Biking Through Paradise

I don't drive. I've never had a license. I'm one of those starry-eyed Boomers who was really, really impressed by the early Earth Days. We were told to walk gently upon the earth. I decided on my own that it would be even more fun to pedal briskly over it.

I like, no, love my bike, and I love the road. I bike most days, winter and summer, except when the roads are glittering ice sheets, or during electrical storms. Maybe there'd be a certain glamor in the second or two you'd have as a gloriously blazing human Christmas tree, after being struck by lightning. But the obituary in everyones' minds would be embarrassing: DAMNED FOOL CHARRED WHILE DOING WHEELIES.

Cyclists bike past lovely things, see sights denied to drivers. One of my favorite roads goes through a huge wooded park bursting with wildlife: fox, skunks, coyote and deer which, in November, will try to clash antlers with you. In the early spring I like to see the wild turkeys strutting. They've won their winter death raffle with the coyotes. I haven't seen a black bear yet, but they've already been reported power-walking into the county.

Once a monster turkey gave me a horrible fright. I'd been swinging around the road curves with (I thought) great speed and style. Suddenly smack in the middle of the road was the biggest and angriest tom turkey I'd ever seen. His tailfeathers were in full warlord display. He just stood there on his two fat feet, staring me down with a sneer on his face: "Do you want some, punk?" I knew who would win in a collision, and that my grieving relatives would have to explain I'd been whacked by a turkey. I veered wildly, went airborne and somehow missed him. When I stole a terrified glance over my shoulder, his beady eyes were saying, "Next time."

Another day I rounded a corner and almost hit a jogger who was running straight down the middle of the road. Raging adrenalin took the top of my head off. I barely managed to jolt around him with some frantic steering. I whipped around on the bike seat and began to shout big gobs of steaming verbal abuse when I noticed he was running on two prosthetic legs and flailing a prosthetic arm. I almost fell off the bike. I yelled "My bad!" with a hypocritical smile, and slunk away. I wondered, but didn't ask, if by chance he'd lost his limbs while jogging. I also wondered what would happen if this man and the monster turkey ran into each other. I thought that if the jogger kept his head and craftily deployed his steel fists and feet, he could probably bring the turkey down and then brain him with all his metalwork.

This is my most beautiful biking memory. One morning I was cycling past a lake after dawn. There was lots of thick pearly mist and fog swirling around. At first I thought I was imagining two figures beside the lake, but no, there they were: a tall woman with a flowered garland on her head, dressed all in gleaming white. She stood with her arms extended over the head of a man kneeling before her. He too was garlanded, and both of them looked ecstatically happy. There were red and white flowers spread on the ground in a circle around them. They were saying a gentle ritual of words to each other. I wanted to stop and take a good gawk, but it would have been so boorish to interrupt such a private moment. What was I seeing here? A Wiccan water blessing? Or just a couple with great romantic imagination?

I think the beautiful woman and man were marrying themselves to each other. I was their only witness, invisible to them. They didn't see me, never knew I existed. But when I biked on through the mist, I knew I'd remember them, and I wished them and their marriage well.