a fine commute in this morning but a totally weird ride home.

In my years of riding along the Charles River I've spotted two bodies in the river, pulled a guy out who'd jumped from a railroad bridge (attempted suicide) and broken his leg and found a woman lying unconscious across the path still clipped into the pedals on her brand new bike.

Tonight, it was late- 10pm or so, and as I come around a corner and am about to cross a road that intersects with a bridge I see a disheveled man in a white shirt, torn open, bloody and looking like he's about to jump. I stop and get him talking, he's drunk and crying and incoherent. Then he wanders into the road and stands there looking like he's about to get hit. I finally get him out of the road and talking to me. I lure him away from the bridge by promising to help him look for the cell phone, keys and wallet, which he says he has tossed away in a nearby parking lot. What I really wanted to do was call the cops but I didn't want him to freak if I did and jump in the river.

We go together to get his phone and we find it in pieces but on the way I get him to give me a number to call to get someone to come pick him up. I call it and no one answers but then he tells me it was his girlfriend's # and she has a restraining order out on him!

That did it. I got him looking around the building for his phone and I took off like a shot and called the cops. But, whew, it was creepy and scary. Hopefully, the upside of this is that I might have kept someone from doing themselves in but I hope this guy hadn't just done something horrible. This creeped me out.