The other night, on an FMFT night BMX session we came up against the sort of situation we’d heard about and knew went on, but hadn’t seen for years.
As we made it up a hill we were aware of a group of what we’re going to call (in a horribly grown-up way) “youths”, hanging around on the corner at the top of the hill. As we approached, separated a little, they pulled hoods up and began to advance towards us. The way they approached was clearly threatening and they went for the classic tactic of trying to get our attention by shouting “excuse me”. As the lead rider I was the first target and elected to get out of there as fast as possible. Pedalling hard I was clear of the main ringleader who was chasing me and got away reasonably quickly, while also worrying about the other half of FMFT. I hoped he’d turn back down the hill, but, not wanting to leave me, had I not made it away he had followed up and was also chased by some of the rest of the group of youths.
With a combination of actually not being bad on bikes and reasonably fast, and a spot of luck we both got away feeling a little shaken and annoyed.
Being fairly sure that the group thought we were younger than we are, confused by our hoodies and BMX bikes, we still thought it a good idea to let the police know and so rang-in the incident in an effort to prevent anything happening to anyone else in the same place.
We escaped anything this time but it leaves a weird feeling of not being safe doing what we have been, and a realisation that, for actual teenagers on bikes, the streets can be a more dangerous place than we assume. Hopefully we won’t find ourselves in a similar situation any time soon, and if we do perhaps next time we’ll turn back as soon as it looks like something’s happening.
A
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