Today's recovery skate was going to be two, 10K loops of my favorite local trail. My sister, Energizer Bunny, and her friends FastGuy and FastChick were planning a training skate for the upcoming North Shore Inline Marathon. They were planning four fast laps and my schedule called for two easy ones, so I knew I wouldn't be skating with them. Still, it was fun hanging out at the trailhead with them, listening to their good-natured (if somewhat profane) banter as I assembled all my gear. Finally we were ready and we headed out down the trail; this was the last I'd see of the 3 while skating:
So I skated along by myself, enjoying the cool weather and sunshine. The trail was a bit busier than usual, but this particular trail, since it's fairly hilly and rural, usually avoids the stroller-and-training-wheels crowd; most of the trail users are runners, bikers, and inline skaters.
In other words, people who know and follow the trail rules.
Halfway through my second lap, I was cruising along, listening to my iPod and composing a happy little blog post in my head...something about sticking to your workout plan even when the people you are with are doing a different workout...maybe I'd call it "To Thine Own Workout be True"...yeah, that would be good...
And suddenly, as I rounded a curve, there she was, SINCAB: a middle-aged woman like myself, jogging towards me about a hundred feet away...in my lane.
Now, you'll notice, from the photo above, that this trail is striped like a road, which would seem to imply that, as on roads, we travel in the right lane. Everyone else I encountered on the trail seemed to be in agreement with this. The sign at the trailhead, when I looked later, stipulated "stay to the right unless passing." And, just in case you need more convincing, I looked up the trail rules online when I got home. Here they are:
The fourth rule is highly relevant...
However, SINCAB did not appear to have gotten the memo. Now, given our relative speeds and the fact that we were moving towards each other, we probably had about 4 seconds before we would be occupying the same patch of asphalt (I knew those junior high math story problems about trains traveling towards each other would come in handy some day!). Here was my basic thought process during those 4 seconds:
Second 1: Hmm, she's in my lane. She must not have been paying attention. I'll stop skating and coast, and move to the right; when she realizes she's in the wrong lane she'll move over.
Second 2: Damn. Not moving over. Do I dare move over to the other lane, or will she change her mind and dart in front of me? I'll go for it...NO! She's going that way too! Change directions! Crap! She changed too! Now we're both going the other way!
Second 3: If I just stay predictable and coast in my lane, she'll head for the grass. She's only one step away from it...why hasn't she gone there already? And what is she yelling? That's not very nice!
Second 4: She's still heading right for me! And still yelling! Collision imminent...Woop! Woop! (That's the Hubster's patented "alarm sound" that he deploys whenever he thinks I'm being needlessly dramatic). Yikes!
At the last second she stepped off the trail onto the grass and punched me hard on the arm as I coasted by!
Well, that did not make me happy. Nor did her yell of "why didn't you move over, bitch!?" So I yelled back "I didn't know which way you were going to go."
And then I called her Something I've Never Called Anyone Before.
No, I won't tell you what it was...feel free to use your imagination...
Then I continued back to the trailhead, hopped up on adrenaline and still fuming--and also replaying the incident in my head. I know I tend to have not-so-helpful reactions to physical situations that I perceive as dangerous...this is why I'm more likely to yell at Skate Park Punks Patrons than are other skaters; I just don't trust my reactions as far as dodging, etc. But still, in replaying it, I couldn't see what else I could have done. By the time we saw each other we weren't very far apart, and I spent the first precious bit of time moving to my right and assuming she'd be getting over into her lane--or onto the grass--as soon as she saw me. By the time it was glaringly apparent that she had staked out my lane as hers and wasn't budging, we were too close for me to try any evasive maneuvers.
When I got to the trailhead, I had planned to wait for Energizer Bunny and crew to finish their 4 laps. This meant it was possible that, while I was waiting, SINCAB might come jogging by. In the left lane, of course. And if she did, I wanted to be prepared. I didn't know if she'd try to continue what she had started by slugging me, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to think out my options ahead of time. So I pulled the chemical spray off my Camelback strap and cautiously tested it (I pointed it downwind, of course. I learned, many years ago when trying to pepper-spray an aggressive dog--with pepper spray provided by the dog's owner, I might add--that pepper-spraying upwind is a nasty proposition.).
Empty. Great. How the heck did that happen; I've never used it.
Oh, well...
