So these last couple of times, this one Dude has approached me upon my return to the Hotel's Bike Rack; during my first encounter, he was clutching a small slip of paper and seemed to giving me the universal non-verbals for soliciting a payment from me.
WTF!?!? I ain't paying no stinking fee just to lock my Bike at a community rack!!!!! But this peasant persisted, with his paw out and his pout on full; what to do? Just as I pondered this dilemna, he surged towards me, in a seeming effort to snatch the backpack draped over my shoulder. Caught totally unaware by this power move, I stumbled back, almost tripping over the densely packed bicycles and electric two-wheeled watchamacallits which increasingly crowd-out the pure human-powered members of the species.
But I regained my equilibrium, and in a reciprocating movement reversed my momentum, lunging at this trespasser upon my personal space. I thrust out with my right hand -- fingers slightly bent and tight against eachother as I struck and grabbed his trachea with the outspread thumb and index fingers of a Tiger Mouth strike; the other fingers aiding in distributing and consolidating the lethal force which I had unleashed on this unwitting prole...
...no, who am I kidding? I feigned ignorance, as if I should have known this shnorer would be bringing his shtick my way in the first place!!!
(He didn't really try to grab my pack after all; but if he did, I had a full can of whoop-ass ready to be poured...). LOL!!!
No, I turned away, unlocked my Girl's model ride (the Mom-in-law's), since the Pop-in-law's manly steed was in use by him for a soup-stock and vegetable run; and, smiling, wished Mr. Bike Rack Guard adieu; vowing to myself to get clarification on the whole issue from my Wife and in-laws; as well as Hotel staff the next time I came for a dip in the Anzhen Plaza Pool.
I'm still not sure whether he saw me as an easy mark because I was a foreigner, or because of my Girl's Bicycle...
