I’m a Navy logistics contractor in DC, and spend a lot of time going back in forth between my office and the Washington Navy Yard, a few blocks away. So I’m walking from my office, a stack of files in hand, and all of a sudden someone SMACKS me on the back and yells something that sounds like “GOOD JA!!!”. It was hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to make me stumble. It’s a guy on a bicycle, maybe late teens early twenties, and he pedals past me fast, and looks back at me and smiles. Then a few seconds later his buddy, looking a little bit older, pedals by me laughing and saying something like “Good Ja!” a few times, looking at me.
I’m confused and a bit distressed, and I check my pockets, but nothing was taken. This was in the middle of the day, and several other pedestrians are looking at me and shaking their head in disapproval (at the bikers, I’m pretty sure).
What the hell? I assume they picked me because I’m youngish (early 30s), male, and sturdy-looking. But what the hell was it for? Is this a mystery I’ll have to live with forever?
I don’t know what they were doing, but bikes getting too close to me on the sidewalk when I’m walking pisses me right the hell off. It’s bad enough that they’re biking where they don’t belong, but they need to give pedestrians a very wide berth - I hate being startled by a biker blasting up from nowhere.
Just in the last week I had a bicyclist blow through not one, but two stop signs in a row. First case he turned left at full speed as I was going straight. Just a second sooner and I would have hit him. Then he blows though the next stop sign as well. Apparently laws don’t apply to him because he was riding a fixie and carrying a messenger bag.
In the second case I was making a right hand turn onto a one way street. I check for traffic and it’s clear, but as I start to turn a guy (not a child) on a bicycle zooms off the sidewalk to my left right in front of me. Yes, I only checked the road and not the sidewalk half hid by bushes because I did not expect someone to be barreling down the hill at full speed on the fucking sidewalk.
Either of these could have been “ghost bike” situations with everyone clucking about how bad drivers are.
Hopefully this won’t turn into a bicycle rider bashing thread. I think the guy who smacked me wanted to smack me. I don’t think his bicycle has much to do with it, other than it allowed him to make a quick getaway.
Damn Crudités! I have no idea what it means or why someone would do that. Do you look like you’re in the military? Maybe they were ‘thanking’ you. Then again they could just be random assholes.
My WAG is that they were saying “Good job!” and having a little fun about the fact that you were hard at work with a stack of files while they were free to play around on their bikes.