New Years Day: The Day of the Coyotte.

My wife was kind enough to allow me out of the house on a bicycle today. I was determined to NOT simply saddle up and burn myself ragged until I ran out of steam. No boring "loop" for me today. With that in mind I selected my Trek 820 as my steed-de-joure. There were other factors in the choice. I had her tuned up a bout a month ago but with the coming of the Crossbike, she had been quite neglected. Also, one of my "plans" had me riding the MTB trails at the local park. The MTB has no fenders though, and it was still a little gross on the streets, despite not raining at the time. Besides, I just really wanted to have some fun with that poor bike! Pull the kid? Yep. Grocery run? Sure. Trip to the bank or hardware store? Trek 820 please. Something fun? Something else!



So I got geared up, got my (way too heavy) backpack* on and fired her up. We head down hill which ment that we had to go back UP hill, and the hills in these parts are pretty steep.Well, to me they are. So there I am riding up-hill, down town, needing to take a left hand turn and am all out of breath and half dead. I check, I double check and whip out my best VC move and signal my left turn. Around the corner and up another damn hill! Really? I'm less than two miles away from home (an on my "way to the bank" rout that I have negotiated about 75000 times before) and I'm exhausted. I seriously thought about turning back, but did not. After all, my Teamates are counting on me right?

I rode around a little more and, based on a cut-through on a dirt trail and past experience, I decided to NOT try to tackle the 5 mile off-road loop on this bicycle on this day. Instead I went up over the highway and out into the countryside. It was there that I cam across this fellow. I stopped to look.

What is this? A wolf? A dog? I doubted both. I settled on Coyote. I watched it run around in the field hunting mice or whatever for a while. I took a few iPhotos of it, but nothing god. I was hoping that it would come closer so I could get a good shot. Well, suddenly it did. It locked on me and started "coming right for me" as they would say in that town in Colorado. It was then I saw the white paws and decided that it was probably a dog after all. Now I became concerned about it's well being. Alone out in a field next to the woods. So I called to it. THAT altered it's trajectory! It took a left turn and bolted. It was heading straight for a playground! Oh great. I was wishing that my iPhone was an iTwo-Twent Two right then as i quickly assigned the animal back into the "Coyote" slot and feared that it would eat a child. I hopped back on my trusty steed and charged, the long way around, after it. I found no sign of the animal and there were no children in sight (other than the one he dragged away into the woods to gnaw on as a snack, I'm sure.

I buggered out.

I kept riding over hill and dale. I saw happy streams and some big, shaggy moo-cows that iThought about taking pix of but they were far away and I was up to my Bag Limit for "little dots that might look like animals if developed correctly" shot for the day. I kept peddling. In all I made it ten miles. I almost got eaten by one wolf and almost run over by one SUV. I felt good about having gone out and got some miles on me on the first day of 2012. I'm glad that I didn't turn back after the first two hills!