RPK79

America is a large diverse country and anyone who stereotypes its culture is just showing ignorance.

FenderTL5

Good News: the OP was able to get away safely.
Bad News: Publisher's Clearinghouse will make no more attempts to notify the OP of his winnings.





OP, that's a scary story, I'm glad you are safe.

spinbackle

+100!!!

UnfilteredDregs

You keep shifting the goalposts to suit your Nirvana fallacy.

Bike Gremlin

We will never know...

cycle_maven

I don't get the controversy, here. The OP did everything exactly right to avoid a confrontation and escape with no damage. The only other possible thing would have been to get the license plate number for the cops, but I can't fault him for that, jeez.

acidfast7

That is true, which makes me quite objective, right?

RPK79

No, actually it doesn't. That's not to say that an expat can't be objective, but the act of being an expat does not make one objective about the country they moved from. If anything I would say they would be less likely to be objective.

genec

I love this whole line of thinking... I once worked on a Navy base which happened to be on the other side of "a bad part of town." That "bad part of town" was a wide strip that ran from the ocean all the way east some 7 miles or so... and the Navy base was right on one edge of "the bad part of town." To avoid that area would have meant perhaps a 10-14 mile detour ultimately to come right back to the edge of it at the base. Navy bases tend to draw a certain element that can make them part of "the bad part of town." Rather hard then to avoid "the bad part of town."

Huge swaths of Long Beach are likewise industrial areas that are not exactly havens for the best folks around... you might live in a nice residential area and work in a nice business park area but find that there is a less than suitable area in between. Folks traveling on Freeways may have no idea other that the not so pretty landscape... but on a bike you tend to have real close contact with where ever you are.

Oh and I love these questions...

Why not live somewhere where violence is reduced because the wealth is more evenly distributed?
If one can't move, why not change one's lifestyle such that one could move?

Have you noticed that the current economy is not exactly conducive to upward mobility? Or that to "move upward" might take the better part of several years of college? We don't all start out as doctors and lawyers. (although some may consider lawyers to be part of the "bad part of town..." )

megalowmatt

It just makes you seem quite arrogant and condescending.

I-Like-To-Bike

Not because he is an expat; any person, whether well traveled or provincial and rooted to one spot can be that way. I think an individual's track record on browbeating BF with slams on perceived failings of this or that country or culture speak for themselves about the poster.

Thulsadoom

Do I really need to expain that just because I currently live in NY that it doesn't neccessarily mean I've always lived here? Oh, and by the way, we have plenty of AHs in NY, I can assure you. And I deal with them every day.

This thread is entertaining. Everybody has advice for the OP. Carry a gun, knife, pepper spray, martial arts, etc. Move to another neighborhood, different state, different country. Lotta disagreement on details but at least everyone seems to agree that the OP is lucky to be alive because for sure whoever was in that old Ford was a major bad person, or persons.

The Explorer slowed down as it passed him, then did a U-turn and began to follow him. He began to evade and they chased him. Why were they following him in the first place? I'll don't know, but it appears that everyone else does.

What I do know is that I wouldn't have run. I wouldn't have done anything except keep pedaling on my merry way, on high alert, sure. I've actually been in situations similar to this one, where someone began following me for no apparent reason. I've also been yelled at and cursed at, had stuff thrown at me, had people try to force me off the road, and even robbed. Here's the thing; If someone pulls up next to me and I see a gun barrel, I'll run. If they come roaring up behind me like they are certainly going to try and hit me with their vehicle, I would run. But that's about what it would take, because as a general rule: I. don't. run. I just ignore as long as I can. I sure don't run from everything that sets off my spook alarm because I just don't have that much energy. And it wouldn't matter where I lived or whether I was armed or not, or if I had a blackbelt or whatever.

I'm definitely not a tough guy. I'm just a dorky old fart who rides bikes, but I know that as soon as you show fear, you invite trouble. After reading through this thread I can't imagine how I've lived this long with that attitude. After all the places I've lived and ridden through, and tense situations I've survived, I guess I'm just charmed.

Ask a professional who deals with bullying victims why people refer to bullies as cowards. They'll probably tell you it's because bullies won't come straight at you. They'll bait you, they'll taunt you, because in the back of their minds they have to feel like there was some sort of provocation, some reason why they were justified in their actions, some twisted reason why they are actually right. It doesn't mean they aren't dangerous, just not AS dangerous, because you can generally out-nerve them. They'll taunt and bait you because they're hoping for some sort of reaction that they can turn into provocation. Almost as a rule, if you give them no reaction at all, they'll just lose interest or go looking for someone else.

There's way more bullies out there than serious predators. Most serious predators don't play cat and dog games. I submit that the OP probably wouldn't have gotten away if whoever was in the Ford was a real bad guy.

I stick with what I said in my original post, I wonder if you had just ignored them if it would've come to nothing.

