Labor Day - The day everyone decided to be jerks.

Wow. What a Labor Day I had. An otherwise great weekend, ruined. Lets start at the top. It was a beautiful weekend. The weather was perfect, summer ending, fall on its way in. Went to Prospect Park Saturday and some friends' wedding Sunday. Great. But Monday, Labor Day, a day which should have been amazing since it was an extra day off from work. Horrible.

I don't know why, but everyone this Labor Day besides me and my wife must've gotten a memo that said, "Be on your worst behavior. Treat your fellow man like shit whenever possible. Be a total jerk but insist you are in the right. If you can't fulfill these duties, please act as stupidly as possible. K' thnx, bai!"

A slow start to the morning, we left the apartment mid-dayish for a bike ride. I love riding my bike on the weekends. There is a path that wraps around Manhattan called the Greenway. The idea is it is a shared bike path, so at many points you are sharing it with pedestrians, roller bladers, skateboarders etc. It is basically a paved path with 2 yellow dividing lines in the middle. It resembles and acts as a miniature road. Now within the path, there is usually room for 2 people to ride side by side. However, the rules of the path, like a fast and slow lane on the highway, is to "Ride right, pass left". This practice, when it works, allows quicker moving traffic to continue moving quickly by, while slower more leisurely riders can continue on their way on the right.

Well today, that idea was out the window. The first area from our house to around Chelsea Piers was packed with people. In some spots it would open up and you could keep moving along just fine. In others, gaggles of families on rental bikes or surrey-bikes taking up the entire amount of room while slowly trying to find willing tourist passengers, kept you from moving any faster than a snails pace. You would go from moving up to 16-17 mph down to maybe 2 or 3, 21st or 26th gear down to 3rd or 6th. Now, this is why bicycle bells exist. Mine was *ringing* yesterday. Sometimes people would move, even though it'd take them a while, other times not so much.

Here's a pet peeve. People with ipod/phone earbuds that are cranked up so loud they cannot hear you. More often than you'd think, you'll come up on someone and try to alert them of your passing. Ringing the bell, saying, "on your left" everything you can try, not making a difference. "Is this guy/girl ignoring me?", you think. No, on approach you realize they are skating away to the Venga Boys or something, or having a very serious conversation with their bff about the STD they might have contracted the night before but they are too busy biking to go get checked.

I digress. Now, you can usually tell experienced riders from the less so. Experienced riders often are wearing their goofy tight lance armstrong wannabe spandex and have expensive bikes with expensive speedometers and expensive gps' etc. They ride low and fast and often have little regard for anyone around them. At pedestrian crossings or stoplights, they are the ones passing you while you're stopped and running over toddlers/puppies. They often also rove in packs of their own.

Less experienced riders on the other hand are also easily spotted. Usually riding on K-mart bikes or rentals. Rental people are especially easy to spot because they all have these yellow trimmed helmets and signs on their bikes for the rental place, advertising for more people to come rent more bikes. These people do not understand left or right. They sortof float, bob and weave like you would in a blow up raft in the ocean. There is no rhyme or reason to their movement. They cannot maintain a straight line, instead they ride on what can be compared to an s-curve. This s-curve can be shallow or severe with some people managing to actually ride across into the other lane of oncoming traffic. Easily a 5-7 foot span of space. They are the ones who will often see a pretty bird and use the time they are viewing it to smash into you or others around them.

So with that explained one of the first sore points in my mind yesterday was early on in the ride, coming up on a group of people riding slowly, and all over the place. Inexperienced. However they were being followed closely by someone who fit the criteria for more experienced. This was odd, usually that type of person hastily passes them by. However he was riding behind this group as if he were a parent or something. Since he wasn't taking the initiative to go around (which meant heading into the opposite lane and passing the group before oncoming bikes would cause me to be unable to do so) I started to do so. We were coming up quickly on one of the path's many choke-points; a spot much thinner than the others for whatever reason that often causes the amount of people fitting through to have to shrink. As soon as I did and got on his left, literally with his face within my peripheral vision, he decides its time to go around too. There are now 4 people across in a spot that can hardly fit 3. I am looking at him going, WTF.

