A Christmas Eve meetup on the Loop

December 24, 2020

It’s quite a bit less inviting this morning when we start out - overcast, cool, damp and windy. We briefly consider turning back and returning to our cozy casita, but we feel committed. We have a semi-date, to keep an eye out for Kelly Iniguez on the Harrison Greenway over on the east side of the Loop. We’re both biking that direction today in order to enjoy the expected tailwind on the way back, and agreed to watch out for each other.

Once we get underway, it’s not unpleasantly cold at all and the headwinds we’d imagined pushing into are really quite modest. It’s a pleasant, brisk ride for the first half hour, braking only for a roadrunner sneaking around beneath the mesquite just beside the path. We’ve seen roadrunners often enough now that I’ve become attuned to their odd spasmodic movements: a short, fast dash, followed by a pause for several seconds while they scout out their new position. You can tell when they’re ready to break out again by the way they tense up and raise the tail to a more erect angle. I should take a video one of these times.

We ride south on the Harrison Greenway, looking far ahead for every new bike that comes into sight. Many bikes, but no recumbents. Finally though one appears, and a hand soon rises up from it. CycleBlaze meetup!

Kelly and I have been in correspondence off and on over the years, but this is the first time we’ve met in real life. At another time, I’m sure we would have arranged a different type of first meeting - a ride together, and a meal or snack break. The plague year isn’t the time for that though, and it feels just right to get acquainted outdoors at a safe distance from each other. We chat by the side of the trail for perhaps fifteen minutes, until it finally sinks in that the wind has picked up significantly and it’s getting cold just standing around.

We could and probably should have turned back and ridden with Kelly for a ways and included her in a video, but then we wouldn’t get our 42 miles in. We have to keep our priorities straight, after all. I’m confident anyway that this won’t be the last time we’ll cross paths with Ms. Iniguez. We continue on for another mile until we reach our magic distance, and then turn around to enjoy the downwind blast back to the casita that we’ve been hoping for.