Today I had an interesting experience. At least I thought it was. Seems like a good thread topic.
While walking home from lunch, it started to drizzle. I took out my umbrella after a few minutes. Didn’t want to arrive home wet.
A woman on a bike passed me. A few yards ahead, she stopped next to an apartment building. I thought she had arrived home. Not so. Seems she didn’t want to get wet either. She asked if she could share my umbrella. Apparently she was in a hurry to get somewhere and didn’t want to arrive soaked. It wasn’t raining very hard, so there was no real danger there, but, eh, one person’s drizzle is another person’s typhoon.
Fair enough. So, we walked a few feet, side by side, with the bike between us and the umbrella trying to cover the lot. That was awkward.
She stopped and suggested I carry her on the bike. She would hold the umbrella. There was an extra little seat in the back, so this looked doable. (First she asked if I could ride a bike. That was kind of funny.)
So on the bike I got. She took the umbrella and sat side saddle behind me. I started really slowly, since I wasn’t sure of the physics of this arrangement and didn’t want to dump her, the bike, and the umbrella onto the road. I zigzagged for a few feet, then straightened out.
Then I asked where she was going. Just ahead, near the bridge. I wasn’t exactly sure where she meant, so I asked for clarification. Then she asked if I was Taiwanese. “Do I look Taiwanese?” I asked her. That was also kind of funny.
After a few yards, I had calculated all the Netwonian physics I needed to get us down the street without embarassment. She held the umbrella really close to my head, to keep me from getting wet, no doubt. I had to look under the rim of the umbrella a few times, since it was blocking my vision! She quickly realized this and held the umbrella a bit higher. I didn’t want to turn around and see how she was doing, since I didn’t want to throw into whack the delicate balance of man and woman and bike (and umbrella). She wasn’t complaining, so I assumed the typhoon drizzle hadn’t drenched her.
After a minute or two, we arrived at the next large street, where I let her off so she could buy one of those yellow garbage bag raincoats at a Circle K.
Into the store she went, and back down the road I walked. And that was that. I had only taken her maybe .2 kilometers, but it was all in all, a very interesting experience.
