My weekly Sunday ‘long’ bike ride, (ie, to the place we usually go and then some till we get bored) was fraught with difficulty today. Never before have my emotions been through so much. I shall explain why.
We set off after watching the Grand Prix (which was very very good by the way) and about 2 miles down the canal there were a bunch of police stood by a bridge. It turned out we couldn’t go any further as there were ‘unidentified objects’ in the canal. Due to this we were forced to look for an alternative route to get further down river. As we left the canal basin and tried to find our way we very quickly came to a pub just next to a bridge over the canal, a pub that was swarming with police. After a quick ‘Diagnosis Murder’ glance at the imaginary camera we deduced that some pissed up nobody had decided to jump off the bridge to cool off. Nice move numb nuts, the canal is only about 4 foot deep ( and yes I know this for a fact!!! ) so you probably ended up stuck head first in the dirt at the bottom. Not so WKD Blue now are you!
Anywhoos, we found ourselves in bandit country ( charming slang for the many down trodden estates we endured cycling around ) and ended up looking very lost as we went down cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac looking for one of the many paths that lead on to the canal. Then suddenly a young lad obviously feeling our plight asks us if we were lost and promptly directs us to two gates he knows of. This kind deed was all the more unexpected as we were surrounded by GTi’s and ‘swanky’ alloys, all of which usually mean you are in the midst of the ‘smash and grab’ culture.
Finally we found our way back to the canal. But not before we stopped off at the world’s most unhelpful bike shop. There were five people in the shop and I don’t think we got glanced at once. The shop was full of bikes that looked great yet weighed as much as Trisha’s compiled divorce proceedings and had replaced strong durable aluminium for weak brittle plastic on almost every part which would be put under strain in the normal operation of riding a bike.
So we found our way back to the canal. We were riding down it and all of a sudden our lives were put back into balance by the cosmos. The earlier kind act was obviously pulling at the very fabric of the universe and we were cycling in some kind of ever tightening spiral that would eventually lead us to evil. We found it. Very quickly.
Ron usually takes the lead when we go out. I don’t know why this is, it’s just how it happens. Suddenly, Ron was braking hard, and then just as suddenly he was head over tits into the dark disease ridden waters of the canal. He did a full forward flip and entered the water head first with the bike still under him as if pure hope would allow him to ride out of this. In a space of time too short to measure as my brain tried to take in what was happening somebody had grabbed me and pushed me towards the canal. I knew I was falling. I knew I had been pushed. There was very little I could do except contemplate that all the times I have wondered how I would first fall in, this was never something I had considered.
I was underwater, I was attached to a bike. My head came above water and my first thought was ‘I hope it’s not deep cause I’m not letting go!’. Luckily I could stand. Ron was already out the water by the time I noticed him but his bike was nowhere to be seen. He was stood looking at his sodden digital camera, a look of disbelief and pain etched across his wet face. A little further down the canal was the culprit. Stood there. Looking at us.
Words entered my head. Sentences formed, they went along the line of “Fuck, I’m about to get the shit kicked out of me.” I stood in the water, holding the front wheel of my bike ( I don’t know how I ended up holding the front wheel either, it was just in my hand when I surfaced ) the man just. . . Stood there. Looking at us.
In times like these, when nerves are on edge and adrenaline is pumping, it is very difficult to know what to do. Is the guy armed, is he gonna freak out and start stabbing us, is he gonna demand our bikes, is he a druggie, does he have syringes on him??? These are not nice thoughts to have, even more so when you are very aware just how close to life they may be.
We start fishing our bikes out the canal while keeping a very wary eye on him. Slowly he starts to come towards us, he looks twitchy, I’m still in the water looking for Ron’s bike, the man looks at us and says “Sorry about that.”
Stop the clock. I’ve got the clue!!!! It says you're a mentalist.
What the fuck. Sorry . You just pushed me in a canal shit for brains. Why are you apologising?
It turns out this guy was ‘Protesting’ against bikers on the canal path. Oh, hang on a minute, is it a bridleway? PUSH ME IN A CANAL. . . . IT IS, SO I’M ALLOWED ON HERE!!!! However, you try explaining this to Mr Obviously On Edge And Probably Dangerous.
While I’m still wading around looking for the missing bike we point out to him that his protest seemed a little ‘over the top’ ahem, so to speak.
Hmmm, with hindsight telling an emotionally unstable man with violent tendencies that he may have reacted in a way not befitting social norms seems a little pointless.
Then he offers to get in the canal and help us look for the bike. I’m still not sure this guy isn’t going to hold my head under the water till Ron agrees to go to the bank and withdraw all his money so I quickly refuse.
