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Once upon a time when I lived in California and there was this Gas Crisis which meant my 15 mpg Gran Torino had to stay home in the garage a lot, I had a 100 cc motorcycle. I had just learned to ride it by practicing in parking lots, and finally one day I took it out onto the street for the first time. I was riding along, trying to remember how to shift (you shifted that kind of bike with your feet and did the clutch with your left hand, and when you've only been riding for two days, it can be a bit tricky - plus with a top speed of 45 mph, I spent a LOT of time shifting) - and I was goign along nicely in fifth - when suddenly out from the kerb stepped a woman with a baby buggy the size of a small bus! Not at the corner - in the middle of the block - straight in front of me. With amazing good fortune I did not hit her; I drove up onto the sidewalk and stalled. Then I went and screamed at her. She looked at me as if I had suddenly appeared from Dimension X and said, "Well, I thought you'd stop!" I explained at the top of my lungs that this was the very first day I had been out on the road on my motorcycle, and that she had very nearly killed me, herself, and her baby. she stood there with her mouth hanging open and a look of blank incomprehension on her face, and then she said, "Well that's just like a big bicycle with a motor, anyway." I asked her if she'd like to try lifting it up from where it lay on the sidewalk, and she rather contemptuously went over and tried to lift it one handed from the left side - and failed. Then I told her that this big heavy hunk of metal had been going 45 miles per hour and that even if I had jammed on the brake (assuming I had remembered how), it would have taken me half a block to stop, and her baby carriage would not have slowed me down much.
I hope she learned something. But if not, I hope the next motorcycle she stepped in front of didn't kill anybody but her.
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