So, I'm commuting back up to the office tonight... I'm on a medium sized thoroughfare, 45 limit, I'm doing about 55. Traffic stacks up quick ahead of me as I have to downshift and brake pretty quickly because there has been a car accident up ahead at an intersection. I come to a smooth quick stop, (somewhere my MSF instructor is happy) and since I am in jam up traffic and look to not be going anywhere I while I pop in neutral and stretch my back.
Then I notice an old couple on the side of me just steady bitching at me- gesturing back and forth and just generally talking ****.

My bike is idling and I have a helmet on, shield down, so I can't hear ****.
Eventually I flip up my face shield and say "excuse me?"
THe old lady is screaming at me " Don't come down here any more! FInd another way! Why dont you just go kill yourself (gesturing at the bike) ! Go back to New Orleans! (I live in Baton Rouge, 70 miles upriver- without going into a social diatribe on the effects of post-Katrina Louisiana, suffice it to say that this was a bigoted old lady's way of insinuating that I was black and should go back to where the storm washed me up from- nevermind the fact that I was born and raised here, am white underneath all this gear (not that it's even relevant) and had nothing to do with the accident in question.

Her husband is yelling **** too, but I can't understand him. So I turn away forward again, and they are steady bitching. Finally, I'm like why are you yelling at me? I haven't done anything to you!" and they just keep at it.
The traffic is being diverted into one lane do to the accident, and a crew truck full of guys watching this display takes pity on me, and lets me in front of them.

People are nuts.

 

Did you get her number? the crazy ones are best.

 

ah the elderly what can you do, thats just how some of them are. I have a lady half a block away from me that yells at me to "slow down" when im doing 20 in a 25 just because she thinks im going fast because its loud. She chased after me with a rake one time after i got to my house then called the cops on me. I get yelled at a lot to slow down by older people actually in residential areas when im usually under the speed limit. They see the bike and just start stereotyping. Happens with my friends evo too but you can hear that pos idling from a block away. They always assume the worst about young people.

 

Hell, I can't even claim youth as an excuse anymore! I
ll be 40 next may.

 

oops my bad...see just another assumption they were making about you because you were on a bike. So do you want any accessories or mods for your hover round for your birthday?

 

D-bags like that will usually get an ear-full of my exhaust

 

Don't worry man they won't even remember what happened by tomorrow morning

Some of the old school just never made it past the 50's man, old crusty and bigoted imo

 

Next time tell the old bed shytter to take her meds.

 

don't cha love this state?

Situations like that make me wish I had a modular lid. Maybe if they see you're absolutely not what they expect, they'd settle down, but not likely. Experience tells me that whenyou prove someone's beliefs wrong, esp. in front of others, they just go bat-****-irrational cause you've just removed their current base of reality.

 

OR... mom quit following me when I ride!