Adventures in night riding…
October 30, 2008I haven’t been doing enough bicycle riding for the last six months. Because of this, riding my fixed gear as my “daily driver” was becoming more and more difficult. So I decided to change my main cog until I get back into shape. While I was ordering parts I also put a freewheel cog on the other side of the fixed hub. Just in case there’s times that being able to coast would be useful.
After I put on the new cog I got a call to meet Frank for beers over at the golf course. I had a couple of other errands I had to run and thought it’d be a good test ride. After the beers, it was dark as I headed across town and picked up some materials I needed at home depot. The Iron Horse trail runs right past the home depot, and there’s an access point very close to there. The only problem with the access point is that there’s not a lot of light at night to see what’s going on.
When I rode onto the trail through this access point I wasn’t able to see very well. So I was a little startled when I heard something running and realized I had scared a cat as it was running along the trail. Unfortunately, there is a fence along the other side of the trail with no way for a cat to get out. So as I approached the cat it stopped running and turned around to start running back towards me. The cat then realized it was getting closer to me and turned towards the fence to try and get away.
It was at this moment that I realized that the kitty had two white stripes running down its black back and a very bushy tail. It was also apparent that as I was rolling towards him that Pepe was assuming a fully-defensive posture and charging the main guns. I realized in that moment two things, stopping would put me directly next him, and the only thing that I could do was speed up get as far towards the other side of the trail as poosible and hope.
Thankfully, that ended up being enough. I heard the spray hitting the fence leaves behind me as I swept past and spent the next few minutes laughing about the whole thing and thinking about how interesting it would have been to actually get sprayed. Not because that sounds like fun, but I was actually on my way to the BART station to catch a ride back over the hill towards home. It would have been hysterical to see how fast everyone in a BART car would leave if I walked on “freshly annointed”.
