What A Long Strange Trip It Is - L.

Every morning and evening, on my way to and from work, I see a lot of odd things. Granted, my commute's only 12 miles, but it's 12 miles through the dense streets of Dallas's satellite cities. I avoid the tollways and highways because they're jammed, opting instead to thread my way through city streets. This zigzag route takes about the same time as if I had taken the highways (50 minutes, minimum, in rush hours), but it's far more interesting.

I've seen a few strange things lately. To wit:

1) Two scrawny, ropy guys decked out head to toe in Serious Cyclist a la Lance bicycling wear--the tight thin brightly colored nylon shirts, padded bike shorts, bike shoes, helmets, bike gloves, streamlined sunglasses, and beef-jerky legs. Nothing unusual about that, you say. Right. But what I didn't say was that these ropy guys were on UNICYCLES. I kid you not. Unicycles that looked like mountain bike type tires--thick, huge, chunky tire with a seat on it. Now when have you seen that? What bugs me about it is, why the bike gloves? They're not exactly holding onto anything....

2) In the warehouse district halfway through my trip while stuck at a stoplight, on a blazing hot day, I look over to one of the anonymous warehouse businesses and see: A large beefy man dressed head to toe in a snow suit--navy blue poofy ski parka, ski bib, and heavy weather boots, coming out of one of the warehouse doors. As if this is freaking Nome, Alaska. He hops down the steps, all bundled up in the 100 degree Dallas heat, unzips his parka, drapes it over the stair railing, and lights up. Stands outside in the blazing sun on the asphalt, in his white T-shirt, poofy ski bib, winter boots, and has a smoke. Eh?? Best as I can figure, there must be some kind of frozen storage business back in that warehouse.

3) While driving down a feeder street, I see a flurry of movement on a residental street I'm passing, and am taken aback by what's unfolding before my eyes: A melee involving half a dozen people taking place in the middle of the street, as two Carrollton police cruisers come to a sliding, screeching (smoking!) halt in the middle of the fray. The police tumble out of their cars, guns drawn, aiming at the people in the street, swiftly advanging on them, their arms braced straight out and their hands wrapped around thick, ugly automatics. That's all I saw before I was around the next corner and out of range.

4) An extremely fit and attractive Asian man in his thirties, shirtless, riding a red Schwinn bicycle with a wire basket on the handlebars. In the basket sat a happy West Highland Terrier. Exactly like Dorothy and Toto, only Asian, washboard abs, and the dog was white. . .

5) In heavy traffic, a man driving his Chevy Tahoe up over the curb and onto the median in the middle of the street, piling out of his car at a dead run, dashing over the median and into opposing traffic. . .to rescue a turtle. Which he did. The turtle was stubbornly trying to walk down the center lane of a thoroughfare in heavy traffic. Our unknown hero snagged the terrapin in a football hold, dashed back through traffic, and got back in his car. Yay for Mr. Tahoe man, whoever you are!

6) I can't stand THIS guy. . .whoever he is. He drives a navy blue jacked-up pickup truck with testicles attached to the back tow bar. Yes, you heard that right. Testicles. Or more specifically, truck nuts. They're proportionally sized for the truck, swing pendulously, flesh colored, and have visible veins in them. They're thoroughly disgusting. I've had this guy in front of me three times thus far, his ass in my face. The fact that his truck's jacked up on big chunky tires means the truck nuts are at my driving eye level, where I can't avoid looking at them. Oh, ugh!!!

7) A mother and a teenager in a Volvo behind me. The mother's obviously very angry about something. She's ranting and raving, her arms waving everywhere rapidly as she screams (and drives at the same time). Her arm waving was what caught my attention in the rearview mirror. Her teenaged passenger sat with shoulders slumped, head down, longish hair hanging down over the face so that all I could see in the mirror was a nose and chin. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Mom screams and hollers at 45 mph, and then shoots an arm out and whacks the hell out of the teenager's face. Teenager doesn't even flinch. The only sign of impact was his/her head rocking to the side, the hair displaced only for a split second. Mom continues yelling and waving. I stopped watching at that point.

8) And the one that bothers me most of all--a well-dressed blonde businessman in his thirties standing on the side of the road, blood streaming down his face, doubled over, screaming incoherently with rage at an unseen thing to the north. Traffic was heavy and there were a lot of people around. He had on khakis, a starched chambray blue shirt, expensive loafers, and had receding blonde hair. No car, no keys, no briefcase, no nothing. Just him, his face bloodied, raving mad. It didn't occur to me until well after I had passed that he might have been assaulted and carjacked. I did think about stopping to see if he needed help but his rage scared me.