Nearly Eaten

Last night I headed out on my road bike for a long ride through the countryside around Fennville. After I had been riding about 40 minutes I made a quick stop to get a drink of water and tinker with my iPod. I always try to stop at or near the top of a hill so that I can use the momentum I've built up going down hill to get back up the other side of the hill. You see the area where I live, by Michigan standards, is quite hilly. (By BB standards, it is roughly equivalent to biking up Everest.) I had already biked up several hills and being in a particularly zealous mood, I decided to continue on and bike farther than usual. Why not?

I will tell you why not:
Once I got going again and got to the bottom of the hill I heard a strange sharp noise coming from behind me. It was difficult to hear it over the blaring iPod but I could definitely hear something. I looked in the rear view attached to my handlebars. Looming behind me in the distance was a gigantic set of white chompers affixed inside the mouth of a 150 lb yellow lab. The dog was barking and galloping at full tilt towards me. "Uh, this isn't good." Then, I looked from the rear view mirror back to the road, the hill in front of me rose up from the ground at what seemed to be a ludicrous incline. "I am going to get eaten."

I started to pedal faster, halfway up the hill a quick check in the rear view revealed the dog was gaining on me. The strange thing was even though he was barking and showing some serious teeth, the tail was flying back and forth like a metronome. "I think he is enjoying this! Maybe he just wants to play." The dog growls and speeds up. "Maybe not."

The dog was gaining on me, near the top of the hill he got close enough that I'm pretty sure he was drooling on my back tire. The barking was right behind me and I was just hoping that once it got to the top there would be a nice steep slope on the other side so I could pick up some speed and get away from this Cujo wanna-be. Just as I crested the top of the hill I checked the rear view. I could not see the dog, which meant he was in my blind spot and less than a few feet away. As I started down the other side of the hill, which was mercifully, very steep, the dog dropped back unable to keep up with my screamin' fast Huffy road bike. He re appeared in my rear view mirror as he slowed to a trot and stopped barking.

As I road away I turned to see him standing halfway down the hill with his tongue hanging down to his knees panting and tail still wagging. "That was a great workout" I thought to myself "but tomorrow, I am going a different way!"