Date: 11.12.11
Ride Day
Again, with the random free range pit bull....
I see him running across the road from about maybe a couple of hundred yards away and I have to turn the bike around, watch as he disappears into the bushes and then gauge the distance so that I make sure that when I am passing that spot that I am at full sprint.
This could be a very nice dog indeed, but dogs don’t like moving objects by their homes, particularly ones they can't make sense of. They probably figured out trucks and cars but I am not something they see a great deal of, and therefore I am a curiosity. And I like my body in its present state...
By the time I am maxing out my power and hitting over 30mph, I steam past that driveway and I hear a bark and some gravel spitting like he is coming and I glance over my shoulder and he is at me but he slows and then stops and then looks a little sad actually.
The wind is straight up rough and when I'm due south it's in my face at about 20 miles an hour. And I'm pretty sure that as I head into the plain states that this will get even worse, so I'm happy to take shelter in the trees while I have them.
I go all the way around Cross Lake, and I stop on a bridge to take a picture and since I have my headphones in/on, I don’t immediately realize that there is man and a woman fishing, just below me. I ask them what they are fishing for.
And she says “Sir?” as in she didn’t hear me and I repeat myself politely and she asks me “what are we fishing for?” as in do you mean why are we fishing? And I say no, what are you fishing for, as in what are you attempting to catch.
And the man smiles and says “Brim or sometimes perch.” And this doesn’t look like a place I would be eating fish from.
And there is an empty phonebooth in a front yard, and a plastic chair halfway submerged in mud like someone was having a perfectly good sit down with themselves and realized they were half submerged and decided to screw it and leave the chair, like a casualty.
And a pickup with three kids in it throw a bottle of water at me that misses me, so I wave at them. And there is a house with about 10 pretty menacing-looking dudes outside of it that look really interested in me when I come by and I give them a polite nod and they almost all do the same in unison, like, you're cool, carry-on.That evening I go to a nightclub and I meet up with a waitress that I met in Monroe and her friends. And then I meet some more friends. I dance too, and I haven't danced in a while and I missed it.
It is so wonderful to start off the day, and end the day, on just the right tone. Sometimes, and this time, it takes a little effort to detour around the negativity and the dangerous bits, but when I see it with enough heads up it's not so hard to navigate it.
I just need a good head of steam so I can blow right by it.
Yeah, a live band doing covers of house hits...tell me where you have seen THAT before.
