Another fantastic sun-soaked summer ride to San Clemente and back neared its conclusion as I rolled along the beach in Oceanside, the weekend traffic crawling along just a pinch faster than me in my cool-down mode.
Ah yes, I said a pinch.
At times Southern California lives up to every stereotypical scene you’ve seen in any movie, and then sometimes even tops it.
So the string of cars cruising on a stellar Saturday afternoon included convertible ‘Vettes, T-Birds, Porsches, a Lamborghini, classic Chevys — just about everything you could imagine. Yes, even a Thing!
As if that’s not entertaining enough, the occupants of the vehicles also push the limits of anyone’s imagination. Pretty people everywhere.
As I said, in cool-down mode I dialed back. I could have rolled past them all, shaming them by getting passed by a dude on a bike. But the views were, well, you get the picture.
Then, suddenly, I felt a pinch. My lycra-clad rear end just got tweaked and as I quickly turned, a large, pimped out pickup truck pulled alongside with a bikini clad babe hanging out the window.
Her equally swimsuit model companions were leaning forward to get a view, all three giggling as the pincher tilted her head to deliver her straight line: Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy Jeans you’re wearing?
I replied, well, yes, they are Bugle Boy Jeans, as they pulled away.
Of course, the punchline gives away how long ago this treasured memory occurred.
This week’s question: What’s the most bizarre interaction you’ve had on a bike?
Most bizarre? Probably the time an off-duty sheriff deputy decided to cut short his daughter’s driving practice to accost the group I was riding in for the egregious error of riding 2 abreast in the lane (as permitted by law). I don’t know why he chose to do that, and in retrospect we should have just ignored him and avoided the whole confrontation, but by far that’s the weirdest experience I’ve had.
I’m a preacher. One week I was preaching on the words of Jesus about birds, not one falls to the ground without my Father knowing. So on Friday I am cresting a long climb when a bird falls out of a tree and through the gap of the bars and my arm and lands dead on the ground
Pretty tough to top that one
One of the more gentle meetings with God that have occurred on the bike.
When you have been riding lots for 45 years, its a tough question.
Been several weird things, but one sticks to mind is being welcomed to Great Britain by British Customs with the full treatment, so to speak.
I was off in Amsterdam interviewing for a job in June in 1986. I know it was June because it was the week of the Summer Solstice and it never really got dark. Anyway, in addition to the job interviews, the folks in the Geology Dept. at the Vrije Univ. said there was a major conference at Cambridge Univ, so I decided to ride my bike to the Channel ferry and then ride to Cambridge, where I had a faculty member from my own university living there on sabbatical who put me up. Self portrait, here:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KJ2JtZOhHFc/UuWXqvarRXI/AAAAAAAABNo/ilwGQV_0CSg/s1600/Holland+1986.jpg
Anyway, the sea was as smooth as glass so I was up on the bridge drinking beer with a Brit for a good part of the trip to Great Yarmouth. We got off, he went his way, and Customs looked at my passport and put me in detention. The whole bike came apart. Sniffing water bottles, looking through panniers. I finally got huffy (the beer helped) and said “do I look like a drug dealer or terrorist?” and the Customs guy said “well, you tell me what a drug dealer or terrorist looks like”.Then they left and I just sat there. Finally, after it seemed like hours had gone by, they came back and asked me what the hell I was doing in England. It then occurred to me to show them my letter inviting me to the job interview and “oh, by the way, you probably want to go to the Archean Geochemistry Conference at Cambridge U” well, duh, why didn’t I think of that sooner.
By then it was getting late but at that point the Customs folks were cheerful, since I seemed to actually be OK, and they directed me to what they thought was the best B&B in the town so I stayed the night. It did have a fine breakfast.
Getting on the road a little bleery eyed, I found myself immediately in the path of an oncoming British sports car while in a big roundabout, and recalled that in the UK, traffic was on the left rather than the right. The friendly Brit, guessing I was from the States, called out “That’s OK, Yank, I’ll get you next time” as we avoided a head on crash.
It got better from there! Riding on small roads through the British countryside from Great Yarmouth to Cambridge was one of the high points of my young life.
That near miss comment is so, so English.
Your linked picture does display what I imagine to be the fashion sense of a drug dealer 😂. Great story, thanks for sharing!
A buddy and I rode from Foresthill, CA to Robinson Flat. We decided to try a forest road that would take us over to Mosquito Ridge Road. The road was rocky, we were on road bikes and flatted enough that we used all our tubes and broke into the patch kits (this was in the days before road tubeless or gravel bikes). Soon enough we were hitchhiking back to Foresthill. Got a ride with the camp host from French Meadows Reservoir campground. Very friendly, talkative guy. Also deaf in his right ear. So every time we spoke, he turned to look at us and his truck drifted towards the edge of the road and the canyon over a thousand feet below (such a bummer not to ride the descent). So we became the listeners, he was the talker.
Do you know how to earn the red patch in the Hell’s Angels? I do after that ride. Let’s just say it involves a woman on her period and one of Satan’s riders who devotes his kisser to her pleasure. We heard the whole story of how our chaffeur earned that badge on his war vest. Our choice was to listen to his story of going down or risking going down the canyon in his truck. What patch do we get for doing that ride?