Vengeance was mine that day - Episode #2
Back before we had a car, my wife and I used bicycles to get around everywhere. On my days off, I'd ride my bike up to Sabs' work to keep her company on the ~2mi trip home. Well, one sunny Sacramento day that little exercise took a turn for the worse.
I'm a very cautious and courteous cyclist. I'll use the sidewalk, but I understand that pedestrians have the right of way there, and that it's me who must move for them, not the other way around. So because of a lady walking along the side walk, I popped down into the gutter (I'm led to believe it was a bike lane, but on Folsom Blvd I didn't really feel safe riding in it for too long) to pass her, and I was feeling lazy so I didn't hop back up on the sidewalk after I passed her.
It was around this time that a convertible full of idiotic teenage girls passed by me going quite slow. Suddenly out of nowhere, the passenger grabbed my arm, while the driver floored the gas pedal. I like to consider myself a competent cyclist, completely in control of my 20" BMX, despite the fact we were rapidly approaching 40mph or so. After a few seconds or so the passenger let go of my arm, the driver changed lanes while I wound down my speed.
At this point in time, I thought I'd caught a break - they were stopped by the red light at the next intersection. I decided to haul ass to catch them, and give them a piece of my mind... well that didn't entirely work out. They were in the turn lane, and before I got even close enough to weave through the traffic and confront them, they got the green arrow to turn.
I then noticed that they turned into a Wendy's parking lot and stopped. They all piled out and filed into the restaurant, leaving Mommy and Daddy's Mustang Convertible unguarded in the parking lot. I normally don't take out my frustrations with the driver on a helpless automobile, but I was so overcome by rage by the time I reached said parking lot that it was either that, or I go to jail for assault and battery for beating the hell out of two little white suburbanite girls in a fast food restaurant.
Having crash landed many attempted tail-whips in my dirt jumping BMX days, I knew exactly the movement to perform. As I reached the car, rage boiling in my blood, I popped my front wheel off the ground. My feet left the pedals, the frame swung around at quite a vertical angle, using all my upper body strength to feed the bike every out of centripetal motion I could muster. The back peg of my bike came down on this skank's windshield, driving an inch and a half hole straight through it, the rest of the weight of my bike creating a huge spiderweb of cracks as the windshield shattered into a million tiny pieces, held together only by the laminate inside it.
So I pulled my bike from what's left of this bitch's windshield, and my peg started to pull the folded mess out a little bit. I pushed the windshield off my peg, retrieved my bike, and went on my way. Vengeance was mine that day.
Vengeance was mine that day...
You can ask my wife... I'm a real laid back person, very slow to anger - but once you get me angry, I'm vindictive, cruel, and a fiendishly evil thinker.
So today I decided to post this story on a truck forum in a thread about people messing with your ride, and I figured I'd recall it here as well. It was in 1998 or so, I'd not long had my license, and the car my uncle left for me when he moved to the states wasn't much, and I treated it like hell, but damnit if anyone else was going to mistreat it.
Some friends and I were at a skate ramp when this kid named Jye shows up. Apparently some of my friends knew him, but I didn't know him, and I don't think he knew me. He sat on his really expensive mountain bike while we were jumping off the dirt pile someone had thoughtfully left right near the ramp for us, and the entire time he didn't do anything but talk crap (not just to me, to everyone). I didn't really do anything, and after a while boredom set in so he decides he'll have some fun throwing clumps of dirt around, and eventually one hit my car.
I told him to knock that off, not to be throwing dirt in my car... so he throws another, which knocks the face off my CD player in the dash. So I confront him and tell him to knock it the hell off. This continues on for a bit, until I get tired and decide to leave.
Fatboy decides to jump on his bike and put it right in front of me so I can't get out. His entire attitude was "what're you going to do about it", turning and looking back at me, pride filling his big fat cheeks like a delicious cupcake.
So I did what any normal, idiotic, testosterone-filled teenager would do when he's challenged by someone so aggravatingly inferior - I floored it. Just enough to send the bumper of my car up on top of that expensive 26" back rim with the disc brakes. My early-eighties Ford sat precariously atop that rim for what seemed like an eternity, while the reality of the situation sunk through the layers of celulite caked on this kid's brain.
Just as the realization hit him like a ton of cookies, that rim folded over. He drug what was left of a terribly expensive mountain bike off to the side, while I drove off - several other guys in an uproar of laughter at what had just taken place. Tears in his puffy eyes, he swore he'd have "his brother" talk to me about replacing his bike...
Well I saw him and some other sasquatch that I assumed to be his brother in the street a few weeks later and neither of them said a damn thing to me. Vengeance was mine that day.
