Tonight after work I ordered Chinese food from a local Vietnamese restaurant. I know, it doesn’t really make sense but that’s the way it is. Anyway as I am driving over there my brother calls me. We are talking and getting rather involved with the conversation. I don’t talk to my brother for very long usually. We both happened to be driving so we were able to talk longer than usual.
I pull up to the restaurant but since I am still talking I just sit in the car. I am parked on a very busy street in the ‘hood. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. He has a pick sticking out of the back of his hair. It has been decades since I have seen a pick so he caught my attention. Upon further inspection I notice he has an infant balanced on his thigh and held in his left arm while he steers with his right.
As I am telling my brother what I see the guy with the baby rides off the sidewalk and into traffic. It is rush hour and very busy.
I would have called the cops but there were two in view. One heading west and one heading east. I don’t know if they stopped him as he rode through the intersection and I couldn’t see him anymore. There was no way they didn’t see him.
What was this man thinking? Is this illegal? It must be. Just when I think I have seen stupidity at it’s finest I am surprised by something like this.
OK – cranky old guy rant coming up…
When I was a boy, my dad taught me the rules of the road with respect to bicycles. We knew that bicycles were single-occupancy vehicles, unless one had a baby seat attached, and that we were to ride as though we were driving a car.
Idiots these days ride three abreast or on both sides of the street, swerving in and out of traffic with a second kid riding on the handlebars. I’m tempted to shake my fist or something, but the ruffians would probably just laugh at the cranky old guy.
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“Get off my grass!”