Admittedly, there are times when you have to shake your head about just how absurd things can be. Apparently April Fools arrived a little early in Butte, MT as yet another "I can't make this stuff up" episode unfolded on the last day of March.
The plan was to go out for a long training ride on the el Phattie. I left from the house and rode up to Maude S where I caught the abandoned railroad bed and rode that up to the pass. After reaching the pass, the dirt road was calling my name and so my trusty green el phattie sidekick 9zero7 dutifully complied and tolerated my cranking away on the dirt road. After about 2 hours of ride time, the skies were getting ominously dark and it was time to turn around and head back.
On the way back I wanted to try to find the new road that the Forest Service had put in from the bottom of Blacktail to the Pass. The course director for the Butte 50/100 was thinking of re-routing the start of the event down the new road. As anyone who has ridden that erosion calamity can attest, it is SKETCH at best. The prospect of a work around would be sweet especially since the descent is always ripe for some great wipeouts - and there is one area where it bottlenecks a little and there are some mean looking barbs on some wire fence...now that would make for a bad day!
So far, it was just another normal day out and about on the phattie. Just logging miles, saddle time, and scenery...take it all in - ahhh therapy for the soul.
Apparently the therapist had a little sum'n' sum'n' extra spicy special on the menu and I was just about to find out what it was.
I looked around for that road through a couple of intersections where I thought it should be and as I was climbing to the first T, I saw a family with a crew of kids getting ready for a good ole' paintball gun fight. I stopped, said hello, chatted the idle chatter that you do when you first see people. There was something a little off about them - they were not very talkative and were not the most friendly bunch. I did not think twice about it at the time and just chalked it up to not everyone being as nice as one would hope. No biggie, certainly not a second thought crossed my el phattie mind.
I zigged and zagged through some intersections that all led to dead ends and decided to head back to the erosion trail mentioned above. I was getting close to my turn off and then BAM! My face exploded and my instinct told me immediately that my mug was the on the receiving end of one of those fully auto scary paintball guns. I quickly dismounted and tried to assess the damage. I yelled at the band of idiots to stop shooting because they apparently did not have the computing capacity to figure out that shooting a stranger in the face should warrant an interruption for them. I reached up and did the check of the face....pat, pat, pat, pat...pat...OUCH....there it was. The little turd family had nailed me right on my upper lip and inner septum of my nose. No wonder that hurt! ouchie mama. Fortunately I am not much of a bleeder but my nose did remind me that with enough force, it too will bleed.
At about this time I was on my ace, next to my bike with a bit of a yard sale going on...glasses here, bike there, gloves off....and pretty much just stunned at the absurdity of all that had just unfolded.
One of the kids came up to me and said "Are you OK" to which a quickly responded "F NO, you guys just shot me int he face!" He quickly tried to edumacate me with his twisted logic of how it was my fault that I was in the woods riding a bike and getting shot in the face. As I assessed the situation it became apparent to me that I need to get off my butt and gather my stuff (and my mind). About this time I was done trying to argue with a 10 yr old about the virtues of taking responsibility for your actions that was pretty much falling on deaf ears - not only falling on deaf ears but getting some lip service back about how I was the one at fault...like they say, arguing with insane people only brings you down to their level.
I got my stuff together, and told them I was going to their trucks to take pix of the license plates so I could have the info. Bear in mind that UNTIL this point even the leader of the village idiots (the father) was telling me it was my fault. Once I took pix of their license plates, they started to change their tune and the alpha idiot started to apologize - and it was 1/2 assed...one of this little twerps continued with his lip service at which point I glared at his father with a vicious enough look that he barked at his son to shut up and move away.
About this point the FAT COW that is mother bear showed up and wanted to escalate things again. She kept yelling at me to calm down (which I was and she ironically was not). She started with the 'let me give you my lawyer's #', and decided she needed to get real close to me to try and poke at my face and tell me I was OK....despite the lip & nose swelling and blood on my face....She too got in the "this is your fault" act by trying to insinuate that this was backwoods Montana, whaddya expect? I was aware enough to realize that trying to talk to these people would be like trying to convince Hitler to take a Ghandi approach to winning the world over...it just was not gonna' happen. I had to glare at the village alpha idiot again so he understood that he needed his monster hippo of a tub of lard wife to back off before she made things worse than they already were.
What totally blew me away (besides the absolute outlandish odds of something like this happening while riding a mountain bike on a dirt road) is that these jerks took NO responsibility for their actions. The 1/2 assed apologies only came when I had their license plate info - and even then they were backhanded apologies.
We live in a world that we get further and further apart from taking responsibilities for our actions. Guess what, if you look like an a-hole & act like an a-hole.....you ARE an a-hole. Own your a-hole-ness. If you don't own your actions then you are even more of a coward and less of a human being. The sad thing is that there was a lesson to be learned for those kids and that opportunity will be completely missed.
If the family had originally come up and started to apologize as opposed to placate me, I would have probably looked past it and thought I was lucky not to be hit in the eye, or ear, or teeth, etc. Unfortunately they did not act contrite at all, and it is just another whacky story of our stay in America's Butte.
The plan was to go out for a long training ride on the el Phattie. I left from the house and rode up to Maude S where I caught the abandoned railroad bed and rode that up to the pass. After reaching the pass, the dirt road was calling my name and so my trusty green el phattie sidekick 9zero7 dutifully complied and tolerated my cranking away on the dirt road. After about 2 hours of ride time, the skies were getting ominously dark and it was time to turn around and head back.
