Passing

I very much enjoy the time I get to spend outdoors both on my way to and while I'm at Elm Creek Park Reserve. At the pond we can often hear pheasants in the surrounding grasses and biking home through the park, I often catch a glimse of young rabbits who are only a few inches long. Their youth is very apparent when I pass them, and they dart in three different directions before deciding to take cover in the tall grass, a refuge to which the older rabbits would take immediately.

Even out of the park, I've had some interesting interactions will animals (and people) on my path. Last week, I was biking next to Hemlock lane under I-94, and a morning dove was walking a very straight line right down the center of the bike path. When I neared it, the little bird "pulled over" to the wall on the left, giving me pleanty of room to pass by. When I looked over my shoulder a few seconds later, I saw that it had moved back to the center and was continuing its very linear journey. Later on that same ride, I approached two women who were walking shoulder-to-shoulder, taking up too much of the path for me to comfortably pass. I called out to them in my usual manner of bicycle on your left! The woman on the left attempted to step forward and right to give me room, but she was thwarted by the woman on the right who attempted to step forward and left, apparently mixing up left and right for a moment.

As a bicyclist in a city dominated by cars and clueless power-walkers, I've found the animals to be (generally) much easier to share the roads with. I add 'generally' because the Canada geese are just downright nasty.