I had been at a bar celebrating a friend’s birthday and, seeing as a good time was being had by all, we closed the place down. At around 2:00 in the morning off I go on my bike headed home after just about everyone had offered me a ride. No, no I shrugged them off, it’s a pleasant night, and a ride would be nice.
I realized that I'm a little more drunk than I had thought when it took several efforts, and consequent putting of my foot down to steady the bike, before I can successfully clip my shoe into my pedal. Given my state I opt to ride on quiet neighborhood roads rather than the busier roads lest my drunken cycling coupled with their drunken driving combine for disastrous results. It was on a very quiet neighborhood street when I approached an intersection. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something gleaming in the light. Well the corner of my eye was simply not enough to see what it was so I turned my whole head to the right to figure out what I was looking at. I chuckled to myself when the image clicked in my brain and I realized what I saw was a prankster, or perhaps a group of them, had strung up some ribbon across the street between a stop sign and a telephone pole. The intended trap meant to of course mess with cyclists. You know, knock them off their bike in the early morning hours as they undoubtedly are riding home drunk after a night of carousing. Good for them, ha, serves us right! But you see this thought is flawed and flippant because in the split second that had elapsed I realized that maybe, just maybe, this ribbon wasn't only to the right of me. I turned my head to return my attention to the road ahead and sure enough there's the same damn ribbon only I'm far, far to close for any evasive action and I hit this stuff at a decent clip. I fully expected the stuff to break free at some point once my momentum had pulled the ribbon past its breaking point. It wasn't until it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me and I was on my back, my left wrist, having broken my fall, in pain and I'm staring at the sky that maybe this ribbon was stronger than I had thought.
I laid there for a bit collecting my wits and tried to figure out what had happened. I got up to inspect the ribbon and the scene and things become pretty clear. One, this ribbon is nylon strapping material it is has a test weight of 2,500 pounds, or so the words printed neatly on the material declared. Two, the stuff had been strung up on three sides of the intersection so that no matter what direction one approached problems would arise. To this very day I will adamantly deny that my drinking had any bearing on me running straight into the ribbon. If anything, had I been sober my rate of speed would have been higher and it would have only hurt more. This stuff was a sliver in color and in the street lights was pretty hard to see. What I will admit to is that my following actions were spurned on by my drunken state.
After moving my bike safely off the road I set about being a good citizen and debugging the intersection, only as I'm starting to undo the handiwork I start to get very, very angry. And it is as though my inner 14-year-old metal head is unleashed and he's been a little mad he's been kept bottled up for so long. In short, I rage. I have a naturally loud voice and should I choose to shout or yell there are few that are louder that I know. I seldom get to raise my voice, but this evening seemed like a pretty good time to really let loose. It began fairly simple. I demanded to know WHO THE FUCK DID THIS? WHO? Right well, actually first I believe I yelled WHAT THE FUCK!!! About 10 times, that was the warm up. Then I proceed to interrogate the intersection at 2:30 in the morning and it went a little something like this.
"What the Fuck? Who the fuck did this? WHO? Oh no one will fess up? NO ONE? What the fuck? You fucking pussies! Someone fess the fuck up right now!! RIGHT NOW!! Oh, so still no one? OK, well whoever did this is a CUNT SORE!! Whoever did this come out right now!! I will fuck you up you fucking cuntsore! Still no one, you gutless assholes! Oh, and to everyone else who I'm keeping awake right now just know I'm doing this because one of your neighbors is a fucking ASSHOLE! I hope everyone in this intersection dies!! I wish death on all of you!! Every single one of you is a gutless little fuck. I hope everyone here gets rectal cancer! No, I hope everyone here gets the most painful cancer there is!! I hope every last person get the rectal cancer and the most painful cancer there is. I FUCKING HATE EVERYONE HERE. And if you saw this trap and you did nothing, well if you aren’t part of the solution you’re part of the PROBLEM! FUCK YOU CUNTSORES!"
So by the time I was done giving that rousing speech which I felt like the last part about problems and solutions was pretty poignant I had the intersection cleared and was getting back on my bike headed again towards home and willing to put the whole thing behind me. Right as I start to ride off a cop car shows up. I guess my yelling had scared a woman who had been milling about on the sidewalk about a block away probably because I menacingly directed some of my diatribe towards her, whoops, sorry lady. Whatever, so I'm directed by the cop to sit on the curb and as I'm sitting there another squad car pulls up followed by three more. In total 5 squad cars show up to investigate. I guess it was a slow night. The cop who asked me to sit on the curb asked what was going on. I explained what happened and told him to check out the intersection for the ribbon. He had someone check on it and told me the reason why they came out was that they take threats of someone wanting to kill everyone in an intersection seriously. I replied with ‘no I didn’t want everyone to die I only wished rectal cancer on them… oh no, you’re right I wished everyone death, sorry.” I’m pretty sure I’m visibly drunk but the cop asked if I was hurt, I replay my wrist is sore, but I’m real close I and I just want to go there, home, which I was allowed me to do.
I did wake up the next day and proceeded to walk to the ER which is conveniently a mere two blocks from where I live and found out I fractured my wrist. There’s a lesson somewhere in there, but as near as I can tell it is that the ER is waste of money.
