After the second day of GRUB, Beth suggested we all head over to the river for a quick dip. She had hoped we would quick dip yesterday instead of, say, showering at the cabin and using up the water at the cabins. We had a few starts and stops, but ended up at the creek just downstream of the 6th St. Bridge. Not the cleanest of spots, but definitely convenient.
When we arrived, a small group of drunken college boys were flirting with a small group of college girls. And when I say flirting, I mean taunting, catcalling, insulting, and throwing flip flops and dirt clods at them. What passes for flirting these days would most likely have been called assault and battery when I was in college.
Kris and I arrived, and wandered past the mating ritual, down the path to the creek edge. We stood at the stop of the rocks, watching our teammates enter the waterm laughing at the frigid water.
As we stood there, a ball of wet sand came flying at our heads, hitting Kris in the hat, and landing on my shoulders with a wet splat. I turned in anger, as Kris asked, "What the hell?" I knew who threw the ball of sand, having seen the guy throwing earlier, and hollered at the top of my lungs, "You can cut that shit out. Right. Now." They looked a little sheepish, but made no acknowledgement of my yell.
I turned to walk back to the bridge, as Kris did. He continued to the car, as I stopped to tell various teammates who were just arriving what had happened. Dan O cajoled the punks, "Not cool, guys, not cool."
I followed Kris to the car, made sure he was okay, then pulled out my cell phone. I was sufficiently annoyed that a call to the police was in order. 411 worked just fine, and I was connected to the Boulder policy in under a minute. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of walking around as I made the call, and one of the hoodlums saw me talking on the phone while looking at them. They scattered out of the water. Even more tragically, they scattered onto the shore between the cars and the water. Rather than leaving, they hovered, never quite leaving us alone.
After about 10 minutes of trying to relax, I gave up, and walked back to the car. Kris had the trunk open and was arranging things, but I thought he was sleeping in the car and had forgotten to close the trunk. Kris suggested ice cream, so off we went to the Haagen Dazs on Pearl St. My months and months of travelling to Boulder were not for naught!
We arrived back at ye ole watering hole just as everyone was driving away to go to dinner. At dinner, I found out that not only had the hoodlums returned to the water, but had taken up throwing sand clods at our group. One hit Roshan in the head. Another tried "cock fighting puffery" as Mark said, to start a fight. Mark's thought was, "Dude, I'm holding a baby!" Mirabelle would have kicked their collective ass, of course.
Doyle's response was my favorite: "Uh, you know, we roll twenty strong."
Having heard the hoodlums came back to make trouble for my friends because of my actions (ultimately because of their own actions, but pushed along by mine), I was a little sad. I don't want to cause trouble for my friends, especially during these moments of starting to live without fear stopping me. All actions have consequences, I just need to make sure I think of them before I take a stand.
The bummer of the whole situation was, however, realizing I lost $20 when taking out my cell phone to call the police. I had a bill tucked in the phone case. It fell out when I made the call. Sigh.
