My Worst Rider

I have been saving my ‘bad’ stories for after my English class and today is the day I share a pretty negative story. I like to think I am a very patient individual. Giving people the benefit of the doubt even at my own detriment. The rider I’m about to talk about stretched my patience thin and it was about a 10-15 min ride. I go to the designated pickup in Oceanside. I park in the street, toggle my hazards and send my usual ‘I am here’ message. The street had houses on my left and a chain-link fence on the right, so I was watching my left. After a min, I notice movement out of the corner of my eye from the right side mirror and the rider gets in the car panting. Not sure what the reason for his exhaustion was, I simply asked how he was doing. He responded, “Oh I’m *breath* doin’ alright, but you should know *breath* I’m bleeding right now.” I gave a quick look up and down of him with the limited street light we had and I did not notice any signs of physical confrontation other than his panting. I gave him some water and a cliff bar and asked him what happened. Apparently, he was beat up by a ‘mob’. This choice of word made me skeptical of his story. But I asked for more details and listened to what he had to say. He kept adding details to his story. This was apparently a group of Mexicans that were threatening him as he walked down the street because he was white. I did not buy that for a second thinking there was more to the story. And then he started to rant…he gave me a little background info about how he knew someone in the first grade who was Mexican and was one of his best friends. And then he added “But he wasn’t like the group of guys I ran into. In fact, I can’t help but think most if not all Mexicans are just poorly behaved.” Hearing this made me feel uncomfortable. So much so, I did not know how to respond. A few moments later as we get on the freeway, he continues giving me a classic ‘I’m not racist but…’ rant giving his world view. “Have you noticed that every non-white country is worse than white countries? That’s why they are trying to immigrate into here. We have it good here in the US!” He just went on and on about this. Telling me that minorities are stealing jobs from ‘American families’ and were just making the country worse off. I stayed silent for the most part contemplating if I should kick him out of the car leaving him on the side of the freeway. As we get on the last freeway, he escalates it further, “Alright I’m gonna get real here for a moment okay? White Power. It’s real. We have the power over every one else. I’m not saying they aren’t human, but they don’t have good intentions. They wanna come here and make this country theirs. We need to protect our country and keep everyone out.” This is the general gist of what he said and he said way more than I put down onto this blog. By the end of his rant, we were parked outside of his house. As he gets out of the car he tells me that I’m a nice guy and to take heed on his warning. I just said ‘Yep’ and nodded and drove off. As of this blog post, I have never felt more uncomfortable with a rider before and this flaming racist is the worst. The only bright side, he tipped me $5.