You want to get ice cream?

On my bike ride today, I was accosted by a series of Utes. Sorry - youths. It was a series of youths that accosted me. And on a scale of one to ten measuring my mature, controlled reaction to these interactions, I would give myself a 6.333. My reactions got more childish with each event, which I guess is logical, assuming it's expected that I would slowly get worn down. And when you factor in my progressing physical fatigue, I think that's a safe assumption. I should have scored a perfect ten, and I'm not trying to excuse the fact that I didn't. But if I had scored a perfect ten, and just let everything slide cheerfully, this story wouldn't be interesting enough to tell in a weblog post. It still might not be interesting enough, but I already wrote a whole paragraph, so I figure I'm on the downhill (it actually ends up being a very long story).

Event number one: getting mocked, and liking it

I was about three miles from home, riding up a hill, and three fourteen year-old-ish boys approached me, walking down the hill on the same side of the road. They were talking and laughing with each other, which I thought was nice. I actually even thought, "It's cool that they're enjoying each other's company, instead of yelling at the huffing, puffing old guy in bright blue spandex shorts sweating like a pig on his bike." I don't know why I just assumed that they would yell at me, but I remember shouting stupid things at old guys on bikes from Dan Carter's Nissan Pathfinder when I was in high school, so I guess I have a sense of universal justice that makes me expect that I'll get my comeuppance at any moment. In that context, today proved my apprehension to be well-placed.

I passed these kids without a word between us. The one closest to me as I passed looked at me, and I gave him the little smile and nod that I think makes me look like Harrison Ford being friendly. It does actually make me look just like that. I continued up the hill, already starting to forget my worry that anything negative would transpire between us. I got about fifteen feet past the trio, and one of them sneered loudly after me, "Nice job in the Olympics!" Now that didn't sweat me too much, because I spend lots of time while I'm showering secretly imagining myself to be an underdog Olympic champion cyclist. They would make a movie about me. It would be called Walter Mitty Goes to London. Starring a young Harrison Ford who would give a small smile and nod to every other cyclist in the race as he zoomed around them on his way to the finish line and glory.

So with all that safely tucked away in my brain's dream box, his remark was more amusing to me than anything. Aiding my amused reaction was the fact that these three looked like closeted Justin Bieber fans, and the thought of them secretly loving Bieber so much but being too scared to come out compelled me to simply give them a thumbs-up as I moved up the hill. So that was my ten out of ten reaction.

Event number two: the telltale signs of alcoholism

About seven miles later, after having just climbed a gnarly hill, I was feeling pretty good. I was in a groove, and as I just mentioned, I had steadily handled what is, for me, a big hill. As I made a right turn at a light, a cherry red Jeep Grand Cherokee full of bros passed me, and one of them shouted, "Yuhkhmawts!" I think that's what he said. I'm sure that's not what he was trying to say but, as we know, the most important part of one person saying something to another person is what is actually delivered to the listener's ears. And my ears signed for a delivery of "yuhkhmawts". It really startled me. I like riding my bike because it's smooth and repetitive enough for me to be able to get lost in what I'm doing, but not so repetitive that it ever gets boring.

So when this guy shouted at me, it jolted me, and I got that unpleasant hot feeling in my body that comes when your brain goes through a flash of fight-or-flight that the rest of your body doesn't follow through on. Phyllis describes it as "her body trying to kill itself". So I was left somewhat irked, because nobody likes the way that feels.

I noticed that the Jeep had turned off onto a kind of frontage road lined on the far side with houses, meaning that it was now approaching me about fifty feet to my right. My mild anger at having been told "yuhkhmawts" took a physical form of stoic coldness expressed via the face. In other words, I stared the bros down, looking like Harrison Ford playing Jack Ryan. I did look just like that. This drawn-out look gave me a good chance to assess the peanut gallery. The men in the car looked to be in their mid-twenties, and were all sporting tank-tops and arm tattoos. Tank-tops so everyone can see their tattoos. They all turned away and snickered when they saw me staring at them, which I immediately translated as a win for me. Yep, I'm awesome.

After I got over this unearned sense of victory, I started to feel badly about a couple of things. First of all, I wished I had just let it go, and kept my eyes on the road. Secondly, I painted myself a quick picture of what those guys' lives might be like, based only on what I had gathered from our brief interaction. I saw a lot of beer, and maybe some disappointed mothers. Either that or alcoholic mothers whose disease they had passed on to their sons. Mothers with arm tattoos, and many tank-tops in which to show them off. Either way, it was grim, by my standards. Then I thought, "I can't just make up a pitiable story about these dudes and thereby place myself above them. They seemed happy in the car, they probably enjoy their lives. They might even be sharp, productive, upright citizens. Who am I to assume they are alcoholics?" Then I remembered that of all the clever, cutting interjections they could have spewed at me as they passed by, they chose to say, "Yuhkhmawts!" They probably are alcoholics.

