are kilometers worth crowing about?

When I #RideTheHighlands, which is frequently, I often pitstop coming or going or sometimes both in Calabogie at The Calabogie Brewing Company, The Redneck Café or the Bogie General Store.

If there are other riders around, I usually try to strike up a conversation. Some are more willing to engage than others. So it was this past Wednesday when I stopped to stretch my legs during my circuitous route back to Almonte.

There was a lone blacked-out bike sitting by the gas pumps at the opposite end of the General Store parking lot. I could see it had an orange graphic on the gas tank, but it was too far away for me to decipher the wording. I decided to investigate.

I didn’t see its owner until I was close enough to touch the bike, a Harley Davidson 114 according to the graphic. She was standing about twenty-five feet away in the long afternoon shade cast by the store and eating something from a bag. Maybe chips from the food truck?

Our conversation began with the standard stuff.

“Nice ride,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Where you headed?”

“Petawawa.”

“You got a ways to got yet,” I said.

“Nah. I ride four- or five hundred-kilometer loops.”

I nodded. Stayed quiet for a bit. Gave her a chance to ask me something. She continued to eat.

“Where you from?” I picked it up again.

“Petawawa.”

Again, I waited for her to do more than reply to my questions. Still, she continued to eat.

“Bike’s real clean,” I said, mentally comparing its blacker-than-black exterior to my dead-bug-encrusted windscreen. “Is it new?”

“Nope. Put about 10,000 kilometers on it every year,” she said.

Her tone suggested that 10k was quite an accomplishment, one with which I should be impressed.

I might have shared that I was 150 kilometers away from riding 20,000 so far this year. Or that I rode 21,000 kilometers last year in my first season. But I didn’t.

“Wow,” I said.

“I ride The Highlands a lot,” she said. “There are tons of great roads in The Highlands.”

“Yeah, I know,” I replied.

Enough idle chitchat.

“Well, I’d best be off,” I said. “Ride safe.”

“Thanks,” she answered.

I walked back across the parking lot, geared up and got on TheFox.

She was still there when I pulled out onto the 508 headed toward Burnstown for the last leg of my ‘infinity loop.’

 

© 2023 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.

you wouldn’t want to kill ryan reynolds, would you?

less may be more, but more is better 🙂