OK, so a lot more of this similar happens throughout the rest of the ride. Trying to get around people. Them riding out into me. This was the most often occurrence. Maybe about 10 times someone nearly hit me or did hit me by pulling around others when I already was, or by starting to bike without even looking who was coming up behind them. One person actually did apologize... one person. The best one of these was a guy who nearly killed Ang and myself by sitting with his friend at a dead stop blocking half the lane then deciding to go. He was looking right at us and he started to move anyway which was the equivalent of a bus sitting still at some train tracks waiting for the train to pass, but then saying, "Ah, fuck it" and driving in front of the train anyway. We both managed to brake/avoid the inevitable crash somehow, but the guy didn't offer any kind of apology or anything. Instead he just stood there with a huge dumb look on his fat face. A clear example of someone who opted for stupid over asshole.

I am glazing over this now mind you, but incidents like this made the day the worst. I could get into detail on all of them, but I will have outdone the length of War and Peace by doing so. So instead I'll skip to the straw that broke the camel's back.

For the following story I have created this illustration to the right. The illustration depicts the bike path and a series of riders. They gray riders are inconsequential bystanders who did nothing more than take up space in this story. The colorful riders which I will explain represent the story at hand. Now, on our way back, and already pissed off at the world, right in front of the Chelsea Piers, the bike path becomes very shallow. It is tight in here, definitely not allowing for much extra space to fool around as there is in other parts of the trail. Part of this reason is also that it is a highly trafficked spot. There are not only bikes to be wary of, but at a few spots there is entry and exists for vehicles crossing to and from the pier that you must contend with as well as pedestrian walkways where people cross and more bikers/skaters/joggers enter. So riding here 2 abreast is a no-no. Doing so causes a complete bottle-neck as no one can pass you. So if you are riding 2 across and slower than most bike traffic, everyone behind you starts piling up.

Well, as luck would have it, I ended up at 17 mph coasting in directly behind some woman's ass as she and her boyfriend leisurely ride alongside each other bullshitting about god knows what at maybe 6 mph. We are represented in my picture as follows: Boyfriend - Red, Girlfriend - Yellow, Me - Blue, Ang - Pink. Despite being pissed about being in such a dumb situation of being forced to slow down so incredibly yet again, I politely rang my bell once and waited for the girl or guy to move flat so we could get around. As you can see depicted in the illustration, the other side of the lane was completely filled with people, so there was no possibility of getting around by moving briefly into that lane. I waited some more, and as their conversation continued, I rang the bell again. I waited again. And waited some more. Then I started ringing the bell repeatedly without stop. Finally the guy turns his head and says, "We hear you!". At such point, no longer giving a shit about politeness, I responded, "Well, you aren't doing anything about it." "How about waiting until you can go around?", he said. To which I responded, "This is a shared bike path. You are supposed to ride on the right and let others around you." His whopping response was "Share, share alike brother." By this point his stupid girlfriend had moved enough and there was a gap enough in the oncoming traffic for Ang and I to squeak around. Ang, passing the woman said, "You really need to stay to the right in here", to which the idiot woman responds: "I am on the right!"

Wow. Amazing. First they are both retarded, especially the guy. There was two choices for them to make in this situation. The polite response would be for him to move forward or back, and let his girlfriend get in front or behind him for 20 seconds while we, and I imagine other people behind us, would pass by. Then when it was clear nobody else wanted to pass they could move back next to each other, or at least try to finish their conversation out by talking from in front and behind. The second choice, being the "I am a douchebag for life" choice, was to ignore the people behind you trying to get by, and instead greedily carry on your conversation, then argue with us instead of still just moving out of the way.

