Last evening my wife and I were out riding our bikes around the neighborhood. When I ride by myself, it’s so I can get my exercise. When I ride with her, it’s so she can get her exercise, and I’m basically along to keep her company. My wife doesn’t ride very fast and so more often than not I barely break a sweat. (Even when it’s in the mid-90’s like yesterday.)
So as we’re coming around a corner in the neighborhood, there are several kids on bikes and scooters out in front of this one house. As my wife, who is riding in front, rides past the group of kids, this one boy on a scooter, who couldn’t have been more than about five or six, decides he’s going to play cop. “You’re going too fast!” he yells, “You’re under arrest!” He starts taking off on his scooter after my wife just as I am riding past him. “You too!” he yells. “Pull over!” My wife and I continue on our way, but this kid is persistent. He’s still chasing us. “Pull over!” he yells about every five seconds. Then I realize, he’s catching up to us. “Pull over!” he keeps yelling. My wife is obviously annoyed but is either unable or unwilling to pick up the pace a little to get away from him. So, for the next block and a half, this kid continues to not only chase us, but pace us, all the while screaming “Pull over!” until he finally gives up and heads back to his friends.
So yeah, my wife and I on our $800 bikes can’t outrun a six year old on a scooter.
I don’t laugh out loud while I’m alone very often, but that image did it. I can just see you. Yellow and black spandex with a matching speedo cap, racing along at 3 MPH, trying to outrun Motorola™
Six year olds have NOS boost, you know.
While getting my hiar done earlier this week, I was under the control of the shampoo girl for a few glorious minutes of soothing scalp massage, if you know what I mean. It having been a bad week, and a stressful day, by the time she finished, I didn’t want to get up. As her lilting voice and dainty hand helped me up out of the washing station, I turned to her and said, “Damn, baby, you could get good money for doing that.” Apparantly, all the little old ladies there thought that was funny as all get out.
A friend of mine in college was a hairdresser. One day a local pastor came in for a haircut. As he got out of the shampoo chair to move to the haircut chair, he looked at my friend and said “You’ve got more power in your fingers that I do in my pulpit!”
I think you did the right thing in maintaining your speed. If you had accellerated, he would have gotten the reaction he was seeking. To completely ignore him was probably the best way to deal with it.
