Roadside treasure [bicycling]

[rebeccmeister]

The most treacherous road on my commute home includes a small uphill, then a slightly larger downhill, then the largest uphill climb of the ride. For around the last 6 months, there has been a tree branch that's about as thick around as my thumb that has been protruding out over the narrow shoulder right at eye level as I bike. Most of the time when it's light out, I see it and move further into the lane, but when it was dark in the winter sometimes I would forget about it and a flinch at the moment I'm trying to build speed for the uphill is dangerous, to say nothing of face lacerations from actual contact with the branch, or potentially winding up in the steep ditch.

Tuesday morning on my way biking to rowing practice, I glanced down at the gutter on a street next to our house, and noticed a nice pair of gardening hand pruners lying there, so I circled back and picked them up. My father would call items of this sort, "Roadside Treasure," and he is not wrong.

I figure if God sends people signs, no one could ever hope for a sign any more clear than that.

The hand pruners were deployed along multiple sections of that road's shoulder on the ride home. That road's shoulder is not more than 6 inches wide at its widest, and the road is curvy with 40 mph speed limits. People who drive and commute regularly on the road almost certainly know of me bicycling on it by now, but that doesn't make it pleasant when someone impatient wants to pass me and I need to be located where a motor vehicle's right wheel usually travels.

I'll get to test my handiwork on tonight's commute home.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I love roadside treasures and collect many of them! In Disco Elysium collecting them is called, "The Jamrock Shuffle." We got 2 colored pencils last week.