The other day I had dinner with Joasia together with a couple that she knows. We went to Van Kerkwijk, a lovely little restaurant in the centre of the city. Food was good, company was good and the evening was almost perfect. The only thing that was the fly in the ointment was the fact that there was an important football match going on, which was being projected on one of the walls of the restaurant. It was an unusual choice for the restaurant, since that’s totally not their vibe. I got the feeling that it was more for the benefit of the staff than the clientele.
When the evening wrapped up, we said our goodbyes and Joasia and I went to cycle back home. Halfway into our trip, we were crossing a busy street and saw that three young lads were walking on the bicycle path. They were walking three abreast and it seemed quite deliberate. Joasia circled on the left while I passed in between them, one on my left and two on my right. In doing so I passed by the one on my right quite closely and my steering wheel briefly touched a plastic bag he was carrying. His response was to reflexively push me away with the hand that carried the bag. The bag got tangled up in my steering wheel and ripped, spilling cans of beer all over the cycle path. Joasia and I kept cycling while the guys jeered at us and started tossing beer cans at us in anger. Later I found out that one of them had hit Joasia on the arm.
We came to a red light and stopped for it to turn green and I heard footsteps running up. I turned to see that one of the guys had came sprinted after us. He got right up in my grill and I told him to back off, shoving him back. He tried to kick me, but he was very drunk. I was wearing a bike lock around my torso and I was afraid he would grab it and use it to jank at me, so I took it off and held it in my right hand while using my left hand to keep him at bay. I think it startled him because he immediately accused me of wanting to attack him with the bike lock. I wasn’t going to, the lock is heavy and it’s easy to cave someone’s skull in, but I didn’t mind that he felt like I might.
The other two guys then came up, and I was worried I was going to have to fight all three of them. Luckily they didn’t seem in the mood to fight. One of them was trying to diffuse the situation, while the other was actually kind of angry, though not threatening. The two of them seemed less intoxicated. I was worried about the one who looked angry, since he was close to Joasia, who was calling the police as I was fending off the aggressive drunk guy. I kept angling away from him telling him to keep his distance, while simultaneously trying to stay close to Joasia, just in case one of them decided to make her the target.
In the meantime lots of bystanders were trying to prevent the aggressive guy from reaching me, which I appreciated. An elderly lady on a bicycle, a Spanish tourist and a security guard stand out, but there were more of them. The aggressive guy kept pushing himself past them and I kept feinting and eluding.
Eventually it seemed like the aggressive guy realised that it might not be worth it to fight me and he got convinced by his friends to stop. However, he then decided that we should shake hands. I told him I didn’t want to shake his hand because he was drunk and aggressive. After that didn’t work, he wanted me to give him a fist bump. He assured his friends that if I would just give him a fist bump he’d let it go. I didn’t change my mind.
At that point he was being pulled away by his angry friend. He then pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket telling me that he’d give me 200 euro if I would shake his hand (!?). I have seen people get attacked when lured into shaking someone’s hand after a fight died down, and I wasn’t going to be that person, not for any amount of money he would pull out of his pocket. Finally his friend managed to drag him away.
All in all this took a couple of minutes. Some of the bystanders gave us some encouragement and started to wander off. The security guard told me that I could use him as a witness if I wanted to press charges. Joasia and I decided to wait for the police who supposedly had been dispatched, but it took a long while for them to get there, probably due to the crazy football hooligans in the city. We decided to leave and cycle home.
What an end to the evening.
