This morning, while taking the typical rounds around the house, I looked toward the backyard and saw waves on the pool. Knowing that neither I nor my daughter were swimming at the time, I looked a little closer and spotted the bobbing head of a mallard.
For whatever reason, my pool is listed in the duck’s Zagat guide as a great place to hang out and enjoy some sun. All spring, I am daily chasing various ducks from the pool, which I’m sure is a comedic event for the neighbors as I stomp around, clapping my hands, and running from one end of the pool to another hoping to get them to jump and leave the pool.
But this morning, things were a little different. Sure, there was the typical duck in the pool, but she had some company. Along with the hen mallard were approximated 12 baby ducks. I think the hen decided the family needed to go for a swim without thinking the whole process through. Although the little ones are pretty mobile, I’m not sure they could have made it out of the pool on their own. It’s a good, slippery 10 inches from water surface to the cement.
So my morning involved a minor adventure of getting these little duckies safely out of my pool and out of the yard to a location more conducive to raising a large duck family.
The mother duck made a few, sharp quacks and soon all of the little ducks were tight around her. I grabbed my skimmer attachment (which is like a flat mesh plate) and put it on the end of my 12 foot pole. I knew that I couldn’t get the mother duck out of the pool, so I worked on the little ones. I first shooed them over to the steps – as that provided the shortest leap to leave the pool. Boy, was the mother mad. She did not like my pole pushing up against her little ones and would attack it at any chance she could muster.
But, in groups of two, I eventually scooped out each of the little ones and set them up on the edge of the pool. You can imagine that this did not happen in one, clean motion – as for every one ducky that made it out of the pool, two more jumped back in with the mother. Finally, the mother hen figured out my plan and she jumped out of the pool. This gave me the “all clear” to scoop out the remainder of the ducklings and get them all together. The final steps were to guide the group across the lawn and out the back fence – safely into the pond at the rear of my house.
After work – with a quick check that no additional ducks entered the pool – I jumped on the bike and headed out for a ride. It’s been over five days since the last ride, so it was becoming critical to put some miles into my legs.
Here is Monday’s weather details:
- Date: Monday, July 13th 2009
- Temp: 78F
- overcast with threatening rain (that never appeared)
- less than 5mph from the NE
It was a great evening for a ride with practically no wind to impact the speed. Since I haven’t ridden for a few days, my legs were begging to be pushed a little harder than normal and I powered up some hills that I would have normally soft-pedaled. This ride was through the various back roads in Medina, Maple Plain, and Loretto. I put together some decent numbers:
- Start time: 6:00pm
- distance: 25.9 miles
- avg speed: 19.0 mph
- duration: 1:22
- bike odometer: 811
My only Event Of Note (EOM™) came late in the ride along some back roads near Loretto. I was approaching a rail crossing, pedaling happily along at 20mph, when I saw some flashing red lights. I approached the crossing just in time for the bars to lower and a train to come barreling through at 50mph.
Thus, around 20 miles into the ride, I had to stop and sit for around four minutes while this train passed through. This was horrible to my legs and my “engine”. It was long enough to cool everything down. Once the gates were finally raised and I climbed back into the saddle, I was done. There seemed to be no amount of coaxing that I could try to get back to the rhythm I had established over the prior miles and I simply dragged myself home. I was actually surprised that I hit the 19.0mph mark – cause those last few miles seemed to pass along at a crawl.
But – there are no bad days on the bike. And no little baby duck is going to stand in my way from enjoying a decent ride on the two-wheeler.
