Road Rage: Hot-tempered lady breaks a bunch of window glass in a bike lane

The scrap-collecting woman was carefully stacking a bunch of wood-framed windows in the bike lane, leaning them against the metal roadside barrier. Just as I swerved around her and pedaled past, she whipped out some type of metal tool and started shattering all the glass in the windows. Almost instantly, there was a pile of shards in the bike lane. It was another one of those “Is this really happening?” moments. I experience them on almost every ride.

I stopped and fished out my camera from my back jersey pocket and started shooting pictures of her. She had her back to me and didn’t see what I was doing. I wanted a good face shot, so I rode over to her other side. When she saw what I was doing, SHE WENT BALLISTIC! Screeching in Cantonese, she fired off a burst of obscenities. She also grabbed a piece of scrap wood and started approaching me.

I’ve already mentioned one Waffles & Steel rule: If you’re gawking at me, I can take your picture. There’s another rule: If you’re doing something that’s dangerous, idiotic and most likely illegal in the street, I’m sorry but I’m probably going to take your picture.

I don’t know what set me off, but I started yelling at her. I shouted, “How can you do this in the street? Don’t you love China? Don’t you love the motherland?” It’s a new tactic I learned from the government: Appeal to a person’s sense of patriotism. It’s probably a stupid idea. The people probably don’t get it. The woman probably thought: “I’m just trying to quickly collect this scrap and get it out of every one’s way. Why is this crazy foreigner talking about loving the motherland?”

I figured out why she broke the glass. She had two big nylon bags. She planned to break up the window frames and stuff them in one bag. The broken glass was going into the other bag, though she had no broom or dustpan to make sure all the shards were cleared away. The odd thing was that her means of transport was a bike. Wouldn’t you think she would be more sensitive about keeping a bike lane free of sharp debris? Nah, it’s the common attitude here: I’ll do what I want to do. Screw everyone else.

As we yelled at each other, a small crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk. In their eyes, I surely looked ridiculous and weird. I doubt they could see the pile of broken glass from the sidewalk. All they saw was a foreigner in lycra on a fancy bike yelling at a poor scrap-collecting woman about loving the motherland. I felt stupid again about losing my cool. What I most regretted, though, was being so busy shouting at the woman that I missed the best picture. I would have loved to have had a tight shot of the woman’s eyes bulging out of her head as she shrieked at me.