Forty years and 800 miles apart, Brian Blevins and I were seniors on high school football teams that won the state championship. If I hadn’t been riding sweep and had a flat, we never would have known.
We’re not scheduled to begin our ride until 7:30 this morning. But it’s still raining and looks like it will for a while. So I come at 7; I want to be here when the first ones come so I can gauge their enthusiasm for wet weather riding. Too late! Rodger is here. He’s almost always the first to arrive, though he drives from Independence. I climb into the front seat beside him. “How do you feel about ridin’ in the rain?” I ask. “I don’t mind being caught in it. But I don’t like to start in it,” he says.
“The Mayor and Catrick’s are expecting a bunch of us,” I say. “How many you think we’ll have in the rain.” “Not many. I doubt Steve will come,” Rodger says. “Wearing that brace, he won’t ride in the rain.” Aaron has pulled up in his car as we talk. Aaron just started his senior year at Liberty High.
I have just gone over to welcome Aaron when Steve drives up. For the three years our Greater Liberty Riders have been riding every Saturday, Steve has been a regular. Some 10 weeks ago Steve rammed into a parked car alongside 69 highway and cracked his skull. He’s been riding again for a few weeks. But he can’t turn his head, wears a brace and depends on other riders to see what’s coming from the sides. “What do you mean thinking I wouldn’t ride?” he asks Rodger. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Then Petra pedals up. She lives just a few blocks away and never drives here. ”Where is everybody? This is weather for real bikers. Memories are made on days like this.” She says. Easel and Ken have come by now. I unstrap my bike from its rack and get my panniers out of the car. “If I’m going, I’m carrying all my gear.” I say. And Rodger surrenders. “If everybody else is crazy, so am I,” he says.
We’re all soon wet. And I’m soon last. If truth be known, I carry these big panniers in part to explain my slowness. Loaded as I am, my riding last seems reasonable. But I doubt I’m the only one who knows the truth: that I would be last even without these big bags. My natural slowness is the big reason I’m last. But not the only reason. I’m responsible for all of these good folks being on the road. I picked the route and the destination, the starting place and the time. I send the emails that bind us all together. So I choose to ride sweep, coming last to make sure no one is left behind.
Brian and Cindy Harvey have ridden from their home in Kearney to join us at Catrick’s for breakfast. Brian flew in from Phoenix about 10 o’clock last night. He flies back early Monday morning, just in time for a staff meeting. He doesn’t like living apart from Cindy and the girls. As soon as they can sell their Kearney home, they will all live again in Phoenix, from whence they came a few years ago; to which Brian’s job now demands a return. In this interim, though, these two have endeared themselves and become major players in our Greater Liberty Riders. Both of them ride often and well. As the days they will be with us dwindle down to a precious few, we hold them close and try not to think ahead.
Sharon has come to join Steve at breakfast. They sometimes ride a tandem. Sharon this morning, though, has driven here from Kearney with her dad, Frank, who is visiting with them for a while.
K Street Bistro in Liberty was our meeting place this winter and spring as we planned our Fourth Annual Greater Liberty Ride for MS. Dave and Mary Ann own K Street. They wanted a picture of me to put up so they could help me raise money for MS The good folks at Printing Unlimited here in Liberty made beautiful posters and gave them free of charge. They are up now at K Street. And in all the places we ride. Catrick’s has two of them in prominent places this morning. The Mayor of Lawson has one up in his office window.
We tell stories and laugh a lot as we breakfast. No one is anxious to leave. And it’s not reluctance to go back into the rain that keeps us in our seat at the table. As much as we all love to ride and long to be on the road, we treasure as much these moments when we huddle together and share secrets, as we seldom have done since junior high.
I am the last to leave Catrick’s and get back to the spot in the parking lot the police have cordoned off for us to park our bikes. They have all waited for me. “Thanks for waiting,” I say. “Thanks for coming. See you down the road.” And we’re off.
I take a while getting all my stuff back in my panniers. Everybody is out of sight when I mount my bike. I’ve just turned onto Salem Road and gone a couple of hundred yards when my front wheel suddenly jerks to one side and I fight to stay upright. I manage to come to a stop without going down. My front tire is flat. I’m in front of a vacant house. I pull over into the yard. Take off my panniers and water bottles, turn the bike upside down and remove the front wheel. A man comes out of the house next door. A dog comes ahead of him. A big, muscled dog. He runs toward me. The man yells at him. He keeps coming. He circles me and comes close. His intentions I can’t fathom. The man arrives and grabs the dog by the neck and carries him back into the house. The man then leaves in his pickup.
A policeman drives up as I wrestle with the tire. I’ve forgotten my tire tool. I thank him for stopping and assure him I’m okay. I finally get the tire off but can’t get air into the new tube with the tiny pump I carry. I’m still working at it when the man in the pickup returns. “Can I help?” He asks. “Can’t get my pump to work. Need some air,” I say. We put my bike and all my stuff in his pickup. He drives me to Casey’s. Their air hose works. But the tube still won’t hold air. “Thanks for bringing me here, “ I say. “I don’t want to keep you. I’ve got a cell phone and can call my wife if I can’t make this work” He leaves.
I keep trying. No luck. I call Bobbie. And give her directions to Lawson and Caseys. I’ve just hung up when the man in the pickup comes back. “ I’ve got to referee a Pop Warner football game in Independence at 2:15. I can drive you to Liberty.” I call Bobbie back and cancel her rescue mission. We load my bike into Brian Blevin’s pickup for the second time.
“Did you ride here from Liberty by yourself?” Brian had asked me this the first time we put my bike in his truck. I had explained that we came as a group. That I rode last to look after everybody. “But who looks after you?” He asked. “They do. But they know I attract Good Samaritans. They know I count on finding goodness. They know I look forward to meeting new people when trouble comes up. They know that today I needed to meet you. It took a flat to make it happen.
HateBusters
Box 442
Liberty, MO 64069
Phone: 816-803-8371
e-mail: hatebuster@aol.com
No Boundaries On Our Soul!
