The situation is not surprising to me at all. Let me tell you about my experience with crazy people.....
A frew riding buddies and I were on this back-road, waaay out in the middle of nowhere (cow country, lol). If anyone knows where Duvall/Carnation is washington state then they'd understand. Anyway, there is this stretch of road between two giant fields. It's about 1 mile long, perfectly straight, visibility is 100% open from end to end, since it's just low-lying fields all around. We were using this stretch of road to 'mess around', i.e. speed, wheelie, stoppie, etc. Yes, I know I'll get flamed for that, but, considering there were no houses around and basically no traffic it was safer and what we thought, not easy to upset houses with bike noise, so we used it to 'play'. Actually at one point some farmers walked across their field and came to watch and were cheering us on.
So, we were messing around on this road for about 15 minutes, one of my friends is coming down the road showing off (speeding) when we see this SUV come around the corner from the opposite direction. Obviously my friend slows down to the speed limit while there's a car on the road, but guess what the SUV does? She turns INTO the oncoming traffic lane attempting to hit (?) or force my friend to stop/swerve in his lane. Yes, she turned into his lane and would have run directly into him if he hadn't swerved in time. He wasn't speeding at the point from when she turned onto that stretch of road.
So, this lady in her SUV stops, blocking both lanes, starts yelling at us (swearing, etc), telling us to get out of here. I guess it turns out she lived on a hill nearby and could hear (see?) us so she brings her SUV down to try and kill one of us? She also threatened to have her husband come down with his shotgun and make us leave the road.
What bothered me the most about that, is instead of calling the cops she brings her giant SUV to come 'stop us' by forcing it into the oncoming lane while a biker is coming directly at her. Do you think she would have done that if we were all driving cars? Probably not, but since her SUV is much bigger and deadlier than our bikes, she decided to bring that. The best part about this is that we have it all on film (I was standing with a few friends on the side of the road filming it).
There really should be a place to do stunts for bikes. Streets are obviously not a good choice, but around here parking lots (even private ones) are apparently illegal too and the cops will ticket you. So where do you go to stunt?
Another short ironic story. At RMC (Renton Motorcycle) on Tuesday nights use to be 'bike night'. Hundreds of bikers would gather in the parking lot after store hours and 'show off' their bikes. There was a long strip that people would use to stunt, some of the guys (and girls!) were really good. Then one Tuesday night about 6 cops were down there early handing out pamphlets that had a picture of a sportbike with notes on it saying 'aftermarket lights and parts are illegal' 'stunting is illegal' etc etc. So, hundreds of bikers, no place to stunt. So, what do you think happens? Yep, you guessed it! Instead of a nice controlled area for bikers to show off and stunt, all of these bikers can't do that, so instead they head out to do it on the streets! Yay, good job cops! You just unleashed over a hundred bikes onto the street to stunt in traffic rather than in a controlled area with no cars or pedestrians.
You know, now that I think about it. If the cops really just wanted all stunting and speeding to stop they shouldn't hassle the bikers, they should hassle the manufacturers of bikes forcing limiters or whatever. All they really want to do is make a few $$ by giving out tickets and also allow bikes to be on the road to collect more taxes! Yay! lol Cops and laws don't mix.
