A few minutes after we pulled into a coffee shop on Highway 101 in Oregon after some light rain and twisty roads a crazy man approached us. This was on day three of our most recent bike trip, which had begun on June 30 in San Francisco. Within minutes the encounter escalated to a dangerous point.
For this most recent adventure, Craig Malcolm, Bob Reuter and I had been joined by Bob’s 27-year old son, Morgan. 
The four of us were sitting at a picnic table under a canopy when a stocky man approached us. He looked to be in his mid 40s to early 50s, had a barrel chest, stringy hair and dirty crooked teeth.
He glanced at the license plates on our bikes.
“You guys from Canada?” he said, in a tone that was neither friendly nor hostile.
We confirmed the obvious.
“Do you guys know that Alexander Graham Bell stole our cell-phone technology. You owe us seven billion dollars!” His tone was now quite agitated.
Realizing he wasn’t stable we tried to humour him away from us. It didn’t work.
He moved closer to us and continued to rant. He accused us of breaking into his home, murdering his sister and made various other deranged comments. All were punctuated by an increasing amount of spitting.
It was at this point that Craig took over. A former OPP investigator, he put his years of experience to work. Craig got right into the man’s face and told him to back off.
As the raver continued we saw he had a switchblade in a leg sheath. He suddenly pulled it out and tried to flick it open. It didn’t open but he held it and pointed it menacingly in our direction.
“I’m an American,” the man said. “I’m entitled to six feet of space in my country.”
Craig gave him a shove in the chest to move him away from us.
The man continued to rant and moved back towards us.
This dance continued several more times. Craig must have shoved him four times before the man finally walked away.
We saw him talking to someone else nearby, presumably about us. He yelled at us from a distance but never came close again.
Needless to say, we hurriedly finished our coffees and hopped back on our bikes. Although the scene had been upsetting and potentially dangerous, we decided it wasn’t worth calling the police. Besides, the OPP had already taken care of it!
How Craig handled the situation was impressive. All of us were glad to have had someone with us who knew what to do in what could have been a life-threatening encounter.
A few days later, in Seattle, we almost had another incident. We were out walking one night and watched as a dog owner couldn’t restrain his two dogs as they attacked a woman walking her dog. This happened about a half block from where we were at the time. Before we could decide what to do, others closer to the scene intervened and helped out. The woman didn’t seem harmed and the police arrived almost immediately.
I guess when you’re out on the road and riding bikes you have to expect that some of your experiences will have an element of danger to them. Happily, the rest of our trip up to Vancouver Island was uneventful.
We’re also glad we didn’t have to fork over the cell phone money to the crazy guy. We knew our Canadian cell phone bills were far too high but that amount was a bit over the top.
