Vroom To Spare

Ha. So I’m biking home last night, making a right turn onto Mesmer from Centinela and a motorcyclist on some tricked-out K1200-rE-3.1415 rice burnasaki races up to make the same turn and does so parallel to me — for some reason seeing fit right about my 7 o’clock to give a high-pitched double-rev of his mighty engine that catches me unawares and jumps me half out of my skin.

This is not a nice experience, and I come out of the turn adrenaline pumping and ready to curse the bastard the way Snoopy might curse his nemesis the dreaded Red Baron after shooting the Sopwith Camel full of holes.

I suppose the engine screams might have been an attempt at a benevolent warning as in “Vroooom! Vroooom! I’m over here” thus better enabling me to check and prevent any drift I might make out of my line and into his, but since I already knew he was there having heard him coming up fast behind me on Redondo the noise pollution came off  malevolently as in “Vroom! Vroom!  My vehicle is vastly superior and so am I!”

As fate and traffic signal timing would have it he got caught at the light at Jefferson and I rolled up next to him trying to see what manner tard might exist behind the tinted windshield of his full face helmet. He in turn, rotated his neck a few degrees to regard me, but in somewhat bored snobbish body language returned his head to a full and straight ahead position.

I looked at his bullet on wheels and his matching brain bucket and knew I’d get further  discussing the merits of road-sharing and consideration with a can of paint than with him, so instead I went head game in employing a minor tool in my continuing war on street terror.

“Hey man!” I said.

He turned and looked at me again, stiffening and giving me a slight nod that was somewhere between”buzz the fuck off” and  “what the fuck do you want?”

“Dude, when you came out of that turn back there, something fell off your bike.”

“Really!?” Came the surprised reply, muffled by his helmet. His body went bolt rigid for a moment processing the information and then he commenced a furtive and frantic lean-and-look down the left side of the bike before shifting his weight and doing the same scan along the right. Looking up at me he asked, “What’d it look like.”

I shrugged. “I dunno, but it was shiny and it shot out to the left. Maybe a nut or bolt or something?”

“OK! Thanks man!” and in the next second he was nudging his bike away from me into a u-turn to go full throttle back and look.

At the green I pedaled onward, chuckling at how long he might spend searching or how long it would take before he realized he’d been deservedly punk’d.