so i had a sort of eventful, suprising ride yesterday. and not so much for the riding itself.
first, i had driven to tennesee valley to start, and ran into kiki there. heard some good news that is beyond the scope of this blog. but good news is good news.
second, i was just about to the top of the grinder climb on rt. 1 heading north out of muir beach. it's rather steep, slow going, no shoulder to speak of, but traffic is generally enjoying the view and well behaved. a silver mercedes at the front of a small group of cars passes in an entirely reasonable manner. a preteen sticks his head out the window and yells something. it takes a couple seconds for it to register in my oxygen deprived brain what he yelled. 'fudgepacker'. yes, he called me a fudgepacker. sometimes i forget how other people perceive all the spandex of the red team gear. but still, fudgepacker? i saluted him in return, he still had his bratty head out the window looking back at me, so i know he saw it. the brake lights of the silver mercedes came on briefly, so hopefully he was getting an earful from the driver. i half hoped they would stop at the cherry stand right there, and i'd get a chance to ask him if he wanted to call me that to my face, and perhaps inquire of the driver what kind of kid s/he was raising, but alas, they were gone. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree i imagine.
thankfully everyone i ran into on the trails was nothing but friendly and gracious. the equestrians, even! the rest of the ride was just splendid, thank-you-very-much.
but then, on the way home i stop for gas at the arco on the corner of divis. and fell. it's the cheapest around, and it's always crowded. there's not space for many cars, people get impatient, tempers flair, sometimes it's not worth the savings. regardless, i pull in off divis. the correct way (according to the traffic control arrows), and queued up. i pull in as a car pulls out, and get out to go about my business, when a dude gets out of his huge-ass-suv, and physically puts himself between me and the pump. apparently he had been waiting in his huge-ass-suv to come in from the wrong direction to take the pump, and i had inadvertantly snaked it. just playing by the rules. not really wanting to perpetuate the ridiculousness, i gave him a bit of a hard time, and got back in the car. thankfully, by this time the car at the next pump had finished up, and i only had to wait another 20 seconds or so for it pull away, and backup into that spot, all while mr. huge-ass-suv honked his huge-ass-suv horn at me. then of course, given the tightness of the lot, mr. huge-ass-suv had to do like a 7 point turn just to get into the spot he had been waiting for. and then we pumped our gas at adjacent pumps. awkward! he wasn't there very long. there's no way he filled the tank of his huge-ass-suv in that time because he started pumping after me, and finished before. i wished him a nice day on his way out.
a couple things to take away from this afternoon:
+ sometimes it's hard not to profile people based on the cars they're in when you keep getting reinforcements of existing stereotypes. cases in point: silver-mercedes-brat, and mr. huge-ass-suv. given this, i wonder what the stereotype of grubby-white-dude-in-subaru-with-bike-on-roof is like.
+ don't drive, stick to the trails when possible.
+ try to dwell on the good news when it comes.
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