My friend Hong and I went riding this morning on our spiffy road bikes. We were trying to find a lake that I remembered seeing on the map, which I conveniently failed to print out, trusting that “of course I will remember the way”. After a while, we gave up trying to find the lake and decided to go check out Boston College’s football stadium instead.
BC football happened to be having a spring training opener game, complete with a small carnival with food, bouncy castles, obstacle courses, and a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream truck. Things weren’t getting started until 11am, but the Ben & Jerry’s guy still sold us ice cream even though it was only ~10:30. However, that was the last bit of hospitality we were shown.
In order to eat our ice cream, we leaned our bikes against a fence so that we could sit down, free our hands, eat our ice cream. Within 5 seconds, someone walks by and very aggressively says “you guys can’t leave your bikes here.” I gave him a look and said “dude, we just want to eat our ice cream, and it’s hard to eat ice cream when we’re holding our bikes upright with one/both hands.” He rolled his eyes, looked annoyed, but did leave us alone.
They had this blow-up obstacle course that is kind of like a bouncy castle, but kids are meant to traverse through it instead of just jumping around. Hong really wanted to check things out, so he asked the guy “what is this?” The guy told him that it’s an obstacle course, and that at 11 when it opens, Hong will be able to see little kids run through it. So Hong asked the guy “oh, so I would be able to run through it?” The guy, with a “are-you-kidding-me?” look on his face said to Hong, “noooo, you will be able to see little kids run through it.” Okay, kids aside, why did the guy have to be so nasty about it? Hong was just trying to be a big kid.
We went to check out the actual stadium, which true to my memory, is not real grass but some fancy astroturf. We walked our bikes onto the turf and stood on the field looking around an empty stadium. There were some other folks on the turf too, running around, jumping, but we were the only ones with bikes. A few minutes later, a guy walks up to us and says “You guys need to get those bikes off of the turf.” Well then, good day to you too.
We acquiesced, but we were tired of being yelled at. We concluded that the Ben & Jerry’s guy was our favorite person of the day. I guess the moral of the story is that bikers are discriminated against by all except the ice cream people.