o.m.f.

I figure that Jeremy is much less in biking shape than I, so I went for a real ride before we were scheduled to go, so then I would be tired and he wouldn't bore me with slow cycling.

I bring my Digital Rebel XT and we head to the skate park. There are usually crazy kids there doing death defying stunts, and I want to take pictures of sport action. So that was alright. I've been there on better days. But I never go alone, or I would look like some creepy quasi-pedophile with a camera taking pictures of young boys who are quite often topless.

Then Jeremy and I bike to a nice access point to ride down to the river.

We even went to see the pelicans! There are a group of gigantic pelicans which summer in Lethbridge living off the fish that fall off the damn. Sometimes, they are very close to the shore. I have been within 10 m a few times. But today they were in the middle of the river.

I've been biking in Lethbridge, on average, 15 km per day, 150 days a year, for 4 years. I have never got a flat tire. On Jeremy's first day, within 10 km, he gets a flat.

At that same moment we came to part of the trail with about four huge trees fallen across the path, big enough that the passage is over.

As I stop and turn around, he tells me he's got a flat. He stops about 5 m behind me. As I'm clipping out of my pedals, he says: "did you hear that?!?"

I say: "hear what?"

Side note: the city of Lethbridge has the knowledge of a population of about 50 rattlesnakes which live in the river valley WITHIN city limits!!! I've read all about them on the city web site.

He says: "snake!!"

Me: "are you sure it wasn't a grasshopper?" (One species around here is not so populous, but has a clacking sound which could be akin to a rattlesnake sound to one who is it not fond of snakes at all, and poisonous snakes even less.)

This happens in about second seconds of dialogue, and the next three seconds consist of me leaping off my bike and jumping up waist-high onto the trunk of the fallen tree.

We watch the brush in silence for the next few minutes. Nothing. Jeremy then tells me stories of his bike shop co-workers coming in contact with the rattlesnakes in the valley. Geez!

He moves closer to me and changes his flat while I keep vigilant snake watch.

After 20 minutes and his wife's phone call, his tire is changed and we start climbing over the rest of the felled trees.

As I'm mounting my bike on a narrow part of trail, I hear the evidence of something moving and I look about 1 m to my right to see the ground foliage rustling in a pattern which I can only attribute to a rattlesnake!!

I can't even get both my feet on the pedals and I start running with one foot and cycling with the other!

I get up a bit of a hill and wait for Jeremy, who yells something, and my split second first thought is that he's been bitten and that I'm NOT going back for him.

We keep biking and about another 150 m down the trail there is a 3 m bunny hill thing (straight up -> straight down).

As I crest the hill, there is a snake crossing the path!!!!!!

I instinctively pull my feet up, which is impossible with cleats....and I nearly bail off my bike to side down a hill into the river.

I could have sworn that thing was 2 feet long with a girth of at least 8 inches....but alas, it was a tiny garter snake which Jeremy claims was only 8 inches long, at best.

And that's my cycling story from Sunday. I didn't actually use the O.M.F., but it was definitely on my mind more than once!!!!