So there we were. I’m in the canal looking for a bike, Ron is stood on the edge close to this random guy and nerves are fraying like cartoon jumpers.
I finally find the bike and we pull it out, then as I come to get out this guy offers me his hand. In the time is takes to go ‘ooohhhh’ after you see someone on the telly get kicked in the nuts, I consider pulling him in. However, then I would be in the water with Mr Lets See How Hard I Can Grip Your Neck. I decide that if we are going to get out of this alive, we had better go the humanitarian route and if that doesn’t work just try our very hardest to beat the shit out of him if it all kicks off. I take his hand and he helps me out.
Now that we are both on the path there seems to be a change in his manner. He apologises again for pushing us in, apparently his dog was ‘terrified’ and that’s why he did it. He then says that he stayed around as he would rather “We just have it out now rather than you jumping me later.”
Hold on Johnson.
Any guy that stands there, and plain as day says, “Lets fight.” Is either one of two things.
a) Fucking nails.
b) Fucking nuts.
Whichever way it swings, this situation was weirder than Round The Twist while nursing a hangover. There was no way I was going to attack Mr Probably Got A Knife In My Sock For Backup. Yet what to do?
Ever the diplomat, and desperately searching for a way to avoid a starring role on Crime Watch, I try to open a dialogue.
Why did you do this, what possible reason could you have?
It turns out he is ‘sick and tired’ of mountain bikers tearing past him and scaring his dog. Yet the only reason he had a chance to push us in was because we slowed down so we wouldn’t scare his stupid little dog. He then got back to the whole ‘you shouldn’t be on this path’ argument and we had to cut that short as tempers were starting to fray on both sides.
This guy was a mystery to me. On the one hand, he pushed us both in a canal in the space of a second. On the other, he stayed around, even offering to get in the canal to help us find the other bike, then helps me out, then apologises, then offers to fight us, then explains his actions.
You can usually tell the ones that will just attack you, but this guy was getting harder to read by the minute. He got very angry while protecting his actions and seemed to steer the conversation towards him getting angry. Was he doing this so he could just attack us and get it over and done with, I don’t know. I do know that it was freaking me out and I knew that the sooner we got away from him the better.
Finally we agreed to disagree over whether we had a right to be there. We got back on our bikes and rode off.
Looking back this whole episode makes me angry. I’m angry that he pushed me in and I’m angry that I didn’t ‘get my own back’. I feel like I should have gone for him, there were two of us, we could have probably taken him in a fight. And yet, the very fact that he seemed to be steering us towards a fight makes me glad we didn’t do this. As I said, either he knew something we didn’t or he was just plain old fashioned crazy. I don’t know and frankly don’t care. What I do care about is that at the end of the day I only got wet. It could have been a lot worse.
Yeah, my ego got bruised a bit as I feel I should have been more of a ‘man’ and stood up for myself. But then I think about it and realise I would rather be the kind of guy that gets pushed in a canal and laughs about it, than the guy who gets in a fight and brags about it.
So this is me laughing about it. My clothes have been washed and the bikes are safely locked away. Ron and I are unhurt and both back home safely. Am I worried that I might see him again when I go out, yes I am. Is it going to stop me going, no it isn’t.
The thing that really got to me. The one thing that really eats away at me even as I write this, is that when we were parting company, for some bizarre reason we shook hands and left on friendly terms. This has been bugging me all day.
This guy just went out of his way to be mean to me and yet I shook his hand.
For all that I almost despise myself for this. There are two sayings that I hold very close to my heart. The first I got from my dear departed Auntie. It was in the last letter she wrote to me and I run it though me head when I find myself in situations like this.
Don’t wrestle with a pig, the pig enjoys it and you just end up getting dirty.
The second is one that will help me to get over my anger. To stop resenting myself for being who I am.
I don’t think that kindness is a weakness.
Tonight I will mull this 10 minutes over and over in my head, I will think of everything I should have said and everything I would have done. I will be stronger than I am now, I would have won the fight, I would have pushed him in. I would have been the one with a weapon. I should have kicked his stupid dog, I should have pulled him in with me. I should I would I should I would.
Tonight I will mull, I will not sleep, I will boil in my own self righteous heat.
Tomorrow I will see more and more of the funny side. I will realise I have yet another story to tell. I will appreciate that I only got wet when it so easily could have been worse. I will grin when I think of myself wading around in the canal. I will openly smile when I remember thinking I had found the bike and yet pulling up a ten foot long plastic pipe. I will tell it when I am in the pub. I will exaggerate parts and forget others. It will bare only a passing resemblance to the story above, I will laugh when I tell it and the way I tell it shall make others laugh with me. It shall be a story that makes me smile and it shall start;
“Hey, did I ever tell you about that dude who pushed me in a canal?”