order from, is right up that street so I assumed he must still work there.
I was correct.
I went up the street, saw him parking out front and go inside.
I pulled up, peeked my head through the front door and quietly & calmly asked him to come outside so I could talk to him. He looked up and yelled, "NO!" which surprised me as I hadn't really thought he even knew what went down frankly [guess he did and was already feeling defensive]. I asked for the manager, he screamed "NO!" again. Patrons were starting to look at us. Finally the manager came out to see what was going on and I told him, he said something in Thai to the delivery guy who just kept shaking his head, back and forth in disagreement or denial.
The manager came outside with me, he remembered me. We exchanged pleasantries and then I recounted what went down, that it had scared the shit out of me and was very close to becoming a real accident with folks getting hurt, namely me. He agreed but then sissied out by saying, "My driver says he did nothing so I must believe him, I hope you understand?". I said I didn't understand nor agree... that of course he's going to claim innocence BUT why would I falsely accuse someone, anyone of this kinda thing? Where's the gain for me? I'm not looking for a lawsuit or some free Thai takeout, it wouldn't make sense for me to falsely accuse anyone of something like this. The manager said, "Then what do you hope to gain?". He said it sorta snotty so I started to heat up. I said, "Well, I hope to gain a few things... that your driver is more careful, that you tell him to be more careful... to not only look for cars and people on foot, but ALSO folks riding bicycles and finally... that he at least acknowledges what he did". It seemed reasonable to me.
The manager said he could do nothing and that he still sided with his driver.
I told him, "Whatever". The manager went back inside and I walked across the sidewalk, put my kickstand down, parked my BBC and stepped up onto the delivery guys bumper and then up onto his hood being careful to not walk too far into the center of the hood as I would have buckled it probably, pulled out my Johnson and started pissing on his windshield.
This felt good for a few reasons:
A) I had a lot of water in me.
B) In the time I had taken to chat with the driver and then the manager, I had cooled down from sweating during the ride and the night chill had made me feel like I needed to take a leak.
C) It allowed me to drain my anger away while relieving my need to deal with points A & B.
The driver ran outside and started screaming at me. Inside the front window of the restaurant I could see the manager on the phone... I wasn't sure if he was calling the Police, taking an order or calling a customer and telling them their delivery would be delayed due to some unforeseen circumstances.
Either way... when I finished up, I stepped down, looked at the driver and said, "I'm sorry. I had to take a piss and didn't notice your car there, so sorry", put my kickstand up and rode over to the Goldman/Sachs building to hook up with Amy and Chloe.
I'll file this one under:
"Interesting Ride".
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