Get off my ass, Grandpa!

I need to tell you a story about bikes.

Deep breath.

I was biking on the Greenway in Minneapolis this week and it was getting pretty late. The sun was starting to go down and the wind was getting very intense and I was pretty much alone with no bikers or cars in sight. Then all of the sudden I felt someone’s presence right behind me.

I am thinking “what the who?!” and I turn around and it’s a super old man on a bike DRAFTING off me. We’re talking his bike is so close to mine that my back tire and his front tire are practically parallel and we are squeezed into a tiny bike lane together with miles of nothing in front and behind us. I was not about to let this guy bike that close to me when we are completely alone on the Greenway and he has all the room in the world to spread out and get the frick away from me. So I slow down and move over into the other lane in order for him to pass me. Except he slows down with me and cheerfully says “no thanks!”

That was unacceptable. If he wasn’t going to pass me then I was going to bike too fast for him. I sped up considerably but he stayed right on my bum and it was starting to freak me out because, hello, I’m a lady and he’s a creepy old man (who was going freakishly fast for his age) and I couldn’t see him because he was behind me.

I started to get really frustrated and I kept looking back at him and visibly scowling to try to get him to pass me, but he wouldn’t. So finally, I put on the breaks, stopped my bike, and moved off to the side because we were nearing my exit and I was not about to let him follow me all the way home.

I stop. He passes me! While passing me he says in an again very cheery voice “have a great night!” But here’s the thing. He exited at my exit! And not only that, he continued to go the way I needed to too. So I slowed my bike practically to a crawl because I didn’t want him to know I was behind him, and thank the biking baby g that he did not turn onto my final street. I sped home the whole way, ready to feel his unwelcome presence behind me at any moment.