Dan Action

Wildlife June 8, 2007

Man, I was reading Adam St.Germain’s blog today and I really wished I was racing consistently through the road season, although I have my reasons for not, and I am just as happy with the fact that I really only have a couple of races under my belt so far this year. His re-caps are fun to read, they play out like so many races I’ve done in the past.  Well, CX season is getiing near.  I’ll be racing my face off soon.

Well, I feel like I am actually coming out of the slump that had me beat down the past couple of weeks. Work has been pretty constant, and I’ve found ways to keep riding fun and and not so prone to overheating. This last week has seen the start of doing night interval workouts, as well as trying to find trails I vaguely remember from group rides which turn into adventures on their own, and who said adventures weren’t fun, huh?

Here’s the thing about riding the trails around Gainesville; every time I head into the woods/ jungle I cross paths with the local wildlife in ways the scare the shit out of me. Let’s look at today for an example. I was riding on University of Florida’s campus, where there are pockets of trees and trail. I was trying to devise a decent loop to do so I could ditch the bottles I was carrying. As soon a got onto the trail, five feet in front of my wheel, a huge bird startled and took to flight. It was a little slow taking off, so there I was locking up my brakes in vain hope not to suffer putting my face into the frantic path of this absurdly huge bird’s talon’s or beak. Turns out the bird is either a spotted or horned owl, and as the on in front of my face flew up, another came from a close branch and the two took turns criss-crossing into the trees overhead. Suffice to say, that woke me up; some damn two foot bird of prey flailing over my front wheel, I thought that would be enough, but no. Fifteen minutes later I duck under a low fence by a small pond and I hear some wild thrashing in the tall grass to my right, and then SPLASH! This huge gator goes flying into the water and I watch it eyeing me swimming slowly along the shore. That was enough, I understand the idea that even this caliber of predator is still more, or at least as scared of me as I it, but come on, how close does one have to come? Visions of this gator pretty much mauling me went wild in my head. I don’t relish the idea of attack by an alligator, go figure. To this date, I had close calls with: a gator, a fucking huge owl, countless deer, a family of wild pig, snakes, and vultures. In every one of these cases, it is an issue of locking up the brakes to avoid collision or getting bit, or what have you. Truly absurd.