the best laid plans…
Posting that “…it might be a little breezy,” was my first mistake. ‘Breezy’ was the understatement of the year so far. It was a hurricane out there. I had jinxed myself before I even started.
My second mistake was to not turn back when I came upon a garbage ‘can’ in the middle of the road in the cluster of homes on Cemetery side road between the bridge over the 7 and Beckwith 9th Line. I watched the plastic container bounce across the road in front of me and the oncoming traffic and, while I stopped and relocated it to the ditch where no one was likely to hit it, it didn’t occur to me to turn around because it was blowing a gale out there. Nah. I kept going.
My third mistake was to bear right instead of left in Smith Falls, which meant I never made it to Jasper, Easton Corners, Hemlock Corners, North Augusta or New Dublin, but instead went directly to North Augusta and missed checking a good 15% of our International Female Ride Day route.
I could have turned around and gone home then. But nah. I kept going. And, as a result, got blown all over the road for the next four and a half hours LOL.
My friend Jenn texted me about halfway through the loop.
“Are you riding?” She wrote. “It’s windy out there…”
Jenn isn’t the worrying kind.
Then, after I put TheFox in the garage, my phone pinged with a request from my friend James (who has ridden to hell and back without blinking an eye).
“Shoot me a text when you get in,” it said. “It’s windy out there.”
If your way-more-experienced rider friends are worried about the wind, you know what you have just ridden through was a wee bit more than what your imagination imagined.
Still, I made it home safe and sound. Despite the breeze and the change in plans…
© 2024 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.
