My Misadventure of the Morning

This is a post about my day because so many people have asked me about it today. And I fear that if one more person asks me how my day went, I may implode. So here. This is how my day went…

Tonight one of my school clubs is having a camp-out  in a local bit of woods. In order to go tonight, we had to set up all of the necessary things. We had to set up our fire pit, our food table, some tarps, and of course; our mighty tepee. So I joined this extra-curricular out of my own unfortunate naivety. Sure camping out in the woods by a roaring fire sounds fun, and setting up isn’t too bad either.

However, one never exactly thinks about transportation the bit of it. As transportation is often a greatly over-looked part of anything. And when my mom had an unexpected meeting this morning, I was forced to bike to my destination. So at about 11am, I set out on my yet-known misadventure.

It was early in the morning on a teacher in-service day, not hardly a soul had arisen from their beds. The breeze was crisp and clean and the sunshine was lovely. I was feeling pretty great on this early-December day when I thought I had no use for a coat. And I rolled along through my small town, enjoying the view of still-green grass and the yellow orb in the sky. My little brown vintage 3-speed huffy sped over the streets with ease. And then I turned.

It was a gaping mouth of a turn, going immediately from suburban street to country road lined thick with trees on either side. To turn down this road, you needed to roll down a very steep hill-and-curve. A terrifying one at that.

Soon I was headed down a steep hill going extremely to fast for my poor little bike. I didn’t want to go too fast in fear of popping my wheels. I didn’t want to hold down my breaks in fear of ruining them. I instead skimmed my feet over the asphalt to slow me down. And it went on like this for a few minutes. Riding down a very lonely road, skidding my feet, and going down a giant twisting hill. All went well until I approached yet another dangerous curve, just like the one before, but the opposite.

Right after I passed our water-treatment facility with no employee cars int he parking lot, and then an abandoned bed and breakfast, I had to turn again. Onto a steeply-inclined one-lane road. On one side, nothing but thick forest, on the other a complete drop over a cliff.

I attempted feebly to bike at this almost 70 degree incline before realizing my legs weren’t exactly the strongest things in the world. At all. And with this epiphany came a quick and depressing self-esteem buster. Only quick, though. As I had to fear for my life walking painfully up this never-ending blind spot. Cars, on the other road who were never there, now suddenly were zooming down toward me in alarming numbers. Every driver I saw turned back pitifully in my direction. With good reason, as I’m positive I looked very disheveled.

And the further up this hill I went, I noticed all the cars I saw were either old, beat-up vans with rust spots and no windows. Or scary-looking pick-up trucks (all gray or white) with windows all tinted past the illegal numbers. I began to get a tightening sense of fear in my chest, a defense mechanism most girls my age walking alone on isolated country roads should have. And I reached for my phone. I needed to feel the shape of what could be my savoir as scenes, bad scenes, began to play through my head. When my fingers touched my pocket, I realized in a panic that my savoir was absent. And when I found it to not be anywhere on me, I was really in a pickle.

And so I realized that in the frenzy of giving my brother a note telling my mom when I had left, and feeding my cat and dog, I had left the shell of blue plastic and silicon on my dresser.

Now, almost there, I began to jog/ bounce my way up the last stretch of hill. Pushing hard with my legs while my arms were stretched out comically to hold my handle bars. So close! I could see the rocks marking the entrance to the campsite and could see the field where we stayed through the thin lining of trees. I saw our fire wood we stacked yesterday put neatly by our fire pit and the giant logs we were going to use as seats. YES! I was here.

I pushed the bit of now-tangled hair out of my eyes and viewed the smooth, nearly worn-through bottoms of my converse, damage due to my self- breaking down the hill. Then I walked into our entrance, smiling at my feat I had just conquered, ready to tell my sad story.

Only to find that no one was there.