But, let's back up a moment. After a long, stressful week of dealing with people (and I still laugh at the joke about how half of them are "below average" - and the people that ask, "why is that!?"), I was looking forward to a quiet getaway with my wife. I even hoped we could leave Saturday night. However, two factors changed those plans: 1) the wife wanted to watch the Spurs trounce the Suns (i.e. she wanted to catch "the game") and 2) our neighbors behind us - the one who had been caught breaking into a local high school and repeatedly stabbing an FFA sheep - decided to throw a party. Sure, they lined both sides of the road with cars, threw up extra lights and a disco ball. Okay, so the stench of beer in our back yard was so thick you could cut it with a knife. That didn't bother me. It was the fact that they played the kind of music found in cheezy Mexican restaurants so loudly that you had to speak up to talk to one another... across our back yard, through the house and on the other side of the street.
Did I mention that this started at 7 PM and was going strong well past 2 AM? No? How about this: I get very, very irritable from loud music (to put it politely). Combine that with a lack of rest, and... you get the picture, right? I could be heading to jail while the taxpayers put our local sheep-stabbing hero (see also: here and here) in the hospital for the best of care.
So do the most rational thing: call the police. Then leave. People playing music that loudly obviously don't care about anyone but themselves, and confronting them is only an opportunity for me to get into trouble or worse.
I called the police. I went for a ride. I rode and rode.
I went down backroads I've never seen before. I was playing all over the place. I then decided that maybe I could come home. As I headed towards S.A. on US 281 - a divided highway with 2+ lanes headed in each direction - I crested a small hill and discovered what the "deer in the headlight" look was all about. (Ah, yes! Here comes the Bambi tie-in!) Despite crossing all kinds of road-rodent infested back roads, this is the first deer I've seen all night and it's literally standing in the middle of the road, facing the median (so I'm approaching it perpendicularly). It begins to move off to the left so I swerve to the right when all of a sudden it changes its mind and tries to dart out in front of me.
As some of you may recall, I hit a deer with the same bike a couple years ago when a small doe decided to change directions and run in front of my bike. I grazed it on the right side and ran over its legs but left no damage to the bike. I rode on, feeling a little unnerved by the experience.
Obviously this doe, which was much larger and probably three to four feet at the shoulder, did not kill me. For taking out deer, this one has to be the weirdest. As it began to dart out in front of me, I clipped it in the head with the upper left fairing of the bike. It left a very small chunk of hair on the mirror stalk and tore a hole through my fairing. My garage door opener - held on by velcro - disappeared with a significant amount of plastic.
And I was still upright, still riding. The FJR took it on the chin, but yet again, I dodged the Bambi bullet, who through no regards to age will probably need a full set of dentures when it's all said and done (if a car behind me didn't finish the job).
So I came home and had a restful evening, right? I was tired and ready to sleep, but the cha-cha party was still on. Naturally, I was enraged. Why hadn't the police fixed this problem yet? If I were to go over and explain to them that they were blatantly disrespectful to all their neighbors and they needed to STFU, who knows what would have happened? I called the police several times and explained that I was more than just a little agitated and that these "people" were more than just a little loud. At 2 AM - only six hours after the initial complaint - the SAPD arrived and told them, in the officer's words, to "shut the hell up." He had to yell at the top of his lungs just to be heard over the music. He apologized profusely to me stating that this night in particular they were understaffed and overly busy.
I can hear those drunks saying the next day, "Vato, that was a great party. We drank and partied so much that by the time we were ready to go home, la policia came and sent us away. Dude, that was sweet!" What a bunch of pendejos. As Carlos Mencia might say, they're those kind of Mexicans - that normal people of any descent - particularly of Hispanic descent - would distance themselves from. By the observation of my neighbor's behavior - now and in the past - I can firmly say that these are not the kind of people I'd ever choose to live near. (I understand they've been driving off neighbors for years now and have contributed to the rental house next to us turning over occupants on a regular basis. *Sigh* it was so quiet when he was in jail!)
Just to make my position clear on this - it is not part of Hispanic culture to be disrespectful of ones neighbors or become a criminal. This particular individual, however does contribute to the perpetuation of such myths. It doesn't help that I have to get into a bloody rage (and not get any support from ANY of my neighbors) to get police assistance. This individual is just another dirtbag whose weapon of scumminess derives from the uglier side of south of the border.
The wife and I left later that morning, and found it very sweet indeed to have a quiet, uninterrupted night of sleep.
But not before taking out a bird with the truck!
Gosh, what is it with these animals and the vehicles I'm driving?
You can see cracks and the hole in the upper fairingand a small smattering of blood on the front fairing.
The doe ripped a lot of plastic apart when shewent kamikaze on me. The road rash to the
right was from a prior incident; this was an
old plastic piece I was using temporarily.
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