On the way back I wanted to try to find the new road that the Forest Service had put in from the bottom of Blacktail to the Pass. The course director for the Butte 50/100 was thinking of re-routing the start of the event down the new road. As anyone who has ridden that erosion calamity can attest, it is SKETCH at best. The prospect of a work around would be sweet especially since the descent is always ripe for some great wipeouts - and there is one area where it bottlenecks a little and there are some mean looking barbs on some wire fence...now that would make for a bad day!
So far, it was just another normal day out and about on the phattie. Just logging miles, saddle time, and scenery...take it all in - ahhh therapy for the soul.
Apparently the therapist had a little sum'n' sum'n' extra spicy special on the menu and I was just about to find out what it was.
I looked around for that road through a couple of intersections where I thought it should be and as I was climbing to the first T, I saw a family with a crew of kids getting ready for a good ole' paintball gun fight. I stopped, said hello, chatted the idle chatter that you do when you first see people. There was something a little off about them - they were not very talkative and were not the most friendly bunch. I did not think twice about it at the time and just chalked it up to not everyone being as nice as one would hope. No biggie, certainly not a second thought crossed my el phattie mind.
I zigged and zagged through some intersections that all led to dead ends and decided to head back to the erosion trail mentioned above. I was getting close to my turn off and then BAM! My face exploded and my instinct told me immediately that my mug was the on the receiving end of one of those fully auto scary paintball guns. I quickly dismounted and tried to assess the damage. I yelled at the band of idiots to stop shooting because they apparently did not have the computing capacity to figure out that shooting a stranger in the face should warrant an interruption for them. I reached up and did the check of the face....pat, pat, pat, pat...pat...OUCH....there it was. The little turd family had nailed me right on my upper lip and inner septum of my nose. No wonder that hurt! ouchie mama. Fortunately I am not much of a bleeder but my nose did remind me that with enough force, it too will bleed.
At about this time I was on my ace, next to my bike with a bit of a yard sale going on...glasses here, bike there, gloves off....and pretty much just stunned at the absurdity of all that had just unfolded.
One of the kids came up to me and said "Are you OK" to which a quickly responded "F NO, you guys just shot me int he face!" He quickly tried to edumacate me with his twisted logic of how it was my fault that I was in the woods riding a bike and getting shot in the face. As I assessed the situation it became apparent to me that I need to get off my butt and gather my stuff (and my mind). About this time I was done trying to argue with a 10 yr old about the virtues of taking responsibility for your actions that was pretty much falling on deaf ears - not only falling on deaf ears but getting some lip service back about how I was the one at fault...like they say, arguing with insane people only brings you down to their level.
I got my stuff together, and told them I was going to their trucks to take pix of the license plates so I could have the info. Bear in mind that UNTIL this point even the leader of the village idiots (the father) was telling me it was my fault. Once I took pix of their license plates, they started to change their tune and the alpha idiot started to apologize - and it was 1/2 assed...one of this little twerps continued with his lip service at which point I glared at his father with a vicious enough look that he barked at his son to shut up and move away.
About this point the FAT COW that is mother bear showed up and wanted to escalate things again. She kept yelling at me to calm down (which I was and she ironically was not). She started with the 'let me give you my lawyer's #', and decided she needed to get real close to me to try and poke at my face and tell me I was OK....despite the lip & nose swelling and blood on my face....She too got in the "this is your fault" act by trying to insinuate that this was backwoods Montana, whaddya expect? I was aware enough to realize that trying to talk to these people would be like trying to convince Hitler to take a Ghandi approach to winning the world over...it just was not gonna' happen. I had to glare at the village alpha idiot again so he understood that he needed his monster hippo of a tub of lard wife to back off before she made things worse than they already were.
What totally blew me away (besides the absolute outlandish odds of something like this happening while riding a mountain bike on a dirt road) is that these jerks took NO responsibility for their actions. The 1/2 assed apologies only came when I had their license plate info - and even then they were backhanded apologies.
We live in a world that we get further and further apart from taking responsibilities for our actions. Guess what, if you look like an a-hole & act like an a-hole.....you ARE an a-hole. Own your a-hole-ness. If you don't own your actions then you are even more of a coward and less of a human being. The sad thing is that there was a lesson to be learned for those kids and that opportunity will be completely missed.
If the family had originally come up and started to apologize as opposed to placate me, I would have probably looked past it and thought I was lucky not to be hit in the eye, or ear, or teeth, etc. Unfortunately they did not act contrite at all, and it is just another whacky story of our stay in America's Butte.
Oh man T. I am so sorry and I hope your nose is okay now. As soon as you said 'paint ballers" I knew what was coming....but was thinking more like....Whizzing by,,,,hitting your bike...your back...But YOUR GREAT MUG?!? Remind me to tell you about our camping on Cow Mountain in lovely UKIAH ca. .... Sounds like they are breeding...dk in bend
ReplyDeleteHey Tiago,
DeleteSo sorry! You are a great writer.Best stuff I've read in weeks. Send this to the Source in Bend.I'll bet you can't wait to move to Bend now. I'm hot on the trail for a nice home. Cheers Rick from Bend