@#**%^#&@*!

Every once in a while out here I'm flummoxed — someone does something so entirely out of the norm, disregarding good taste or convention, that I don't know how to react.

Yesterday I was peacefully riding my bike, blissing to this
on my iPod, perhaps straying a little closer to the center of the road than I should have, when blasting around the bend behind me beeping came an old man on his moped. As he passed me he torqued his body around to to flash me the finger.

Perfectly acceptable, even required behavior perhaps in Providence or San Jose — too odd to believe out here. I'm holding on to the thought that the man was communicating to me in sign language something about a one-horned big horn sheep.