Obstructing teenagers?
Sorry, can’t be bothered typing this in dutch at the moment, I would just like to ask for some advice, feel free to answer in dutch though. I’m f(26) and my husband is m(29). We have some friends (a man and his pregnant wife) visiting and were on a bike ride to a park, and we encountered some teenage boys. Very dutch, blond and blue eyed. They proceeded to ride 3 in a row and drove as slow as possible, trying to block anyone trying to pass. 3 of us got past but they blocked the last friend, even stopping. I asked them what they were doing and got nothing but nonsense replies, like “idk” and blown raspberries.
I’ll admit, I got riled up, my temper is a little short, so I mirrored them, but I thought it would be over after we passed them. Instead they followed us for two more blocks, still trying to block us and irritate us. I tried to just keep driving but they caught up and actually blocked me from 3 sides.
I reacted without thinking, can barely remember it, but I felt so cornered that the only way out was with force, so I rammed my wheel into the bike of the guy on my left, and shoved the guy on the right out of the way, somehow managed to stay on and gunned it up and over the bridge. My husband was apparently right behind me and was about to ram into the back of the left bike but I did it first.
That was just my own experience, my companions had different ones. I would just like to ask if anyone else has experienced this, and if there’s anything different we could have done? How would you typically handle this?
I don’t want to resort to violence or physical force, but it felt like I was given no other option as they kept on pursuing us. Is there like a magical phrase that I can say to break the group mentality spell of the teenage hooligan? Any advice is welcome.