Up, Down

I leaned into the handlebars and pushed down hard with one foot, then the other, then the other….Strange how no matter how often you ascend this path, it’s still vraiment terrible going up. And I mean that. Really.

Beneath my helmet, my straggling hair was sweaty against the back of my neck. My bikers’ jersey sent the breeze funneling off in every direction, but it felt as if I were inside a tent. My legs burned. Ahead of me I saw Gerard, his shoulders bent over the curly handlebars of his own skinny bike, legs pumping up and down as he circled the next hairpin curve. Gerard is more fit than I am but I could tell it was giving him a good workout too.

Rounding the next curve, I glanced off toward the bushes at the side of the road and was startled to see a rabbit watching me. A rabbit would not have attracted my attention on this road – they tended to show up at some point in any ride – but this one wore a plaid waistcoat and had a gold pocket watch in his front paw. Had he been checking the time? Why? Why would a rabbit care about the time? Why would one be wearing a waistcoat and carrying a watch anyway? No time to wonder. I bent over my handlebars and kept going. When, unable to restrain my curiosity, I glanced back at the rabbit, he was gone.

Long, long stretch, then the next curve. A flash of red caught my eye. Looking again, I saw a cardinal and his mate. They had built a nest in a thicket near the road. The male cardinal was just landing gently on its edge, a shopping bag full of groceries in his beak. The female cardinal wore a frilly organdy apron. She greeted her mate with sounds of joy and pleasure. At her feet, scrawny baby cardinals awoke and bobbed out of the nest, squalling for whatever it was their father had brought home. I shook my head. This was a strange ride!

Gerard was waiting for me at the next curve. “You look tired,” he commented. “Do you want to rest for a bit before we take the next stretch?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I assured him, wiping sweat from my forehead with my pocket bandana. “I’m a little tired, but at least I’m still alive.” I stopped at the sound of my own words. Now why had I said that? I was very much alive. Was there any doubt of the fact? “By the way, did you see anything strange on the way up the mountain?”

“Not particularly. M. Lenoir has some really nice snapdragons out in his garden. Why do you ask? Did you catch sight of something unusual?”



“Never mind.” I tucked the bandana back in my pocket and pushed off again. Gerard rode along beside me for a few minutes. I could tell he was trying to be kind by not outdistancing me, but I ignored him, not because I was mad at him for being faster than me but because I was saving my strength to pedal. We could talk about the rabbit and the cardinals when we got to the little coffee shop at the top.

Push, push, push, push. If only a mountain road had a few stretches that went downhill instead of uphill! I could coast for a minute and rest my legs. And my lungs, too. I was having a little trouble breathing. But that would be silly. If you are going up a mountain, you have to keep going up, right? At least I was still alive. Funny, that’s the second time I had that thought. I bent into the bicycle and pedaled hard for a minute to catch up to Gerard. He glanced in my direction as I neared him.

“Doing all right?”

“Oh yes. By the way, are there cardinals that live on this mountain?”

“I don’t think so.”

At the next curve, there was a teddy bears’ picnic in progress. Several of the bears were sitting on a red and white checked tablecloth eating biscuits and honey, while another one—obviously the mother (moms always get stuck with this kind of job) bustled about pouring glasses of milk. She turned to look at me as I went past. Hmm, this is getting to be a really interesting trip. Why do I never see these things on bike rides on other days? I guess I just have been so focused on getting to the top, I never noticed all the special things on every side.

On the next curve, a little cottage with a stone wall hugged the road. A horse and a goat looked over the wall. The goat was eating snapdragons. The horse was eating hay and had a cardinal perched on his back. The cardinal was eating sunflower seeds from a shopping bag. They all looked at me, chewing, as I slowly and laboriously pedaled past. In the garden of the cottage, a woman was hanging laundry. She hung up a jersey that looked just like mine, only it had been cut right down the middle. Now why would someone cut a nice jersey? With scissors? It will be ruined, I thought. And those socks had been cut, too. I turned away and looked toward the next hairpin curve, then glanced down at my jersey. It had changed colour and was light blue, made of cotton, like a shirt, but there were no buttons on it. Where was my nice new fluorescent green jersey? If that was what the woman in the garden was hanging up, how had she gotten it?

“Never mind,” I told myself. “I’ll find out on the way down the hill. A jersey is nothing. At least I’m still alive.”

Still alive.

I looked around. Gerard was nowhere to be seen, but there were bicycles all around me. They were being ridden by a horse, a goat, a cardinal, a woman with a basket of clothespins tied to her apron strings, and a rabbit in a plaid waistcoat. They were riding behind me and they were all cheering me on. Well, if Gerard had gone on without me—and I hadn’t seen him for ages--at  least everyone else hadn’t.

“Keep going, come on, you’re going to make it.”

“I thought we were going to lose her. She’s got some injuries, but at least she’s still alive.”

I opened my eyes to see a white ceiling. It took a couple of minutes for everything to register, but the smells and sounds told me it was the ceiling of a hospital room. My head ached. I looked around for the rabbit, bird, horse and goat, but all I saw was Gerard and a woman I didn’t know. She wore scrubs. She was a nurse, or maybe a nurse’s assistant. My head didn’t just ache. It throbbed. I moved, and my right arm and leg were heavy with plaster. They ached too.

“Where am I?”

Gerard came over to the bed, looking worried and relieved at the same time.

“It’s OK, Mathilde. You were hit by a car going  the other direction as we came down the mountain from the coffee shop, but your helmet mostly protected you and all you have is a broken arm and leg and a concussion. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

The nurse came to the other side of the bed. “We thought we were going to lose you, but your condition has stabilized. At least you’re still alive!”

I glanced from Gerard to the nurse, whose scrubs were printed in a repeating design of rabbits, cardinals, goats and horses on a background of snapdragons and sunflowers. Yes, at least I was still alive.