I got yelled at during a brevet last weekend. The guy was actually waiting at an intersection for me and walked out into the road to intercept me. I thought there was an emergency and slowed down, and he started carrying on about "riding in the middle of the the road" and not being on the shoulders, etc. I must be getting mellower with age, or maybe I was just enjoying the ride; a few years ago I would have put him in his place. Instead, I just said, "Thanks for the advice, I'll consider it" and rode on.

A few years ago a group of teenagers drove by me and yelled, "Get the f off the road!" and sped away. I knew that there was a stop sign ahead, and I started pushing it to get there. Sure enough, they were stuck in a line of traffic. I'm a teacher, so I switched into teacher mode and teacher voice and pulled up next to their open window. You could tell they surprised that I had caught them. "I'm sorry, was there something you wanted to tell me back there? Because I couldn't quite make it out." They sheepishly gave me a "no." "Oh, okay, I thought I heard something. When you yell something at someone, you'd better make sure they can understand you, and you'd better have the balls to stick around, too."