But the vacation is not really the purpose of this post. Although we were largely sedentary during the week, we had bursts of athletic activity. On these occasions, whenever we went running or biking, every other exercising person we saw or passed on the roads nodded, smiled, waved or greeted us. It was actually quite nice and made the East Coast heat and humidity bearable.
Then, when I got back to LA yesterday, I got heckled and mildly bullied by my fellow exercisers.
I was on bike ride on Labor Day and stopped at a light, fairly oblivious to my surroundings. The light changed and I slowly accelerated. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by about 200 other bicyclists, 100% of them in their tight-ass, neon-colored, matching bike outfits. They had some momentum, so they began to swarm and surge past me, both on my left and right side, clearly trying to intimidate me, the lone biker. Then some jackass calls out "nice kit and bike combo", and a few of his buddies laughed and echoed what he said. I assume they were making fun of the fact that I was wearing normal gym shorts and a loose fitting gray and black mountain biking shirt (or, as they called it, kit), rather than one of their road biking ensembles. The swarming then got a little more aggressive and I finally had to pull over and let them all go by.
Three things about this whole thing bugged me:
- I had chosen my clothing specifically so I didn't look like the prototypical pelaton wanna-be-member (i.e. them)
- The swarm actually slowed me down, as they weren't actually going that fast. If you're going to be a bully, shouldn't you at least back it up with some effort?
- When did bicyclists become tough guys? Have they looked at themselves as they clickity clack around Starbucks with their giant coffees?
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