Crimes

The town I live in regularly makes it into the top ten places to raise a family, top cities for women's health, etc. It's supposed to be this healthy, friendly, safe, interesting, fun town. I guess technically it's a city but it's the smallest place I've ever lived in my adult life, by far, and it feels like a town to me.

I commute to and from work on a bike path that is separate from streets and sidewalks. I only have to think about traffic once on my commute, when the path intersects with a major road. I also run on that bike path on the weekends. I also regularly took the kids on it in their stroller, back when they would consent to stay still in a stroller, and we would go to a playground just off the path. My point is that I use this bike path constantly to go anywhere.

But this weekend we had two crimes on the bike path. The first one happened a block from my office, on a part where I travel every time I go to work. A college student, a woman, was robbed at gunpoint on the path. It happened at about 7:30 p.m. There have been many, many times when I've left work later than that to walk home on the path.

Then on Sunday morning a woman jogger was accosted on the bike path a mere block from my house. A man hissed at her, showed his teeth, and then tackled her on the path. She fought him off and ran away.

I've always thought of the bike path as safe, even though it does feel a little creepy sometimes late at night if I'm walking alone. Sometimes I have taken a street route if it's particularly late, just because the path isn't lit and it gets very, very dark. But for the most part, I walk on the path without thinking about it. It's usually well populated but there have been times when I've, say, walked to work early on a Saturday morning and the path has been deserted. Now should I think twice about this? I don't want to give up my bike path runs or my walking commute to work. I don't want to live my life in fear of something that's statistically improbable. Maybe I should get some pepper spray or something? The jogger who was accosted is scarier to me than the woman who was robbed at gunpoint, for some reason. Just because the story seemed so strange and creepy. Neither man has been caught.

Maybe I should take a self defense course!