Aluminum bikes, they're ten years ago as well.
And the rider—where I was in kitchen rags, like usual for the ride home, he was in tights. Not shorts or a bib, but some kind of wet suit a surfer might wear: slick black like a second skin, ankle to neck to wrist.
It would have been terrible in the sun, and at night it had to be terrible as well, since there was no way your skin could breathe.
To match the black seal suit, this cyclist also had black shoes and black gloves, a flash of pale skin at wrist and ankle. No helmet. And—looking down to what I was holding—no glasses.
I held them out across the muck, through the misting rain, and in response, this night cyclist, he snarled.
I'd never seen anybody actually do that before. Like a dog you were happy was on a chain.
"What?" I said, only loud enough for myself, really. He was already whipping his bike away, standing to granny gear it through the silt just under the water.
When he looked back, his dank black hair was plastered to his white face.
And his eyes—they were all pupil.
Like smoke, like a whisper, he faded once he made the dry concrete.
For maybe ten seconds, I considered what had just happened.
And then I saw it for what it was: An invitation. A challenge. A dare.
I smiled, splashed through the tall grass, ran past the deep water, and hit the concrete running alongside my bike, catapulted up into the saddle already shifting hard, my nostrils wide because my lungs were about to need air.
It had been too long since I'd really gotten the opportunity—the need—to open up. Coach had diagnosed me early as a sprinter, and he'd kind of sneered when he said it, like there was no hope, really. He'd work with me, sure, but I was what I was.
For four years it made me faster, better, harder.
He was right, though: I'm a born sprinter. I'll burn through my quads those first two miles, leave the whole pack in the dust.
It was one mile until the trail nosed up into the canyon for twenty vertical miles.
It was one mile, and this night cyclist, he only had about a half-minute head start.
If only Doreen could see me now.