29 August 2009

Stale Beer

True story: Last Friday at noon I went on my usual bike ride in the hills that surround the office park that I work at. As me and my co-worker were descending a small hill, the driver of a (blue?) car traveling in the opposite direction threw a half-empty can in our direction and managed to hit me with a glancing blow square in the chest. I had less than a half second to react to this. Thankfully, I was completely fine from the whole incident. The car disappeared, and there was nothing I could do about the whole incident -- I had no description of the car, no license plate, and I wasn't carrying a cell phone either. The only thing that I could hope for from the incident was that the people driving behind the (blue?) car would have seen the incident and called the police.

After the coward(s) in the car disappeared, my co-worker asked what had happened. Since the can that hit me was blue, I assumed that the can was a can of Pepsi. So I told my co-worker that some idiot threw a can of Pepsi at me.

There was nothing we could do at this point except to continue the ride. So, that's what we did.

When I got back to the office, I sat down at my desk to cool off. There in my cube, in the absence of a 20mph breeze from riding my bike, I took a few breaths and tried to figure out what the strange smell was. Then it hit me: stale beer. That coward in the car threw a half empty can beer at me!

Oh, wonderful. Not only was this driver cowardly enough to throw something at a bicyclist, but he/she also had an open container of beer in the car too, in handy enough reach to throw at me.

I wish this driver had had enough courage to stop...I'm sure I could have convinced him/her that what they did was wrong.

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