Bro'd Rage: My ugly encounter with a dangerous young driver. PART III- Brospotting, follow up, and support

This is the truck.

Only 1 of 4 wheels remain on the driveway, so your highest possible grade would be 25%. You definitely failed, dude.

Whilst traversing campus on my Wednesday lunch break, I caught a glimpse of a familiar sight: the nose of a green Toyota Tundra with New Jersey plates. It was driverless and parked this time around, thus thankfully not split seconds from hitting me head-on, so I walked over to have a look. It was clear that: 1) This was definitely the truck from last Friday's run-in. and 2) It had been parked by a person severely deficient in the finer points of parallel parking. The truck was where the people are supposed to go.

What? No truck nuts?

As I made my way around the truck to snap a few pictures, a young man approached and got into the driver seat. In our short, seconds-long conversation, he said it was his truck, that he was not on campus on Friday, and that his roommates borrow the truck. It's not my job to grill the guy, but I recommended that he get in touch and cooperate with Campus Safety and the Hartford Police ASAP. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear of the Friday incident. If I give the benefit of the doubt that this is true, then that means that the college administration had not contacted him five days after the incident. If it's not true, he's an accomplished liar. Either way, somebody's BSing me, and I don't appreciate that one bit.

Schleppi said this photo looked like a "TMZ shot"

 In the meantime, I had gotten nothing meaningful in the manner of updates as to progress being made by Campus Safety and the Dean of Students office. Either nothing was happening, or I was not being updated in a timely fashion. I got a few more updates and clarifications on Friday, but only after I had sent out a rather exasperated Thursday afternoon email that pulled no punches. Not long after my Bro-spotting lunchbreak, I did receive an invitation to speak with the Campus Life office, which I will do early this coming week.

As much of a drag and a timesuck as this incident has been over the past week, it has brought out the best in a lot of people. A number of Trinity staff and faculty approached me with encouraging words and, fairly often, a personal story of a student whose misdeeds went unpunished. Trinity Professor Jack Dougherty composed and circulated a letter of support which was co-signed by Dario and other bike riding Trinity faculty and staff members. All of the above lifted my spirits and reminded me that I work with some truly excellent people (and that they are by no means in short supply.) I still believe that positive outcomes and change can come from this ugly encounter.

My work week ended on a high note. The weather was beautiful, the day was full of unexpected delights, like a dogs and (Tastease!) donuts gathering on a nearby quadrangle late in the morning, an impromptu Spanish guitar and percussion jam outside of the Austin Arts Center, and a successful opening at the Broad Street Gallery. This Saturday Hartford will be filled with Samba, films, friends, and one of the best parties for one of the shortest sporting events of the year. In between that, I have some bikes to repair and ride. It will be nice to get back to that.

Lucy in the Quad With Donuts

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Free Bicycle!

Remember those old home security commercials featuring a "burglar" who brags that he can pick most locks with a credit card? No tools at all required to snag this bike. Read more!

Hey Whippersnapper,

It's not enough that you had to go tearing across traffic and then the wrong way on a one-way street. I was willing to overlook that, ignore your lack of helmet and bad fashion sense. But at some point, someone needs to intervene. Maybe your momma is too tired from workin' it all day to raise you up right. Maybe your father is in jail. Or worse, maybe he taught you to do this. In any case, I will be unable to sleep at night if I do not say something.

You're doing it wrong.

Your saddle is wrong. So wrong that I almost choked on the lunch I was eating as I watched you speed by. As I'm sure you know, all manner of depraved kink can be located on the internet. Take this as a sign. If one searches for "backwards bike saddles" on Google images, nothing of the sort resembling your rig appears in the first hundred or so photos. If it's too kinky for a search sans filters, it's too kinky for a boy your age.

There is nothing macho about flipping the saddle around so that you risk impaling yourself with one wrong move. Now, maybe because I'm an old bag, or whatever you youngsters today would call me, you might think I know nothing. To indulge you in that fantasy, I did some research. Jim Langley, who I'm sure has his sphincter intact, notes that:

"If the nose of the seat bothers you, tip the seat down 1 to 3 degrees. Don’t overdo it because a tipped seat will cause your body to shift forward putting added pressure on the knees and preventing the seat from supporting your weight adequately. If the nose bothers you enough that you want to tip is excessively, try different seat designs."

See how he never says that you should flip the nose of the saddle complete around and tilt it skyward? Sheldon Brown, another expert who presumably has not ripped himself a new hole, says:

"The angle of the saddle should be pretty close to horizontal. Some men prefer the front to be slightly higher than the rear; some women prefer the front slightly lower than the rear, but extreme angles should be avoided."

See? No extreme angles. Peter Jon White, yet another expert, says:

"In order to fit a bicycle, you need a saddle you can sit ON."

One website states the obvious: "Bicycling is supposed to be fun, not painful."

Nobody gets street cred by landing in the emergency room with a saddle up his ass. Nobody. Read more!

Ur Doin it Wrong

I was doing an internet search to find out some boring facts about bicycle usage, and the top website results all had something in common -- they either mentioned fatalities or included some sort of baloney like "you can ride in CT if you don't mind feeling like you are taking your life into your own hands." It's like some unwritten rule exists that every conversation about riding has to allude to danger, helmets, and hellish drivers. I swear it's all to keep the masses complicit in the destruction of the environment by coercing them back inside their cars via stories of bicyclist fatalities.

Whatever. Sometimes bike crashes are hilarious.

For instance, Snooki, some creation out of Jersey that I do not understand entirely since I lack cable tv, but whose existence I know of thanks to Perez Hilton and TMZ, tested the boardwalk with her face today. And of course, you can watch it, over and over.

No, you're not a bad person for mocking someone who is famous for being an obnoxious partygirl. Read more!