The good news was that my good friend Andi was riding with me and she was rested and well trained. (Last year, she was under-trained so I helped her along; this year it was her turn to pull my sorry ass!) It was good to see familiar and friendly faces at the start, oh so early the morning. And by 6:30 we were off and riding. Another BIG plus was that it was a dry, albeit cool, day. (I had prayed for no rain and asked anyone I knew, religious, spiritual, atheist, or otherwise, to help me pray for no rain. It couldn’t have hurt.)
Because I was so tired, the riding was challenging, but not impossible. About ten miles before the Sagamore Bridge, I got a burst of energy and climbed some of the hills with my usual zest for such things. Around the same time, a truck slowed down and pulled up right along side of me. The passenger, a middle-aged white man, stuck his head out the window and asked me, “What does ‘gazunteight’ mean?” I looked at him and repeated the question with a puzzled face. I know it means “God bless you” but somehow I knew that he wanted me to say this and then he was going to be a smart ass of some sort. He was not friendly and the vibe I got was he wanted to ridicule me and perhaps us or the ride somehow. So, I didn’t give him the satisfaction and after asking the question three times or so, he gave up and zoomed off.
I shook my head and said to Andi, “That was weird.” Actually, it was more than weird. It was disturbing. I find these types of hostile interactions disturbing. Whether he was harassing me because I was riding an AIDS ride, or because I was on a bicycle, or because I am Asian-American, or just because he is a yahoo, it hardly matters. What is WRONG with people anyway?
I also feel that these kind of interactions are getting more frequent. I guess with the lousy economy and all some people venting their anger and frustration through bigotry. It makes me sad that this is so. What would it take for people to have more compassion for each other? What would it take for the threads that connect us all to be at the forefront and the differences in the background? How does one respond with faced with hostility and not breed further hostility (and stay safe)? I wish I had good answers to these questions but I don’t. In my life, I try to maintain a compassionate perspective because so many people are in a lot of pain and don’t know what to do with it. (At the same time, this is no excuse for abusive hostile behavior.) I wish I could say to that man, “I hope you are blessed and I am too.”
