Pulling a Bayless.

I met a girl last night, a friend of a friend, who's riding her bike from Austin to Alaska this summer. I'd heard stories about her before, and was extremely excited to meet this person in the flesh. Anyone who has the balls to ride their bike from here to Alaska is a badass, and I want to be their friend.

So there we are, and I'm asking her questions about her bike trip: how long it will take (70 days); how much has she been training to get ready (starting in December, she rides at least three days a week, between 25 and 60 miles each time, depending on the day); which route will she be taking ("I'm going through Central America," she said, "through Colorado," before I explained to her that she shouldn't phrase it that way, porque me confunde); where is her final destination exactly (Anchorage); stuff like that.

And then, someone else chimes in with a question:

"What are you doing this for?"

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In high school, it was called "pulling a Bayless." Anything that was said which made fun of/spoke irreverently about another race, religion, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, person's mother, anything -- but only if it was said right in front of the last possible person you'd want to hear -- was "pulling a Bayless."

Borat pulls Bayless' all the time, except he's doing it on purpose.

Let's be clear: I'm not a racist, I'm not a sexist, I'm not an anythingist. I'm honest, with myself at least -- and I try to be honest with other people as well. And honestly, I think it's funny and somehow morally justified to make fun of everyone, without exception, because that, my friend, is the meaning of true equality. It don't matter if you're black or white or a freak like Michael Jackson. I will make fun of you, just slightly less than I make fun of myself (but for some people, I will rip on you much more than I could ever dream of ripping on myself -- you know who you are).

This, by the way, was especially true in high school, when I was a much bigger asshole than I am today. This was when the phrase "pulling a Bayless" was coined. I could try and say that I just couldn't catch a break back then, that it was simply a four-year streak of bad luck, but it's also true that I was constantly putting myself in a position to get caught saying something stupid, because I was saying stupid things with a much higher frequency in those days.

"You could ... assume everyone was gay, and not say anything offensive," Dwight once told Michael in "The Office," in the episode when it was revealed that Oscar was gay, and Michael was all torn up about having once called him "faggy." "Yeah," Michael answered, rolling his eyes at what he thought to be an incredibly dumb suggestion, "I'm sure everyone would appreciate me treating them like they were gay."

I just tried to find that clip on entertonement.com, but it wasn't there. I did, however find a Dwight clip where he himself sort of pulled a Bayless ... only it wasn't in front of someone whose mother had actually died of cancer, and therefore, it wasn't a Bayless at all.

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"What are you doing this for?"

We're back at the original scene now, by the way.

"Oh, cancer research," she said, matter of factly.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "And I lived in Africa for over a year because I had always had a burning desire to help Tanzanian oprhans, and not because I just wanted to chill with my best friend in a foreign land, and would have taken any job that would have allowed me to do that."

"Oh come on," I said, cutting in, "you didn't do it for cancer research. You did it because you wanted to ride your bike to freaking Alaska, dude!"

I thought it would draw a laugh.

"Actually I lost my mother to cancer, so..."

But I thought wrong.

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(Cue the crickets)

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Not knowing what to say, I tried to make a joke to make up for the failed joke which had gotten me into this incredibly awkward situation in the first place.

"Wanna get away?" I asked out loud, looking in the distance.

Then I began to apologize profusely.

I felt horrible. Who makes a cancer joke to a girl whose mother died of cancer? Come on, Bayless! What are you DOING?

I kept apologizing, profusely.

"It's okay, it's okay," she assured me. "It's fine." A strange scene: a girl who lost her mother to cancer, trying to make me feel better about it. I am going to Hell.

I kept apologizing.

The look on my friend's face -- the girl who had introduced me to her -- said it all: "You are an idiot."

"I could hear it coming," she said later on while standing in line with my British guest I have in town at the moment. "And I was trying to stomp on his foot, but then I realized, it was already in his mouth."

"It would have been so much funnier if she had just reacted really, really poorly to that," Jamison was telling me simultaneously, when it was just the two of us rehashing the event that had just transpired, and wondering out loud if the image of my Uzbek-asshole face would be her motivating force as she pedaled up the formidable mountain chain that cuts across Central America.

"Yeah," I shot back, "it would have been funnier for YOU!"

I was glad to be holding a beer at that moment. I drank it very fast.

And before leaving, I made sure to find this poor girl -- an inspiration, a selfless person, the opposite of this guy -- and apologize, again. And again. And about three more times after that.

"I promise," she said, "I'm fine. Don't lose any sleep over it, all right?"

"That's why I'm about to buy another beer," I said.