Crash Test Dummies

Watch out! Did you see that?

There are very few street lights in Central Oregon. I love that. On a clear night, the stars glitter like sugar scattered on velvet. I like the rural feel of streets sleeping under a night sky.

It's those suicidal maniacs that drive me crazy. Night after night, as I try to make my way safely home from an event in town, some lunatic dressed all in black lurches across the street right in front of me, or silently glides through the dark on a bicycle with no reflectors and no lights while dressed like a depressed vampire.

The other night I turned a corner just a few blocks from my house, and a herd of hooligans in clothes no brighter than charcoal were loitering in the middle of the road in absolute darkness. See them in the photo above? Or maybe that's the photo of the bikers I'm always dodging in the dark. Or the pedestrians wobbling home late at night doing their black-cat-in-the-coal-bin impressions.

There was a big to-do last year about a bicyclist killed at 2:30 in the morning in Bend.

I don't drink or do drugs, and yet I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the times I've almost hit some self-destructive yahoo in the middle of the street in clothes that make undertakers seem gay.

If you want to kill yourself, that's up to you. After all, this is Oregon. But please, don't make me the method of your demise. I don't want to be picking pieces of you out of my grill. I don't need a lube that badly. Really.

If you're going to be out walking or bicycling after dark, invest a couple bucks in reflectors, blinky lights and light clothing. Steal the money from one of those beggars in the median if you have to. But if you persist in cruising Bend like a wraith and I run you down and break your legs, don't come running to me.

*mutter*


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Opinion