Did You See That?

This past Saturday evening, I set my alarm for 6 AM. The original plan was to get out of bed early on Sunday, hit the road for a few hours, and then get back home before the day began in earnest. All that would have worked if, around eleven Saturday night, I hadn’t decided to turn off the alarm and sleep to my heart’s content.

So rather than take a group ride up here in the woods of Westchester, I loaded the bike into the truck and drove up to Bear Mountain for more climbing repeats as riding up and down a 4.5 mile hill never fails to serve as terrific entertainment. Am I right or am I right?

After spending thirty minutes climbing to the top, I took a few slugs from my water bottle, spent another ten minutes cruising to the bottom, and when I reached 9W, I turned around to begin the process all over again. Less than five minutes into the second ascent, I glanced up to see a shiny black bear on the side of the road staring straight at me.

Now hold on! First thing first. I’m proud to say I did not lose control of my bladder. This wasn’t a full-grown bear. The black bear that stood no more than twenty-five feet ahead of me looked more like a teenager and I say teenager as it was definitely not a cub and it was definitely not as big as I would imagine a full-grown bear to be. If I had to compare it to something, I’d say it was about the size of a big dog, like a big Labrador with meaty legs. Does that help paint a clear picture? I hope it does because that’s about as much effort as I’m putting into that description.

So there I am on my bike pedaling up Bear Mountain when a bear walks into the road. In hindsight, I probably should have glanced at my heart rate monitor to see how my cardiovascular system reacted to such a situation, although my brain placed a higher priority on avoiding a potential When Animals Attack situation, so rather than check and see how a bear sighting might have been messing with my heart rate, I stopped pedaling, hit the brakes, and was halfway through cutting a U-turn when the bear turned and ran back through the bushes.

And that was it. That’s all that happened. After waiting half a minute, I started back up the hill again. Just as I reached the spot where the bear had been standing, a car came around the bend heading in the opposite direction.

“Did you see that?” I asked the driver as we both slowed. I had to make sure it wasn’t my imagination because, you know, my imagination had a tendency to just flare up like that at times.

The rest of the ride, I’m happy to report, was uneventful, unless you want to include a lot of heavy breathing and sweating on my behalf as I labored my way to the top of the mountain again and again, yet the lesson to be learned from this experience is simple. Whenever you take a ride outside the suburbs into the mountains, bring plenty of water, food, and a gun.