tourists on bicycles

Here is a typical Dan story:

He took his bicycle into the bicycle shop down the road (there is only one in town) to see about getting a crank set for it. The shop owner looked at it quizzically and asked if he had built it himself. O yeah, just cobbed it together really. The owner said, "you are a bike mechanic?" Dan listed all the bicycle and sports shops he'd worked at. The owner said, "would you like a job?" (these kinds of things happen to Dan all the time. People see how competent or knowledgeable he is about something and then offer him a job. It's rather humorous, actually.)

So the next day Dan started as the shop's new part-time mechanic. It doesn't pay much of course but it's something different and will fill in some gaps when Dan isn't working at the fish job.

That same day this family of tourists came into the shop. A man, two women (full-on hair and make-up, high heels, etc.), and two children under five. The man wanted to rent bicycles for them all so they could ride to the garbage dump to see bears.

I know what you are thinking. What the heck?

The garbage dump is about 20-25 kilometres away from the bicycle shop. Sure there is a trail for about 8km of it, but after that it is a narrow shoulder on a busy highway with 80km/h traffic.

The owner at first pleaded with the man advising against this notion, saying it was rather unsafe to ride that far with such small children (never mind the stiletto heels on a bicycle). The man insisted. The owner finally refused. He declared that if the children should die on his rented bicycles, he would not want that on his conscience.

(My comment later, when Dan relayed this story, was why on earth would you take your meal-sized children to see bears?)

Later the owner told Dan that those women would have been filing for divorce before they hit the junction (where the bicycle trail ends).

It just blows my mind what grown-ups can think up...