This is the equivalent of you walking up to a doorway in which someone is standing, saying, "excuse me", and they don't even look at you or respond to you, but instead continue standing in the doorway, then start arguing with you to go find another doorway. What the hell? And then to act like we are the bad guys? Do these two take separate cars and drive down the highway talking on cell phones to each other while one is in the fast lane and the other in the regular lane both going 30 while other cars are trying to go 60? Is this reasonable behavior or am I just nuts? And then for this woman to claim she is to the right. Wow, friggen stunning! If you are to the left of your boyfriend, you are most definitely not to the right. You may be to the right of people in the opposite lane, or right of the Mississippi River, or right of the international dateline. But to the right, as the multiple signs saying "Keep Right, Pass Left" are concerned, you are not to the right.

Christ. I try to be a good person, I often stay to the right even while talking to Ang just in case anyone comes along. If the situation were reversed, I would have never thought twice about letting him and his girlfriend through. It's just common courtesy. What would it have harmed me to do so? It would have taken literally no extra energy to slide out of the way quick. And as you see in my picture, there was literally no one in front of them, but a huge pack of people behind. So not only are you blocking me, but potentially dozens of others. That's just not right.

Anyway, that was the biking adventure that left such a sour taste in my mouth I didn't want to go outside again all day. But we did to take our dog Gus to the dog park. Another place where some serious assholes reside. I am finding more and more that a dog's behavior is a mirror of its owners own behavior. I brought Gus's tennis ball. He is picky and only likes squishy tennis balls. I am sure this is because his mouth is small and its hard for him to hold the stiff kind from a tennis court. Anyway, there is this St. Charles Spaniel named Hunter who continues to chase and steal his ball lately. If Gus gets to it first the other dog will walk in front of him trying to grab it away until Gus, who is already timid, just drops it to get away. When Hunter grabs it you cannot get it back. He refuses to drop it. He instead locks onto it so hard you can pick his body off the ground by picking the ball up. He will also bite you if you try to grab it off the ground and its not already in his mouth. To date his owner has made one weak attempt at helping me, and otherwise just sits and watches. She informed me Hunter likes to hold the ball and not let go. You think? Do something about it. So poor Gus couldn't play ball.

Then this old lady that thinks she owns the dog park approaches this group of 3 little kids. Now I hadn't been paying attention to them, but they were just 3 nice kids who wanted to come in and see the dogs, they did not have a dog of their own. They were politely asking people if they could pet their dog etc. Now this woman who thinks herself the equivalent of a sheriff or something gets up, with her cane and all and walks over to the group of kids and proceeds to lecture them. "We don't allow people in here if they don't have a dog. However. Since you three are nice and have been asking nicely I have decided not to run you out of here. You see I am kind of the Manager around here" blah blah blah. What a f'ing bitch. Who died and made her boss? So as I'm sure you could probably guess, the kids who were scared/embarrassed slowly walked away and left.

Then this asshat guy who I have seen a few times, calls Gus to come sit with him then offers him treats. I have throughout time asked him repeatedly to not do so, as I want Gus to play with the other dogs, not him, and I don't want a stranger randomly feeding my dog the entire time I'm sitting there in the park. So we took Gus and left.

Ang eventually went to the local grocery store. I can't comment too much on her experiences there, but she said it was packed, people were pushing and shoving, and the employees were moving at a snails pace, only exacerbating the situation.

So after she got back we stayed in and that was that. I haven't had such a miserable day dealing with people in a long time, and I hope I don't again. Both us us were then in bad moods, not with each other but we were quietly pissed off the rest of the day/night because you couldn't help but run the events through your head over and over. The audacity of people is sickening. I spent my life trying to be overly polite, giving way to people usually at my own expense.

Just this morning on a bus down to work, an old man, and a veteran at that was trying to find a seat on the bus. I hadn't noticed him until he fell over trying to climb the stairs in the back of the bus where I was sitting. That means that the entire front of the bus, 3/4 of the people on it, would not give him a seat. The girl next to me stood immediately to give him her seat, I stood a moment after to give her my seat to replace the one she abandoned and I went and stood for the remaining 3 or 4 stops on my ride. Now what if the man came on, fell down and instead of offering my seat or her offering hers, we just sat and laughed at him. That would be the mentality I was running into all day yesterday.

I hate the human race sometimes.