Biking to work is fun!

I was riding my bicycle home yesterday and had just crossed a four-way stop intersection. About half-way through the next block a mini-van passed me quite closely, gunning its engine etc etc as it went. Naturally I made the jerk off motion with my hand.

I wondered, as I often do, Did the driver see that? and if so does he/she understand what I mean? Well yesterday all questions were erased.

The mini-van pulled over to the right -- in fact I thought it was making a right turn at the next street. But no, it stopped and the driver's side window rolled down just as I was approaching on the left.

Side note: why do these total douchebag drivers pull over and roll down their windows like this? Do they think that I am actually going to pull over as well and talk to them? Really? No, really?

It turns out that this mini-van was being driven by a husky male who I guess just got his license or something? His male companion was in the passenger seat, and unbeknownst to me at this time, another dude was in a rear seat. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll meet him in a moment -- stay tuned!

The script at this point is what you'd expect:

Driver (as I pass on his left): What's your problem!?
Me (looking back over my shoulder as I continue moving):Huh, what?

Now the mini-van pulled out again and came up beside me, on my left. The passenger side window rolled down and the the above exchange was repeated a few times (I continued to play dumb. People hate that, I think). Finally:

Driver: Are you telling me to jerk off, buddy? What's your problem?

I continued to play dumb (and actually, I was not trying to tell him that he should jerk off. What I meant was that he himself was a big jerk off. A subtle distinction, I suppose).

This exchange was repeated a few times, and I continued to keep the puzzled look on my face. Then, suddenly, the sliding passenger door opened and dude in the backseat leaned out and yelled BANG!. This little guy had a shaved head and looked like he was fifteen years old and had been working out since he was about thirteen and a half.

I guess his BANG! was supposed to be intimidating. Supposed to make me think that he could have shot me with a gun if he wanted to? I'm not sure. Anyway. I laughed and asked them if they were a comedy troupe (I'm not making this up, I swear).

That confused them, I think. I heard one of them say troop?. By this time I had reached my turn, and I turned right. They turned left (the wrong way around a traffic cirle thing). I didn't get a chance to use the line that I always want to use when these young arseholes accost me with a mini-van: Shouldn't you guys head home now? I thought your mom wanted the mini-van back by six o'clock.

If I could label a blogger post through the e-mail interface (which I cannot) I would label this one with: mini-van.