Paging Alice

I like biking the 606 Trail because it allows for doing laps, 2.7 miles in each direction, and not a car or a truck to cross my path.  People are another matter.

On Tuesday they brought along a whole lot of crazy with them.  I had one jogger I was ready to pass on the left suddenly decide to do a U-turn; runner-cyclist head-on crashes are not a pretty site.  Luckily, I was able to get out of the way.  Then, about twenty minutes later, a runner ten or so feet in front of me decided all of a sudden she didn’t want to get wet from the sprinklers watering plants that line the trail.  Again, this happened just as I was getting ready to pass, a body jumped right in front of me.  “Oh, sorry!” said the rightly embarrassed jogger.  I think she was grateful I missed her.  At least I hope she was. 

Then there was this guy—kneeling, no less—who looked to be slashing away at the trail pavement with something in his hand.  “It’s controversial!” he said, looking up at me as I rode by.  On the way back, I saw what he had written in chalk: The Pope is a Nazi pimp.  Who knew?

You know the penny-farthing, that Gay ’90s bike with the huge front wheel?  Well, someone had his own version on the trail.  It may have happened between the suicide joggers.  This character comes riding in my direction on a welder’s dream, one frame mounted on top of the other; how he got on the seat I’ll never know; ditto steering.  Better yet, the two frames put together formed a kind of cradle in front, where character #2 perched...facing backwards.

The trick for me is to do as many laps as possible before body parts start to rebel.  Tuesday, I managed fourteen before pulling off the trail at St. Louis Avenue; there’s some grass and a tree that are perfect for a weary body.  It was the kind of day an apple should have fallen on my head.  Instead, when I got back on the bike, a woman in her 70s walked up and asked, “What direction are you going in?”  I pointed east.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed.  “By any chance, did you see our son?  He’s in a wheelchair, but he hasn’t passed us by yet.”  Sure enough, a lap or two later, I saw him, a man in his thirties wheeling away from two elderly people I assume were his parents.  Somebody must be unhappy in that family dynamic.

All my times on the 606, I’ve never once seen a rabbit.  So, tell me, how did I fall down the rabbit hole?