Strangest thing ever

So, the weirdest thing happened yesterday at the City of Lakes 25K (race recap in the post below). Norm & I were working the finishing shoot, tearing off bib number tags and running them to Jack in the timing tent. 99 times out of 100, nothing out of the ordinary happens. Tear. Spindle. Repeat.

However, after a few finishers came through the shoot, something totally bizarre went down. It started innocent enough...a guy tried to walk the wrong way down the chute. I expected this would happen. I mean, we have the chute on the pedestrian path near the band shell. It's a popular spot. Anyway, he got around Norm so I stuck my arm out and said "Woah! We've got a race in progress & finishers are going to be running through here." His response? "You don't own the f@*king lake!"

What!?!?

I should explain that this guy was about 6 feet tall & must have weighed 250lbs. One shove would have sent me flying into Lake Harriet. He had on big headphones, and I think he was listening to talk radio. He looked a lot like the guy who plays the backwoods lunatic in the movie "A Life Less Ordinary".

Norm handled it very diplomatically by saying, "Sir, there's no reason to get upset. You just have to walk around the chute & then you can get back on the path." I took the low road by saying, "I may not own the lake, but there's no way in hell I'm letting you walk down this chute!" Norm was definitely on to something, because the guy launched into some tirade about how he walks here all the time & we're blocking his way, blah, blah, blah, on and on.

Eventually, he relented and went around the chute - a detour of about 50 feet. He's out exercising, but he's complaining about exercising a little more? Odd. He was muttering about what jerks we were as he waddled off into the distance.

After he was gone, Norm calmly said one of the funniest things I have ever heard; "I can't believe he went straight to the F-bomb. How do you top that?"

Ha HA! How do you top that?! There's no where else to go? I guess he could use two F-bombs in one sentence, but then it just dilutes the shock value. The only way to one-up himself would have been to pull a weapon, which I'm sure he was capable of.

There were only three other people who tried to walk the wrong way down the chute. There was a couple out walking their dogs. I asked them to go around & they did. The seemed a little confused, but they were happy to oblige. The fourth was a jogging woman who actually asked, "Can I go through this way, or should I go around?"

I could have hugged her for that.