PERPLEXING ENCOUNTERS

From behind, a series of hard, purposeful raps came crashing down on my head. An unexpected attack, I was both surprised and blinded by the viciousness of it, and by the fact that it happened at all.

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The view of the sun was inaccessible to me as I rounded the corner and sauntered along the bike path, which skirmishes parallel to Fitzherbert Avenue, from the city centre to Massey. Blinding rays of light, spreading expansively across the dairy paddocks, intimated that the sun was just overhead. I deduced that the time was almost high noon, but without a watch I could not be sure. I was heading to the office in the Geography Building, where I work almost daily on my thesis, after an early morning excursion into the city centre.

Bright rays signified warmth, but on this day, Palmerston North was overtaken by a chill that had crept overnight onto the southern tip of the north island. The chill in the late morning air betrayed what the white rays seemed to imply: a warm sunny day.

As I rounded the corner just over the peaceful Manawatu River, I marvelled at the serenity characterizing the ambience of this exact location, a discrete spot along the semi-busy highway. It is one of my favourites out of all the ones along the walking routes I normally take for my daily walking exercises. A cascading cliff of bushy vegetation, which implies the existence of residential life on the other side, exists to the left of this spot. Meanwhile, the ambience of this spot is spoiled occasionally by the lone cyclist cruising along on the part of the path reserved for them, and frequently by the panoply of cars zipping past as they round the curve.

On this day, however, the serenity of this excursion is betrayed by the aggressive pedestrian, who came at me from behind. After wrenching free from my attacker’s tight grasp, with some effort I stepped to my left onto a grassy patch, a gesture intended also to relinquish the path to the attacker, where seconds before I had treaded, untethered to any overwhelming worries.  

I glanced to my right, a reflex reaction to movement just over my shoulder, and noticed that this person was not in fact a pedestrian, but a cyclist. I took note of the gait of this person and the touring bike she forcefully manoeuvred back onto the bike path. An expert hop onto the bike seat and off she went, as if accosting me was an item on her to do list for the morning.

The lone witness to this attack is a somewhat tall, grey-haired, paunchy man, someone I did not recognize, who disentangled himself from his bicycle to ask with a hint of concern in his tone, “Are you all right?”

Hours later, she came to my office door, asking for a moment in her office. The purposeful, almost manly stride viewed from behind, struck a chord; the touring bike leaned up against the wall triggered a red flag. “Does that look familiar?” she asked me, as if to prod for a clear, visual memory of that incident in the late morning.

She offered me the seat facing her computer and posed the most perplexing enquiry: “What are you doing here?”  Several small gestures, but one second after her enquiry, it occurred to me that I had taken the wrong turn.