Other things not to hit with your bike

A doe, a deer, for instance. Big, up close, and huffing. I was starting to wonder if I’d have to mace it, but it finally took off. As it was, I was having a little trouble with the road, which had gradually surrendered all paving and gone to dirt with some strewn gravel here and there. Came around a bend, there’s a doe of substance before me, not moving. Then she did, and took a couple others with her. I don’t want to be run over by deer.

I’ll note that it was in Quebec that I first learned that there is an international highway sign that indicates “road crumbles into nothingness,” but around these parts, we don’t feel the need to warn people about that. If it happens, it happens. This particular road was paved for a few hundred feet on both ends, and unpaved for more than a mile in the middle. Another thing we don’t do around here is put up signs naming the back roads. Or even the main roads, often enough. I believe the thinking of the woodchucks is that if you belonged there, you’d know what road you were on. So I found myself climbing and climbing and climbing up a road, and every now and then it would level out, round a bend and climb again. It was only when I was at the top, consulting my map for the rest of the journey, that I realized I might have expected nothing less from something called Mile Hill Road.

Windy this afternoon, and the sun hid away by the time I got out for my ride. I was wearing my leg and arm warmers, and needed them, and zipping and unzipping my jacket and jersey. I’d climb to the top of a hill in a fierce hot sweat, rolling things down as I went up, and then at the top have to cover myself back up again. I learned why the serious guys shave their chests — it’s quicker than letting the zipper pull the hairs out seven at a time.

Had a delightful morning shopping with my older daughter. She needed jeans and a hairpiece for the Nutcracker (party children MUST have ringlets, and with her cool little Keira Knightley haircut, she can’t ring), I needed some new dress shirts, so we had a nice little morning together, followed by a bad lunch at the Friendly’s (but followed by ice cream and caramel). She’s a vision, she is. Both my girls amaze me constantly. Smart, funny (well, they have my sense of humor — decide for yourself if that’s funny), and a little too pretty for their own good.