I Brake for……No One

This is our street.  The street where we live.  It’s very steep.  This is not an optical illusion.                                                                                                 

This is my husband.  He loves to ride his bike.  Yesterday, he rode 45 miles to a car show.  I met him there…..with the truck….

 

We have pretty rough winters, here, so we don’t ride for months and months, and when the days finally started getting pretty, he got out his favorite two-wheeled transportation……and the tire was flat.  Really flat.  He had to patch it….which didn’t work.  Then he had to break down and buy an inner tube….which did.

Last Sunday, the weather was exquisite and we were invited out to our good friends’ for a light evening meal.  Because they live in the country 20 miles away, my Sweetheart , who’d been aching to ride, decided to make this his maiden 2010 voyage.

Over here, on the far right side,  about the middle of the grey house, is where he realized he’d forgotten to hook up his brakes after he’d installed the new inner tube.  There are still marks on the road where his left shoe cleat that hooks into the toe clip was dragging along the pavement, sending a July 4th style shower of sparks to the amazement and possibly horror of passersby.  That slowed him to hyper-space. 

Just beyond that and to the right, after the tree, is a triplex with a fairly steep driveway and lawn.  Straight ahead of him was first a stop sign and a busy street, then a street light and an even more busy street.  He opted for the lawn.

This slowed him down from rocket blast to careening, which didn’t seem adequate to him at the time.   So he made a quick decision–and an even quicker left turn, hopped off the curb and blazed across the street to an even steeper driveway, where his progress finally came to an uneventful halt.

He breathed heavily for the space of about three minutes, thanked God and attached his brakes.  He also arrived safely and in time for hors d’oeurves.

 

 

I try not to panic whenever I think of it.  I try not to think of it at all, actually.  But there’s no one in the world I’d rather be with in an emergency.  Not even Jack Bauer.

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