Slap-happy trails to you

Yesterday was Memorial Day, and today I feel as if I’d been kicked several times in the crotch by a rodeo clown. That’s because, in the spirit of honoring our fallen soldiers, we decided to dress in ridiculous outfits and pedal around in circles for a couple hours before stuffing our faces with food. We went on a bike ride.

Why is it that children can dress however they want when they hop on their bikes, but adults have to make a fashion production out of it? Adults, in deadly earnest, don costumes for everything, a fact I was reminded of in embarrassing detail when I visited an aerobics class with a friend a few years back. Everyone else was dressed in trendy spandex leotards and special aerobics trainers, and I showed up in a floppy t-shirt, denim shorts, rolled-down socks, and Mr. Roger’s-brand deck shoes. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail, but that was my only concession to the aerobics community, of which I was clearly not a part.  Anyway, despite the bike shorts Scott so graciously lent me, the ones with the crotch pad thick enough to fool the Princess and the Pea and all her sisters, I still looked like the product of a past century. Maybe I shouldn’t have applied toothpaste to my mosquito bites before I left the house, but you live and learn.

Poor Scott. As is any proper biking enthusiaste, he’s enthusiastic about biking, and as a natural-born teacher endowed with the gift of gab, he’s also enthusiastic about hammering the details down your throat in an enthusiastic manner. I, on the other hand, as a reclusive intractable mute who’d rather be home reading, hate being taught something unless I ask. “Okay, see those gears on the right side of your handlebars?” Scott chirped enthusiastically in the parking lot as we started out. Undeterred by receiving no answer whatsoever, he continued. “And the ones on the left side? Those determine the blah-blah of your doo-dah. Here, let’s pull over and I’ll show you…”

“NO, just keep riding.”

“Well, if I show you…”

“NO, I’ll figure it out myself. Me do it. ME DO IT.”

Following behind Scott several yards on the trail, in the flurry of the water- and woodfowl he flushed as he rode, I messed with the gears and found out they worked the way he said they did. Imagine that.

One of the deadliest hazards on the bike trail, I discovered, was other bicyclists and/or pedestrians, but Scott thoughtfully circumvented this by proclaiming in a loud voice, “Coming up behind!” every time we encountered them. He did this to avoid startling them. As with the gears, it was good for me to see how helpful this was, as formerly peaceful, meandering people jumped and stumbled over their feet on a mad scramble to the trail shoulder, or accidentally upset strollers containing sleeping children, or skidded and fell off their own bikes. 

I think I’ll wait a few weeks, or until the burning stops, before hitting the trail again. Hey you guys, I hope you’re having a great day. kiss! xo