Bike Ride

Today, I’ve decided to practice my art skills and take a different approach to my post today.  Bear with me…my art skills suck, and this is my first time ever writing a personal post that does not have to do with achievements and failures.

I don’t really write about my personal life, but one thing you need to know about me to fully understand this post is that I’m incredibly impulsive.  Often I get these “brilliant ideas” that seem great at the time, and then I go through with them without any thought of the consequences.  This post is a perfect example of one of these times.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at home by myself.  It’s a little after 7PM, and I’m wishing I had a movie to watch.  Suddenly, a light bulb goes off and I have one of my brilliant ideas: I’ll ride my bike down to the library and pick up a movie!

According to Google Maps, it takes 20 minutes to get to the local library on a bike.  Taking into account any delays from traffic lights, it should take no more than 30 minutes to get to the library.  No problem!

I grab my backpack and bike and head off.  It’s about 7:20PM.

At first, I’m having a great time!  But after a while I start to notice that it’s getting a bit dark.  I hesitate.  Well, I’m already almost halfway there.  Besides, it can’t be that late.  Google Maps said it’d take 20 minutes.  Realizing that I’d definitely be back by 9PM, I kept going.

That was when my trip started to become considerably less fun.

The sidewalks started to become narrower.  “No matter,” I thought.  “I go to the library all the time, and I know a bike lane’s coming up soon.”

After getting to the end of the sidewalk, I stop just in time as I realize that the sidewalk has no ramp.  I end up having to dismount my bike and walk it across the street.

I have to do this countless times because from then on NO SIDEWALKS HAD RAMPS.  Not only that, but the further I went, the bumpier the sidewalks became.  Some were literally falling apart.  And the more deteriorated the sidewalks became, the more decrepit the neighborhoods were.  Before long I’m passing places with barbed wire fences and roofs with gaping holes.  Forget worrying about rain; an entire car could probably pass through this hole.

Soon the sidewalks end and there’s nothing but gravel.  That’s right, gravel.  There are few things worse than gravel in your shoes.  But unless I want to drive in the street and get hit by a car (it’s getting really dark out and I don’t have a front reflector), I realize that I’ll have to ride on the gravel.

 

Despite the gravel and the fact that there’s only a small glimmer of sunlight left, I refuse to give up and keep going.  I brave the gravel in my shoes.  I pass a creepy looking gas station.  I barely avoid hitting some huge weird looking rocks.

By this time it is completely dark.  I’m beginning to realize that it has been waaay more than 20 minutes.  Just before I start panicking, I see a bike lane coming up ahead.  Yay!  No more gravel!  Suddenly my life has significantly improved.  That is, until the bike lane ends as soon as I come to the train tracks.

I realize that I’ll have to cross the road that cars are crossing.  I sit there in shock for a few seconds.  I have no reflector.  It’s pitch black out.  The possibility of becoming roadkill suddenly seems incredibly likely.

I see a car off in the distance.  Realizing that I might not get another chance for a while, I take a deep breath and ride across the train tracks as fast as I can.  After about a dozen more seconds, I can once again ride on the side of the road.  I managed to make it…yay!

The library is just around the corner now, so I quickly park my bike and lock it.  I HAVE MADE IT.  I have braved creepy neighborhoods, gravel roads, outerspace rocks, and the strong possibility of becoming roadkill.

Eager to see how long it took me (and equally eager to get out of the dark and wash the gravel out of my shoes), I run into the library.  8:25PM.  My heart sinks.  An hour?  Seriously?  It took me a freaking hour to get here going downhill?

Well, the good news is that at least I’m inside now.  I go to the bathroom and wash the gravel out of my shoes.  Even though it’s kind of late to watch anything now, I decide to get some movies anyway since that’s why I came in the first place.

Unwilling to go back in the dark and brave the unknown, I decide to hang around the library until 8:45PM.  This was when the panic started to hit me.  The library closed at 9PM.  It suddenly occurred to me that I’d have to ride home.  In the dark.  Down gravel roads and through decrepit neighborhoods.  This was exactly the kind of thing that would happen in a horror movie…an innocent girl is riding her bike home in the dark, when suddenly a murderer jumps out and kidnaps her.  He then proceeds to take her home and chop her into tiny pieces, which he then shoves into a garbage bag and hides in his basement.

Obviously this is a worst case scenario, but there were tons of other terrible things that could also befall me.  I mean, I’m riding a bike in the dark and there are barely any streetlights on the way home.  What if I hit something and flip over and end up dying in a ditch?

It then occurred to me that absolutely no one had any idea where I was.

My parents were at a baseball game (there went my brilliant idea to call them up and ask for a ride).  I hadn’t left a note.  Something terrible could befall me and no one would even know.

Nevertheless, I knew I had to do it.  I mean, what else was I supposed to do?  I couldn’t stay in the library overnight.  I considered asking one of the librarians for a ride home, but I didn’t know any of them that were working that night.  Hesitantly, I ventured out into the dark.  

 

 At that point I realized that there was absolutely no way that I could make it home on my bike.  I briefly considered my options.  I could camp in the woods behind the library.  Considering my fear of the dark, that didn’t sound like such a great idea.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t just hang out by the library’s bike rack and then call my parents when they got home.  Not only that, but when they go to a baseball game they can come home anytime between 10PM-11PM, and I really didn’t want to be standing in the dark for another two hours.  The majority of shops were either closing or already closed.

It then hit me that my ex-boyfriend lived down this way.  Sure, definitely not my first choice, but it beat standing alone by a bike rack in the dark.  Quickly I unlocked my bike and headed off into what I hoped was the right direction.  It’s been over a year since I’ve last been to his house, so I silently hoped that I remembered the way.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally turned my bike on his street.  Suddenly I was plagued by doubt.  What if his parents refused to give me a ride?  Or worse, what if they weren’t home?

Worrying about this and cursing my idiocy for driving down to the library in the first place, I finally managed to find his house and ring his doorbell.

His dad opened the door a crack.  “Hello?”

“Um, hi, it’s…Katie.  Um, I was wondering if I could…you know…come in for a little while?”

He opened the door a bit more, at which point I lost any mental composure I still had and began to have a breakdown.  Almost in tears and getting more upset as I went on, I said, “I went down to the library on my bike and according to Google Maps it was supposed to take 20 minutes but it took an hour going downhill and now it’s dark and it’s going to take me at least an hour to get home and I don’t want to drive home in the DARK so please take me home!”

There was an awkward pause.  “…Uh…sure.  Come in.  Let me get a shirt on,” he said, opening up the door for me while I apologized profusely for inconveniencing him.

We managed to fit my bike in the back of his car.  On the way home, he said, “It’s a good thing you didn’t come a month from now, because then you would have been standing outside an empty house.  We’re moving to Tennessee.”  (There goes my brilliant fantasy where I get back together with my ex-boyfriend.)  He then proceeded to tell me that Kat (my ex-boyfriend’s sister, and leader of writing club back when I was 13) is currently living in Maryland and is planning on marrying her new boyfriend in a couple of years.  My ex-boyfriend’s brother is moving to Washington DC and is planning on retiring from the Armed Forces in a few years.  And my ex-boyfriend and his parents are moving to Tennessee, because his dad just got a new job there.

All this news was considerably shocking.  I can’t believe they’re moving.  In fact, it makes me feel pretty depressed.

Thankfully, I managed to get home in one piece.  Yay!!!

And despite my misadventure, I learned an important lesson.  Ready?  *Drum roll*  GOOGLE MAPS LIES.