These days, when it’s like springtime, and I break out of my COVID cave and drive around, I see trees blossoming, sunny yellow daffodils popping up here and there, and I think, “Maybe it’s time I get the bike out of the shed. Dust off the cobwebs and try again.”
Then I shake my head as I remember the last time I tried riding the bike. I fell within three seconds and scrapped the heck out of my knee. Three seconds. I didn’t even get onto the street.
I used to ride a bike everywhere; on my college campus, on treks around Marin County, at the beach, over hills and dales and now – I’m a chicken.
If there was a nice flat track somewhere in Lake County, not on a public street, perhaps I’d be game. Thinking that through though, I don’t have my trusty old Volvo station wagon of yesteryear, I have a VW Bug. The bike is too big for the trunk (is that what you call that tiny space in the back of a VW Bug?), so there’s a transport problem to get to a nice flat track.
I called the Lakeport bike shop to check out bike racks. The guy who answered the phone said my type of bike won’t work with a normal bike rack. Of course. I have to get a hitch kind of rack. Which would have to be ordered, which would probably take a couple of years with the way transport of goods is going.
So, what? Try riding my clunker on the pothole ridden streets around my house? Or maybe take walking back up, or look out my front window at the pretty trees, take up gardening again even though my backyard trees haven’t allowed the sun to shine on my previous veggie gardens?
What IS a girl to do?
I could look through Netflix again for something interesting. I could scroll through Instagram for a few hours. Fill the hummingbird feeder. Clean the kitty litter?
After writing an article about Reese Ranch Retreat, located in Witter Springs, I told owner Catherine Reese that I have a gift for her mini-donkey Marshmallow. (A miniature donkey is a separate breed in their own right.) There’s a pair of old rubber boots that have a split in them in my garage. Been sitting there for a couple of years and I have no idea why I didn’t toss them. I don’t usually hoard things, but they are so cute with their pink flower print, I just couldn’t give them up.
Except…I’ve seen donkeys play with boots before, so I could pry my bottom off the couch, clean up the boots and go to Reese Ranch Retreat to see my favorite mini-donk and give him a super toy. I’m not giving him the pair, don’t want to overwhelm him, unless his mini-horse pasture mate, Panda, insists on having his own boot. And I could look at the flowering trees on my drive out there.
It rained on the drive out to Reese Ranch Retreat. No sun, but who cares? When I pulled up to the ranch, two baby pigmy goats were out frolicking with ranch employee Bethanie Redmill. They jumped and twirled like whirling dervishes. Exciting!
As I sat down on the cold steps of the porch, the babies ran up to me. They’re only a few weeks old and hadn’t been named yet, so I named them: Little Boy and Little Girl. Little Boy had brown spots on his knees and ears kind of like a donkey’s ears. Big and a little floppy. Little Girl had some black markings and ears that stuck straight out. Two bouncy mostly white goats.
Both of them loved having their backs scratched but Little Boy especially loved it. Little Girl jumped on me and nibbled on the boots with her tiny mouth.
When I went to the pasture, Marshmallow and Panda were milling around. Marshmallow came up to me, sniffed the boots and decided he wasn’t interested. Panda, however, galloped up to me, took a skidding muddy stop before he mowed me over and checked out the boots. He was looking for a treat, not a rubber boot. I tossed the boots into the pasture and neither Marshmallow nor Panda noticed, they wanted their rain-soaked backs scratched and scratched. Panda moved his butt between me and Marshmallow and I wasn’t sure who he was getting ready to kick. Jealous little guy.
Before I left, I sat with Little Girl and Little Boy and Redmill took a picture of us cuddling. Then I drove home thinking, “I’m going to give the bike away. Baby goats are more my thing.”
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a freelance journalist for the Record-Bee and various other publications. You can email her at lucywgtd@gmail.com
