Had things been different, right around this time I would have been getting ready to go off on an exciting bicycling adventure that I’d named the Big Red Bike Tour. But the trip is off, or at least changed into a different, much-truncated version.
Having fortunately fallen into buying an aesthetically delightful bicycle of such an azure hue it could only be given the name Big Red, I was keen on taking advantage of its comfortable riding sensation and ability to go anywhere to head out on a tour.
Keeping up the Big Red theme, I promptly went out and ordered a blue Kangaeroo kit (replete with thought bubble to reinforce the idea that the kangaroo is thinking), blue gloves, blue bike bags, blue shorts and a blue helmet. As you do.
Cycling gods intervened, though, as they have shown a tendency to do for me over the past few years, both good and bad.
This time, it wasn’t my hands avaged by rheumatoid arthritis and infection–or any other health issue of my own come to think of it–or lack of ideas or bad weather or stolen bikes or free bikes or any of the other reasons that the velo fates have turned their attention toward me to affect my riding in recent years.
It was the bloody bird, still undergoing treatment at the Yokohama Bird Clinic. Dino is not going to recover and we are going to bring her home. But only after throwing everything we had at trying to make her better, including the funds for the Big Red Bike Tour. I tried to sell another bike to buy her one last week in the hospital, but there were no takers.
I’m still taking the time off I had planned to use with the Big Red Bike. And I will ride as much as I can over that time, just in less exotic places and for much shorter durations.
And I will spend as much time as I can showering love and affection over my best feathered friend…I hope.
