Rainbow Down

A Man For One Season

Hey!  Here it comes now!  Our Old Friend Summer and even in a warmish place like Florida, Summer makes a difference. The squirrels are getting frisky and not just the ones in the trees outside my summertime doorway. The frisky rascals that inhabit these trailers are warming up as well and coming out of doors and here we go, summer is upon us and we have got to get ready.

Bacon!

I get ready with Bacon. Bacon! Because I also, (even though old and stiff and crotchety) am feeling frisky my ownself and man, I just took a brisk and risky Baconesque Quicksilver ride through a gentle misty sundown rain, wearing gym shorts and flip flops and there was a rainbow over my shoulder, and I don't mean a romantic figurative artsy-fartsy rainbow, I mean there was a real live brilliant little rainbow just the right size for a sundowner bicycle beer run and I took it, man, zipping and darting and cutting across the sleepy highway like drug dealers or crooked stock brokers (or whoever the bad guys are in that movie) were hot on my tail and I just had to Get the Job Done.

See Me Flash By

I have written about the various variations of my rides; the Lazy Float, the Free Century, the Buddy Run and the Phred Stalk and probably more, I can never remember. Sometimes I pile it on so high that even I lose track.

But this zippity-doo-da lickety-split three miles to the House of Beer is all about bringing home the Bacon, evoking the Inner Messenger and saying “Hey Summer! I'm still here Old Buddy! What? I know man, I can't believe it either!”

Danger Man

Lickety-split and when I get there I dash inside and whip my three-dollar Goodwill messenger bag around my neck and reach in for my wallet and the girl behind the counter is accustomed to me now, but the first time she twitched and jumped a little when I thrust my hand into the bag and seeing her reaction I laughed like a maniac 'cause let's face it, I ain't the Mild-Mannered Trailer Park Cyclist right this minute, it's me Kevin Bacon Lickety-Split Quicksilver and I need that beer! C'mon, Honey, it is only sprinkling right now and there is a sundown glow and a rainbow but that can change at any minute and then it will be Summertime Thunder and Rain and I don't have a name for that ride yet.

Yee-Ha!

Then like a bandit I stuff the six-pack into my bag, whip it smartly around so that it lands just right in the small of my back and I leap for the door. Shazam! Take that,  Bad Guys! and Boom! I'm back on my bike and I'm too old and stiff and crotchety to do one of those flying cyclocross leaps into the saddle but I do a pretty good rapidissomo mount anyway and I have already down-shifted and I accelerate impressively and with alacrity away from the store and by the time I clear the parking lot I am hitting a good clip and the rain has stopped and I feather the brakes to clear the moisture from my rims and I lean over into the drops and cut hard and fast around the corner. Was that a stop sign? Who knows? It was just a red blur to me and I pull hard on the upstroke so my flip-flops dig into the toe clips and I'm breathing hard because let's face it, I am almost two Kevin Bacons in the real world but this ain't it; this ain't the real world, this is Florida at the front-end of summer and there's a rainbow watching and I don't want to let it down.

Never Disappoint A Rainbow

I don't go to saloons much anymore because of the exciting and interesting and frequently disastrous results of my forays into public drinking establishments. Me, I'm all about Sundowns and Gentle Rain and One Friend At a Time. It seems that lately, though, all my One Friends seem to be either Over-Married or Long-Distanced or Pedaling the Far Country, if you know what I mean. But what of that? One of my oldest and best friends of these my waning years lives only a few trailers away.

Canyon de Chelly

Or he did. As I sit here drinking my ill-gotten reckless beer, I am looking out my window at a U-Haul Truck. Coyote is leaving, returning to his Ancestral Home of deepest Arizona for some reason or another. He has good reasons for doing so but man, you are talking about a guy with whom I have shared more windshield time and middle of the night interstate philosophy sessions than any other two-legged creature on Earth. Or in Heaven for that matter. We used to joke that we spent more nights in rooms together than we did with our wives. Except it wasn't a joke; it was the truth. Coyote would take extended leaves to patch things up and then come back out, always loyal and always, by the time he came back, Just In Time. I was the Owner and the Boss and didn't have that luxury and when Number Two left because she “Didn't want to be a single parent anymore” Coyote was there and his Ol' Lady and when it all came crashing down (the first time) and there weren't that many loyal friends to be found, guess whose couch I crashed on?

Every Picture Tells a Story

Yeah, I know. Stiff upper lip and all. Hell, we hardly see each other or even talk much. But that ain't the point. The deal is, should something come up and some filthy lucre were to be had, all I had to do was walk a few trailers over, let my old friend know that it was time to saddle up once again, and off we would go. And that is a pretty big deal. Coyote was the Facilitator. He took care of all the crap that distracted me from the finish line. He was really good at it. It was like having a fully-amped Lance Armstrong riding domestique in a bad climb in the Tour de Hell.

How Many Hearts Are Broken By U-Hauls?

Ah, man, this is only Life. Life its Ownself. That U-Haul is pulling out in the morning. When it pulls out a chapter of my life will have been written and polished off and hopefully, for my brother Coyote, a new more better chapter will begin.

Bonne Chance, Coyote!

Still Here

 That Rainbow is gone now but it left behind a sneaky beautiful twilight that will serve just fine.  As for me,  I am fast enough, for now. I am quick and daring on a bicycle and I am still here and now comes summer (as it always does) and I will be alright; all of us will be alright and our chapters are still being written and that is just right. The finish line is out there and we will sure enough find our way to it and that, also, is just right. 

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Refugee Camp

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