A mentally disabled man who rode his unicycle naked on the Kemah bridge is being accused of indecent exposure after police say he was distracting drivers and creating a hazard.

Joseph Glynn Farley, 45, was in custody Thursday was to be transferred to the Galveston County Jail on the misdemeanor charge, police said. His bond was set at $1,500.

Kemah Police Chief Greg Rikard said Farley was not intoxicated or impaired when he was arrested Wednesday afternoon in the buff on a bridge on Texas 146 that links Kemah and Seabrook.

“We started getting phone calls,” Rikard said. “People were stopping by the police department, saying that a guy was riding naked on the bridge.”

Rikard said that officers are familiar with Farley, who lives in the area and often can be seen riding his unicycle. “We haven’t had any issues with him until yesterday (Wednesday),” the chief said.

Moments before the bare escapade, patrol officers warned Farley to stay in his lane on the bridge because he was veering into traffic and falling down, Rikard said. “They asked him to stop (riding) for the day. He was compliant, he said ok, and off he went.”

“Next thing you know,” he said, “he stripped down and went at it in a different direction.”

Farley told officers that he liked the way it felt, Rikard said. The cyclist’s clothes were found at the foot of the bridge.

Carl Farley, the cyclist’s father, said that his son suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and sometimes engages in unusual behavior that until now had been out of public eye. Exacerbating matters, he said, is that his son does not acknowledge his mental condition.

“At the moment, it (the disorder) doesn’t have a lot of treatments, especially in my son’s case who doesn’t believe he’s sick,” said Carl Farley, 73. What’s more, he refuses to take medication or to take part in therapy, he said.

“Over the last six-plus years he’s steadily gone downhill,” Carl Farley said of his son. “He frequently suffers from delusions and loss of contact with reality, which is what the bridge incident illustrates. Oftentimes he doesn’t know right from wrong.”

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