WHy do all the crazy people seem to come out at night? I was riding home the other night and I was stopped at a stop light and this bum came up to me and he said to me, "You're not a car, you don't have to follow the same rules as cars. Do you think you got a license plate on that bike?" I said, "OK," waited for the light to change and went on my way. The other night I was coming back from a long commute and I was cutting through the old rail beds at a pretty good clip and I was about to go underneath a bridge when I heard a bunch of breaking glass and rocks being thrown. I don't know where it was coming from. It was real dark on the old abandoned rail bed so I turned around and went the other way. Then I heard some voices say, "Who was that?" I did not stick around to find out what they were doing. It seems like when I commute after dark, there are always characters and crazy people out there. Thanks.

Jeez your commute sounds scary at night. Me I just worry about being cut off by cars that don't see me coming. They're almost as dangerous as the cars that do see me but cut me off anyway.

I commute home @ 2am... I see very little of anything when I'm on my way home. It's actually kind of nice and VERY peaceful. The few cars I've come across that late hardly acknowledge my existence.

This is what happened to me last night - I'm riding up First Avenue in the East Village, only about 10 mph, a half-block or more away from the next intersection. It's windy. A stout woman is waiting to cross the avenue, and her hat suddenly blows off her head. Mind you, I'm half a block away, at about the point at which I'd look up to see if I had the light, but I'm now on alert, looking to see if she or the man now crossing the street towards her is going to go running after it. Neither does, but I'm aware of the hat still skittering along the road, waiting to see if someone picks it up. I feel a little sorry for her, and briefly think of going to pick it up for her, but it's all the way on the other side of the avenue and I can't get over safely; traffic is relatively light, but that still means plenty of cars.

Now, honestly, I don't know who had the light when the hat first blew off. I don't know if the peds or the cars had the green. But I was, again, half a block away. When I finally pull up to the corner, slowing for the car approaching on the cross-street, this woman looks me in the face and screams, "You f***ing b***h! Because of you, I lost my hat!"

I didn't even get angry right away, because I'd felt the whole incident had nothing to do with me, except for my being a sympathetic witness. I suppose in her mind, if she hadn't seen a bike light approaching, she would have run after the hat. But I do think there were cars rolling along with me -- and was I supposed to stop in the middle of the block because I saw her hat fly off? I was not riding quickly, and I was nowhere near her when it happened. Anyway, I'm not sure it being night had much to do with it, because I could easily see this happening here during the day, and this is less "crazy person" than "childishly misplacing anger person" but her rage was so out of proportion that I thought it might qualify for this thread. Sometimes from our vantagepoint as cyclists we get to see the worst in some people.

I guess the wind had nothing to do with it.
She lost a hat, you retained your cool. You won.

Crazy people on bikes come out at night, too

A friend of mine works the night shift at one of those 24-hour big box gourmet supermarkets. EVERY night around 2am, a woman rides up on her bike. The bike has a big basket on the back and front. She shuffles through the store, mumbling nonsense to herself and picks items to buy. She'll buy things like one banana, a small quantity of nuts from the bulk bins (like 10 or 12), maybe half cup of oatmeal, etc. One time she got into a fit with the night manager because she only wanted to buy one aspirin, not the whole bottle. So he just gave her an aspirin from their first aid kit. Her purchase never amounts to more than $5 or so. And this goes on every night....