Stupid shit people say

Me.  Before getting my "participation" medal.

There were a couple of funny stories from my Fondo ride.  On involves a woman with a fat ass being mad at me when I passed her on hill climb which is more or less self-explanatory.  The other is this one.
So we finish the ride, have our lunch, chill out with a couple of beers and chat with Wheezy and then we get our bikes out of the bike area and are heading back to our hotel.
I've got a lot of medals for completing various marathons and halfs, and for placing in some of them.  I'm not a big medal person.  I have seen people wearing their medal the day after the event occurs.  I maybe wear my medal during the immediate aftermath and perhaps I will wear it if a bunch of my fellow competitors are getting together for a celebratory dinner, as sometimes we're all getting together after having competed in different races and so we want to know what one gets at the end.
If you know me, and you don't, you know that I haven't shown you all of my medals and explained the stories behind them.  Nor have I even asked if you wanted to see them.
Anyways, we're heading back to the hotel and I am still wearing my medal around my neck.  Riders are still literally coming in.  We're walking our bikes and this woman flags me down and says "What's that medal for?".  Her husband looks mildly uncomfortable and I kind of give her a weird look since there are well over 3,000 riders with their friends and families in Whistler for the weekend and roads are closed and it's a pretty big goddamn event.  So I say "It's for the Gran Fondo bike race that happened today" and she says - and I kid you the fuck not - "Oh.  So it's a participation medal: everyone gets one."
And I look at her, after spending five hours in the saddle and riding 122 kilometres and climbing over 7,000 feet and I say "Yes".
And then she just smiles and walks on.
I'm quiet for like 20 seconds, which is really about 20 seconds way too much for me and then I remember the second most stupid thing that anyone's ever said to me which happened when we were in Seattle a few weeks ago and the Blue Angels were flying overhead for an airshow.  I turn back to Michael and I quote the heavily coiffed and jingoistic woman who said to me "You hear that?  That's the sound of freedom."
Talk about comedic timing.