Event number three: physical violence, or you can only ask so much of a man

Eighteen miles into my ride, I had begun to encounter heavier traffic and a lot of road construction, which had probably raised my stress levels. Not as much as a monkey's stress levels are raised when he gets taken to a zoo in America where a surgeon straps him down to an operating table to perform a double bypass on him (I heard a story about that on the radio - apparently that sort of thing really stresses monkeys out), but I'm sure I was a little more stressed than I had been at the advent of my previous two encounters with our nation's bright, up-and-coming generation. Unfortunately, this extra stress made me much more prone to the previously described sensation of my body trying to kill itself.

So it was, then, that a car full of high school-aged boys and girls pounced on my vulnerability as they cruised past me on a busy, four-lane road. I'd been going straight for a while, and was in another groove, and then one of these kids screamed something like "hhauk!" as they sped towards the intersection. This one startled me as well. And then the perfect storm just came together.

The light they were approaching turned red about two hundred feet ahead of me. They were stopped in two lanes of heavy traffic, at a light at which I was planning to make a left turn. Their position in the far right lane, surrounded by cars, meant that they couldn't possibly follow me after I turned without having to go way up the road to the next right turn and then backtrack. I know this is probably boring to read; I'm including it because it's the psychopathic train of thought my mind pursued as I grouchily pedaled toward the long line of stopped cars they were stuck in. But my main focus was on the ideal that people shouldn't scream at other people for no reason. We just shouldn't do it. Of course, we also shouldn't retaliate when someone does something as harmless and trivial as scream at us. We should just let it go.

But as I huffed and puffed closer to their car, I was only thinking about how we shouldn't scream at each other. "What happens to those girls in the car if I don't teach the boys a lesson?" I thought. "They probably get it in their minds that dipwads who scream at strangers for fun are the right kind of guys to date and marry. And then their lives are ruined forever." More assumptions. More making an ass out of u and me. So I checked over my left shoulder for approaching traffic. There was none, which meant phase one of my plan was a go. I navigated between the two lines of stationary cars, and reached down to pull out my water bottle.

As I passed my most recent harassers, I had a split-second to hear the song they were blasting through their car's stereo: Mo' Money Mo' Problems. Notorious B.I.G. and Sean "Puffy Diddy Daddy" Combs. Classic. They were just at the part where the girl sings the chorus - something about money and problems, I believe - when I rolled up and let them have it. I got a good, long squirt of water right into the back and front windows of the driver's side. Then I just rode off. Like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones at the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Because he has to go save Marcus Brody from getting lost in a side canyon in Turkey. Also classic.

I was there and gone so quickly that I didn't catch their reactions. I didn't even have time to see how well my squirt of water was aimed. But I'm pretty sure I got at least two of the car's occupants directly. As soon as I did it, my brain (again with the brain, what is this guy's deal?) tried to justify my actions. No, it wasn't justifying, it was putting a shell around my guilt and burying it. I proceeded to the front of the left turn lane trying to ignore the nagging sense of having acted far beneath myself. Also, there was this heavy feeling that the now very slightly wet young people would throw a pair of scissors or a roll of dimes at me as they passed.

I knew they'd do something. They were the kind of people who scream at you for just riding a bike; of course they'd have something to say about being sprayed with warm water from a sports bottle I found on the road (no joke, but don't worry, I washed it very very well). My only consolation in that moment was that it was highly unlikely that they would be able to get across a jam-packed lane of traffic to straight up run me over. It was more likely, I surmised, that they would find me three blocks down the road and run me over there.

Realistically, and in retrospect, I realize that they weren't going to try to hurt me. That would be an uncharacteristic move for a group of loud, mouthy teenagers. Being in a group of peers will push that kind of kid to transform from a sullen, reclusive hormone factory into a bold, socially edgy hormone factory. But even then, they're almost always all talk. Waiting to turn left at that light, though, I convinced myself they might shoot me. But they didn't. What they did was designate one of their company to shout something at me. The first thing I'd been able to understand since The Bieber Gang took their best shot about an hour earlier (credit to those fine young men for enunciating).

I will not write what this kid yelled. I won't even do the thing with the first letter of the word followed by a series of asterisks. Because it's the one curse word I really, really dislike. You've probably guessed the word by now, but I'm still not going to write anything close to it. Instead, I'll give you a pair of phrases in parting, each providing a small clue to the youths' response to my drive-by spraying:

Clue #1: "*** **** ** *** ******?!" (That's as close as I'll get to it with the asterisks.)

Clue #2: "You want to get ice cream?!"

I'm not proud of what I did. Objectively, though, I think it was a pretty good shot for not looking or stopping. And my average of 6.333 out of 10 isn't awful. And I believe I can only get better. Harrison Ford out.