After a few minutes, a couple of guys came running by. I had passed them shortly after my altercation with SINCAB, and I thought they might have heard us.
"Did you hear me yelling back there?" I asked them, and told them that a runner running in the left lane had punched me.
"We didn't hear you," said one, " but she's been having conflicts with everyone out here today."
Nice. At least I'm not alone.
And then it hit me. Conflicts with everyone. Energizer Bunny is out there.
Now, Energizer Bunny is petite, but she is feisty. She also has the mouth of a sailor; even as kids there were times when, in the middle of a verbal altercation, I'd pause for a moment in sheer admiration of the novel string of cuss words she'd come up with. And, unfortunately, EB has even more trouble than I do dealing with situations she perceives as dangerous; thus, many a fellow trail-user has had their vocabulary expanded when they encountered EB on the trail. I figured something fairly epic must have happened.
Before EB and her friends reappeared, though, here came SINCAB, jogging down the trail in the left lane. (I was reminded, when I saw her, of the studies done on the unreliability of eyewitnesses--I could have sworn she had on a white shirt, but she was wearing all black).
As she got closer, she stared intently at me. I stared back...good--as I remembered, she's smaller than I am. If necessary, I'm pretty sure I can take her...
"Were you rollerblading back there?" she barked.
"Yes," I said, and it was on--verbally only, thankfully.
I don't remember all of the first salvo, except that I explained that I wasn't trying to run her down, I just didn't know which way she was going and thus didn't know which way to dodge. She countered, at fairly high volume and intensity, that she had been hit from behind by a biker on a trail and thus had decided that it's safer to run on the left. She also didn't buy my explanation, and decided that she needed to resort to calling me "fat" to get her point across.
"You were taking up the whole trail," she said several times, "and you need to, you're so wide."
Really...are we in third grade?
I finally convinced her that I would have been fine with coasting past her, if I had known she would stay where she was, and was not at all unwilling to give up a few inches of trail to her...I just hadn't known which inches she needed. Then I asked a seemingly logical question.
"If you're afraid of the wheeled vehicles, why don't you run on the grass?"
Well...apparently it's "none of my damn business" where she runs, and "the Wayzata police support me in running on the left."
That's fine, except the park is in the city of Maple Plain, not Wayzata, and none of the other trail users are privy to her little agreement with an unrelated city's police department.
So the discussion continued, and it became clear that the issue was that SINCAB adamantly refused to step onto the grass to avoid oncoming traffic; she felt that she was in the right, and had had numerous altercations with bikers and inliners as a consequence. She had decided that, if a biker or inliner refused to yield to her, she would simply push them over. Which is what she said she did to me; I countered with "no, you punched me, and don't ever effing touch me again."
And then, as the discussion continued, the real picture became clearer.
"I'm just so afraid of being hit by a bike again," she said, obviously distraught. "I'm even afraid in the grocery store. I've had someone hit my ankle with their cart..."
Well. Afraid of carts in the grocery store. Clearly, SINCAB's cheese had already slid at least halfway off her cracker, and I wasn't interested in seeing it finish the slide. So I switched modes from "what the Hell is wrong with you bitch" to "yes, yes, I fully understand your position and you're right...but realistically, how are we going to keep you safe from those nasty people on wheels?"
With this change of tactics, I finally managed to get her to agree that it might be safest to simply step onto the grass when she saw wheels approaching. I also found out that she had, indeed, encountered Energizer Bunny, and there had been words, but I was able to explain EB's judgement issues. We ended up apologizing to each other for the issue and we were on decent terms by the time she jogged away--in the left lane, of course.
Five minutes later, EB and crew rolled into sight. EB was dancing on her skates to her iPod, and flashing the finger with both hands, kind of like a profane version of John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever disco-point. I knew she wasn't flipping me off, just venting about her encounter with SINCAB. When she stopped, I asked if they had had issues with a woman jogging in the left lane.
"Yes, that @#$#@%^" Energizer Bunny began (interestingly enough, she chose the same words for SINCAB that I had--but EB, unlike me, has called someone that many times before), but I cut her off.
"At least she didn't punch you," I said.
Well, that got their attention, and I relayed my tale. The best part, though, was that EB said that the last time they passed SINCAB--5 minutes after she and I finished talking--she had stepped onto the grass and they had skated past without incident. So there's progress.
Now if we can just get the grocery cart pushers to behave...
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