But I suppose I'm just senile.

phoebeisis

Boozers Doper Low Life Thieves-incompetent "predators" kill LOTS of people-
just because they are incompetent-couldn't find him-doesn't mean they weren't dangerous
Safe bet Seal Team 6 wasn't stalking him


Brits-only their cabbage eating cousins could match them in violent death toll in the last 100 years-
Really big on state sponsored mass killing-and getting their citizens killed violently

Bike Gremlin

Looking across the sea, and having talked to friends, US is not an ideal place to live. Germany sounds a lot better. Guess it also depends on what you like. Having said that, I personally don't like when someone out of my country criticizes it, while I take local critics with much more respect.

Although, Acidfast's post seems quite reasonable to me. Definitely something to consider. Man has one life - if you have to carry a gun to "be safe", that's like playing Russian roulette every day.

Jiggle

You are so full of it your eyes are brown.

Even if it was true, just because someone else can't handle the tools properly doesn't mean I'm going to leave them at home and be a helpless victim. You are free to do so, but you don't make that choice for me. Thanks for playing.

acidfast7

That's only logical as my horizons change. When one is exposed to new things, one needs to adjust the goalposts. 200mph trains are the norm for me now and I'm quite disappointed by the English train system!

Note: I am making fun of where I live now. I don't have to throw the US under the bus in every post.

acidfast7

Woosh. The point is that it's a sad state of affairs when one needs to defend themselves when riding a bike with potentially lethal force. It's not a gun issue. My point originally is that it's only the Americans that jump to the you need a gun conclusion. The German equivalent would be that one needs a new fine. The British answer would be to add more CCTVs. And in Sweden, someone would suggest a new tax to prevent people from driving SUVs.

You guys always take everything out of context.

I-Like-To-Bike

I lived in Germany for 10 years and liked it very much. I also am glad to be living in the U.S. What I don't like is someone from either/any country is a person who makes it a habit to be arrogant and condescending about cultural stereotypes as often as possible, and then resorts to "Who me" excuses later.

acidfast7

I really think that people throw around "arrogant" and "condescending" way too much. It's OK to disagree, but I think you'd find it hard to actually cite anything from my posts in this thread that are arrogant and/or condescending.

I-Like-To-Bike

Which 200mph trains did you normally take in Europe? Haven't read of any/many French adventures and you seldom seem to fail to mention in the commuting forum every place you vacation/travel to and from.

acidfast7

Frankfurt-Bonn/Köln quite often (1-2 times/week) which is 300km/h (only 186mph). Other times, usually only the 250km/h rail (a few times/week). I had a BahnCard 100 which allowed from travel on any train in the German area (+ some Austria, etc...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BahnCard#Bahncard_100

French adventures?

I usually localise my travel plans to one thread (BSO thread) ... that you can read or not read ... a few posts said that they liked the "extra" stuff in there and we learned about Slaninar's English and German skills amongst other randomness.

As far as it being arrogant, I never state that I'm better than someone else because I'm travelling, that seems more like a personal issue for the reader.

Also, I do miss Germany and am fighting quite hard to get a professorship there, but that market is super tight compared to the Anglophone world, which is already quite tight (US/UK/NZ/AUS/etc...)

edit: Actually the "bow down to your queen" comment is quite hilarious and I laughed out loud at the airport. but that about as close to an arrogant comment in this whole thread, unless I'm mistaken.

Bike Gremlin

You choose for yourself. I choose safer paths without a gun - it is a tool that kills a man by just pulling a small lever. Too dangerous IMO. Lots of responsibility in case it gets stolen, taken away from you etc (at least where I live, by the local laws). So it gives a lot of thought and worry.

Does it add protection? Perhaps, to a degree. I'm a grown man. If someone attacked me for money, I'd let them have it. If they wanted to kill me, they can do so before I realize they are trying to. Not a single robbery with a man getting killed in my city last year. And the year before.

Guess there's a different mentality in the US - here people carrying guns are a bit weird, or working some risky job (night time taxi etc.). Or criminals. Carrying a gun is considered very weird.

acidfast7

Ironically, that's why I said always a gun at the beginning of the thread. It's one of the things that the US is really know for. It's not even a judgement on whether it's useful or not.

I like the Swiss and UK approaches. Swiss households all have guns and proper training is mandatory (every 2 years). In the UK, no one has a gun, not even the police (unless in some very special circumstances.)

SHBR

Just curious?

How many people here have been chased by a motor vehicle?

There seems to be a lot of arm chair quarterback type of responses here.

In my experience, there isn't enough time to have a rational debate about what the best course of action is in this type of situation. This is classic flight or fight response, and even if you are armed, that won't stop a 2 ton vehicle dead in its tracks, it more than likely will only escalate the situation, making it more dangerous for everyone involved.

This is yet another symptom of a much larger societal issue.

Psychopathic behavior is glorified in mass media, with with fictional dramas such as Breaking Bad and House of Cards, then we wonder why these problems continue to exist?

acidfast7

To be fair, I've never even heard of anything like this. Sometimes, I feel that the BF Commuting sub-forum is some weird collection of unique experiences that are exceptionally rare.

I'm used to whole families cycling across countries during summer holidays ... not an SUV attack in an industrial zone after dark ... sounds like something out of '24'.