Afternoon Ride

Morning Ride

I figured it out

I took a trip to the NW today for an easy ride and to pick off a number of tiny little segments. I'm gearing up for a long weekend ride where I hope to test whether I can handle 8,000 feet of climbing in a single ride.

I cut into a little dead end where I passed a group of men in their twenties, and then came back out and turned back onto the main street. It wasn't threatening at all; they were just hanging out and I too was minding my own business. As I passed them the second time (maybe 30 seconds after the first), one of them yelled out "You're going to have to ride that motherf*ck*r FAYUST". The whole thing was so weird. For one he yelled way louder than was necessary given my distance of maybe ten feet. Judging by the volume alone I would have guessed he was talking to someone else. I wish I had had something to say back to him but I'm usually so caught off guard by this culture of yelling things at strangers that I never know what to say so I just ignored him and kept on riding. Maybe he, similarly, was fumbling with the handle of the doorway between our vastly different experiences, trying his best to quickly come up with some way to connect with me, reaching out the hand of humanity to a stranger passing by. Or maybe it was a threat. I guess I'll never know.

I spent some time wandering around Mondawmin mall, which is a deeply unpleasant place to be, not just in the same way that all malls are, with their vast, paved parking lots, bleak and baking and uniform and ugly, but also in an additional, extra-special way, with police cars idling all over and youths teeming around, swearing, seemingly purposeless, occasionally fighting. I left there and headed home on Liberty and came to a stop at a light where kids were crossing the road. I'm always pretty wary any time I'm around groups of young boys just released from their morning confines, and while I saw no movement, as the light changed, I could hear one of them start yelling out, "Give me my damn bike, give me my damn bike, or I'll bust your ass." I didn't look—my practice being to just ignore these kinds of outbursts, and as I noted above, having little to say that will come to me in the moment—so I suppose he, too, could have been reaching out to me, in that awkward just-post-pubescent way, hoping for some mutual acknowledgment of our respective humanities. Or maybe he was trying to start something.

In any case I got home fine and it's nice to be out in a city that I like, actually, for all its charms.

0.39 new kilometers
🏘 Completed Reisterstown Station
🏘 Completed Fallstaff
-- From Wandrer.earth

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Matt Post

unilateral interactions with strangers

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Afternoon Ride

Afternoon Ride

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Afternoon Ride

I figured it out

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