A little less than a happy high

One of the hazards of having my bike serviced in a shop that employs a brace of bike-couriers is that the same surly invincibility they use to navigate city streets tends to bleed out into their customer service. I dropped my wheels off last night for tuning just as the young woman behind the counter was complaining to one of her cohorts about "some crack-head" who wanted to know how much one of their bikes weighed. It didn’t seem that unreasonable a request to me, though the exchange was instructive in that I learned that manufacturers don’t normally publish weights because there can be a significant variance based on frame-size alone.

And so, edified, I approached the counter to ask for a tune and that they check my bottom bracket. Before I knew what was happening, the bike was out of my hands and up on a rack, and I had a tattooed twenty-something insisting that there was nothing wrong with it.

"Well, when I’m climbing or topping out the gears I’m getting a clicking noise."

"I can try to tighten it for you, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it."

"The last time I was getting this noise, I was told I needed to replace it. Please, can you just check it out?"

He rolled his eyes. "It’s a closed cylinder, so there shouldn’t be anything wrong..."

"Yeah, I got that. Look, I’m leaving it for a tune anyway, so could you just have it looked over?"

"I guess... It’s when you’re under power?"

At this point, I was starting to think that the judgement has been made. I’m not of the typical bicyclist’s build, and he’s sized me up for a weekender or worse, a poser. (Heh. I just remembered the pseudo-skaters we had in high school. All the gear, none of the shred.) I know the dialogue in my head is just my own paranoia, but I couldn't shake the idea that he was calling me out. I felt like I wasn't ~enough to warrant his time, and that maybe the things I imagined he wass thinking might be true. I said, simply, "Yeah. It’s the same problem I had last time around."

"Okay," he replied, "we’ll have it ready for you Thursday."

Query: if a party were to kill someone whom he believed desired him dead and who might have had the means or might have acquired the means by which to attack him, would it be possible for the party to claim that his "preemptive strike" was an act of self-defense? Would this be viable as a legal defense?

Just curious, is all...


On the upside, I suppose it would mean a possible return to a dueling culture.