Cheap commuter bikes, ducks, and angry cyclists

You don't need a lot of cash to get yourself a commuter. My brother sent me some pictures of his latest project the other day and I thought I'd share them with the readers of this weblog: He got the frame for free, sanded it down, painted it green, and painted the forks, stem in white. The result is a pretty decent looking grocery getter/trailer tractor/urban tank. Pretty cool I think. In the very least, the price was right.

I almost got into a crash the other day: I was coming up the hill just before the Selkirk trestle on the Esquimalt side. At this point I want to pause because of the severity of the language my fellow cyclist chose to use, I will use "duck" instead of another word ending in "uck"
This was late at night and I had just recently killed my lights in an unfortunate zoobomb crash. So I was riding slow because I could barely see the trail, with moonlight as the only light source. Apparently someone else had the same limited brain function as myself, cause as I come around the turn up the hill there's a big Swooshhh!!! Another ninja bike with no light. This guy shows up from out of nowhere, coming the other direction, as he sees me he grabs a handful of front brake which sends him straight over the bars and then he slides on the gravel into the railing. I could feel the wind from him as his scrambling screaming hulk tumbled by me, but he missed me by about an inch or two. This was only the start of the whole incident. After letting out a little yelp of fear and surprise, I asked the guy if he was ok. His answer was a blunt one: "duck you you ducking idiot!" Slightly taken aback I asked him why he was calling ME an idiot (he's the one who could not control his bike after all, and ate shiskebab). "You're riding in the middle of the road!" he yelled. "No more than you were, buddy (not that it's a road but we'll let that slide)," I replied, "but are you ok?" At this point he was stumbling to his feet and I noticed that he had a bicycle wheel strapped to his back..."just get the duck out of here!" -"What?... Ok sure, but are you ok?" -"What the duck are you going to do, call me an ambulance?! just get lost!" He said and was surprisingly intimidating for his small frame. I was not going to get into any more altercations with this guy, specially since I had nothing invested in the whole scenario. I was fine, my bike was fine, whereas he was probably bleeding, and his pride had obviously taken a bit of a pounding as did "his" bike. So I Just got back on my steed, laughed at this poor guy and rode the rest of the way home extra carefully. But as I was riding, I could not help thinking about his reaction to the crash. Sure it's embarrassing to crash, but ...why did he want me out of there so quickly, why did he have a wheel on his back and, why did he not seem to be all that comfortable with his bike in the first place. Hmmm... perhaps he did not have an entirely clear conscience. Was it actually Karma that threw him off his bike since he stole it? I guess we will never know, but I have ordered some new lights, I wore off a bit of my luck that night and lady luck does not usually stick around for me for too long.