Like Gentlemen

I rode past Joe P’s house this weekend on a bike ride and he was outside in his pickup.  I couldn’t help but pull over and say hello.

Two years ago, the last time I remember riding past his house (I’m sure I’ve ridden past it a dozen times since, but this was the last time I remember doing it), his dog came out from the back yard to say hello.  By ‘hello’ I mean he charged me.  And the dog – I never knew his name, I referred to him as ‘Fido’ in my letters to Joe – was no Chihuahua.   I’m not sure what kind of huge, black, hairy dog it was, but it was seventy-five pounds if it was an ounce.  And fast enough so that I caught sight of him just about two seconds before he knocked me over.

Did I mention that Joe lives on a pretty busy street? 

Time seems to slow often during accidents, and that’s lucky; two seconds was enough time for me to calculate that if I tried to turn out and avoid the collision, Fido was going to knock me into the street.  Traffic was coming at me from both directions, a trip to the asphalt was a near-guarantee of severe injury.  I grimaced, said a quiet apology and turned my wheel right into Fido.  He knocked me onto the sidewalk instead, then yelped and bounded back into the back yard. 

I found out later that Fido got a good scare and some bruises but was not seriously injured, and I could say the same for myself: badly scraped knee, hip and elbow, and somehow I cut up my hand pretty good.  It must have gotten caught under the brake lever and sanded smooth by the sidewalk.  I disentangled myself and inspected the damage.  Not me – skin and bones heal on their own.  What about the bike?  Ruined front wheel, torn gloves, scraped up tire, torn handlebar tape … and who knows what else to the carbon fiber frame and forks?  Getting bent wasn’t likely, but what about stress fractures?  The true extent of the damage could be deep and mysterious, and not show up for a long time.

That's when I met Joe.  He came out of his house calmly, in a tip-toe sort of way, asking me how I was.  I only noticed then that a lawn mower wasn’t running any more. 

How was I?  Well, I had just been knocked off my bike by a big dog, so I’d been better.  But I held onto my temper.  Fido was big but not nasty.  I didn’t get the feeling he was allowed to run loose, or that he was trying to hurt me.

Joe nodded.  “He [the dog] has a thing for motorcycles and bikes, I don’t know what it is.  He’ll go after them every time if he gets the chance.  I thought he was locked in the back yard but somehow he must have gotten through the house and outside.”  I have a dog, too.  Maggie finds ways to get where you wouldn’t expect her to be like she's a contortionist.  Here was a responsible pet owner who had been outsmarted by his pet.  Welcome to the club, Joe.

“I understand,” I told Joe, “but we do have some damage here.”  He nodded.  “I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but this is a really expensive bike.”  He winced and nodded again.  Then the kicker, “I have to call the police and report this.”  The implication was clear: I needed compensation and if Joe turned out to be the kind of guy who was going to fight me on it, I needed a record of the incident.  He seemed to understand right away.

“But,” I added, “I will not make a vicious dog report.”  Deal.

As I was calling the police a cruiser pulled up.  The officer got out, all sunglasses and chewing gum and smile.  “I saw you laying there and wondered what was up,” he called out.  Did he, indeed?  He made the report, gave me a reference number and I nursed myself and my bike to the nearest shop.  Three days later I sent a bill off to Joe for a bit under two hundred bucks.  Luck was still spreading itself around; the frame and forks were fine, a new front wheel wasn’t that costly (lucky again: I was riding the cheapo set that day), new gloves, some odds and ends.  I included all the receipts and what I hoped was a nice cover letter and waited. 

A week or so later I got a note from Joe – and a check for more than the amount of the damage.  He explained that he thought the bill was very fair and that I had certainly suffered a little damage and inconvenience on top of those items, and so he felt he should bump up the compensation a little.  I cashed the check, it cleared, end of story.

How many ways could this have gone wrong?  What if I had leapt up ready to swear and fight and threaten?  Or if Joe had charged out of his house yelling at me about hitting his dog, ignoring the circumstances?  Or if the cop decided the paperwork wasn’t worth the trouble (or if the damage didn’t look ‘that bad’ to him) and blew me off?  What if the bike shop smelled deep pockets and inflated the estimate, or if I had jacked up the bill, justified by a belief in some kind of punitive damage for Joe daring to have a dog that acted like a dog?  What if Joe replied that if I wanted any money out of him I could damned well sue him? 

At every turn, the chance for the whole experience going off the rails presented itself.  And every time, the people involved didn’t let it happen.  Joe took full responsibility for his dog.  I limited the damage what damage had actually been caused.  I went out of my way to document the process.  Joe went out of his way to be fair to me.  The professionals acted like professionals.  In the end we didn’t look out for ourselves, we looked out for each other, and the process.

And this is what it takes for the traffic incidents that will inevitably take place to stay small; everyone doing their part at every step, everyone looking out for everyone else.  I didn’t feel so much proud to be part of it as lucky.  All the theories about community members coexisting were right there in action in front of me.  They worked.  (Or rather, this is what it took for them to work.)

Joe and I have nothing in common.  He drives a big pickup, I ride a bike.  We’d never be friends, I don’t think, we would have had no reason to interact were it not for this kind of situation.  But seeing him over the weekend, it felt like I was saying hello to a friend.  He asked me if any other dogs had tried to take a bite out of me.  I laughed and said no and asked how he was doing.  He said he was fine.  I waved and was on my way.