It rained on and off all day, but each time the thunderheads got close I slipped under some shelter and was able to dodge the worst of it. Halfway through the morning I realized I had left my ground cloth at Ben’s house. It really irked me, because my tent floor wouldn’t prevent the water from seeping through, especially on a wet day like today. 

Even so, my mood was buoyant because….  I was back on the road. It felt REALLY good to be riding. I had been restless, and didn’t even realize it.

Around noon, there was a huge thunderhead almost on top of me so I pulled off the road, out of sight, and into a vacant pavilion that appeared to be a place where they branded animals. There were a lot of rails, and a couple of small, narrow stalls which had head-sized holes. 

I love places like this. I was invisible from the road and in a spot where I could just enjoy the rain hammering the tin roof. I found a sizable pile of wood chips and wiggled my butt back and forth until it felt like a custom chair. Once snuggled in, I pulled out my sandwich and started nibbling. 

My mind wandered as I stared out at the rain, and my attention was eventually drawn to a spider web about five feet away. Bored, I picked up a tiny piece of wood chip and tossed it into the web. Immediately, the spider raced out and, after determining that it wasn’t edible, began deftly snipping the strands around the unwanted object until, finally excised, it fell to the floor.

After the tiny piece of wood fell to the ground, the spider expertly repaired the damage, dancing up and down his homemade cables and filling in the gap where the chip had been. 

I… was… FASCINATED. I realize that this is something you can probably find on YouTube quite easily, but at the time it was engrossing, watching this small piece of nature going about its business, doing the things that spiders do.