So I'm driving along a country road barely wide enough for two cars to pass when I zip around a corner and suddenly find that I'm sharing the road with three bicyclists and a cow. The bikers, clad in bright yellow and orange biker shorts, shirts, and helmets, were just ahead of me in my lane and were conscientiously observing the rules of the road; the cow, naked as the day it was born, was trotting
blithely northward in the southbound lane as if utterly unaware of the traffic code, weaving in and out of the lane and even pulling over onto the shoulder without once signalling its intentions.
I had plenty of time to slow down to accomodate traffic conditions, but the bikers, the bovine, and I were all heading slowly up a steep incline and anyone coming the other way would have been blissfully unaware that he was about to face an important decision: hit the cow head-on or swerve straight toward the bikers? I had no way to warn any approaching traffic, nor am I proficient in the appropriate methods for removing a bovine scofflaw from the right-of-way.
Fortunately, the five of us topped the hill without incident, and then the cow, perhaps seeing the error of its ways, took a left turn into a meadow. I didn't see a turn signal, but at least I was spared the sight of seeing a healthy cow turned into hamburger on the highway.
Monday, September 24, 2007
The bikers, the bovine, and me
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4 comments:
Why is it that these sorts of things are always happening to you?
It depends on what you mean by "these things." Cows appear in the road more frequently in the country than in the city, but on the other hand, a city near and dear to our hearts has suffered numerous incidents involving dead cow parts falling off of trucks into the road. Further, as you will learn when you take the humor writing class, it's not the event that creates humor but the way we perceive and frame the event. So why aren't you writing about things you encounter on the road?
As I was driving to southern Indiana, we saw countless cows, many horses, two ponies, two squirrels with very good judgment, many crows, several hawks, a goat, a turtle, and a sheep. Once we got there we saw 2 groundhogs. These were all alive, by the way. I didn't count the dead ones.
It was an exciting trip critter-wise. And I've always been jealous of cows. They wear leather all the time. :-)
I did write about a turtle I encountered on a road once - your road to be exact. I suppose my description of "these things" was rather vague. In that I mean that only you would ever run into cows AND bicyclists on a steep incline, only you would break down on the side of the road at 8 a.m. and accept a ride from a well-meaning individiual only to be later chastised by your colleagues...I guess I will learn more about humor writing over the J-Term, but until the college has a class on "Living Like Bev" I just don't think I'll have to sort of fodder for great material that you have.
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