I was cycling back home from class a couple of years ago in Mobile Alabama when I came upon sections of metal fencing strung out along the road. I looked up and I looked down and I could see no reason for this freakish obstacle. It wasn’t very high and so I swung my bicycle over the fence and then clambered over myself.
I then heard a stentorian voice coming from a nearby bullhorn warning me not to proceed any further and to step back from the fence. It was Alabama’s finest fully armed and not in a good mood. I was hoping to get a green card at that time and so I didn’t want to argue. Not that it would have been a good idea anyway. I said I would take the long way round, through Langan Park, which I did.
I never did find out the reason for the barrier and I suspect that if my skin had been of a darker hue I might still be languishing in an Alabama gaol. It was weird and discomfiting and not at all the way police in the UK would have dealt with the matter. Travelling by bicycle, or even worse walking, are almost felonies in themselves in Alabama so it is probably just as well that I never did get my green card.