Bike ride

7/23/2005 03:03:00 p.m.

I went for a bike ride today. Pedaled for about an hour, cruised through town. There are sections in one of the parks, down near the river (which is still mighty high), that are rather frighteningly muddy. At a couple points I was praying I wouldn't have to put my feet down, since I was wearing sandals and I didn't really want to feel river muck squelching between my toes. I should've brought my camera, I kept thinking.

Then I was coming down the north side of the pedestrian bridge and I saw a big animal in the grass alongside the trail. I thought, Wow, that's a big dog. Then I looked closer, and it was actually a deer and her fawn. I jammed on the brakes (which, though clogged with mud, worked just fine, if a little loudly) and stopped. The deer didn't run, which surprised me. She made a slow circuit of the grasses, every once in a while pausing to look back at me and make sure I hadn't moved. Her fawn's eyes never left her. Then I heard some rustling off to my left, and looked over to see another mother-fawn pair coming out of the riverside brush. Four deer. I watched them browse for a while, trying to decide if I should pass through or go back and leave them along the trail.

Then another cyclist came from the other side, and she didn't see the deer until they had almost made it back to the bushes. The spell was broken.

Still wish I'd brought my camera.

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I did some outlining work on The Coldest War last night. (It's the expansion of my tale of the dead in the Kuiper belt, called "Outside, Looking In", which I'm currently trying to sell.) I also put up the first draft (very raw) of "Between Heaven and Earth" on my writing site. Feel free to have a gander at it, if you'd like.

See ya!