At first, I attempt deft maneuver of one hand holding umbrella, like the local, elegant ladies do and always keep dry and tidy while biking. For me, this is less likely. Keep trying. People ride with no hands and small children (small, less than toddlers) ride on the center bar, holding themselves on with NO assistance from the driver. People ride with surfboards under one arm. (I passed a woman one day, biking along alone in a tiny bikini & board shorts with a surfboard, content, strong, gorgeous.)
Certainly, if I go slowly... I can manage this... in my new Used, half a sundress with bathing suit underneath: am I not acclimating myself to local culture?
Well --- I'll tell ya ....
Funny thing with umbrellas is that they catch air quite nicely. By "nicely" I don't mean nice & even like M.Poppins but quite well. Quite completely they gather up air currents. So, if you're already wobbly and a large truck goes hauling by -- the draft off that sucker will toss you around like a bath-tub toy in the rain on a bicycle into a ditch.
I Know.
The umbrella got stuffed into the front basket with my purse which I had wisely and attractively wrapped in the plastic bags from last night's beans&rice take-out.
Eating beans & rice, even switching to lentils (when I finally get my own house), this is Not the diet of the lean and lanky. I realize that. But it's cheap and healthy (in its way) and very Tico (local). Biking will help and swimming *when I finally cowboy-up and go every day despite warnings of machete-wielding thieves on the beach and killer riptides and utter shame at my appearance (the equally disturbing scary whiteness and Gerber chub that has returned from childhood.)
I say all this, about food and biking and the swimming I intend to do because, after biking down to Cocles, calling Sondra from the Spa (she is not working today but is very gracious about my choosing the other house), leaving a voice-mail for Denise, and biking back in CONSTANT, STEADY, DRUMMING RAIN for 3 miles, I did all this, got to Vista Verde road, turned the very last corner five feet from my gate and ran into a tree.
(I digress but it's worth it.)
Not just one tree technically since it has an Air Plant: Tillandsia, attached to its trunk --ohh, just about face height.
It turns out, these fascinating "air plants" have tiny spikes. Shark-tooth shaped thorns that must also have a protective coating of something annoying to skin, like mild napalm. The hand and arm I put up to slow the impact to my face (my real face, folks, including upper lip) are burning and studded with these tiny attackers. Luckily, there were 2 things that saved this from being worse : the cold water outdoor shower just a few feet away (yes, in the StillRaining rain) and the fact that I had just run my face into a tree.
It's hard to take yourself seriously just then or to have a whole lot of self-pity.
Pulling thorns from my arm, hand, and face; covered with angry, red scratches (that will last days it turns out) ... the point of all that was to say:
I immediately wanted a coffee. And toast.
I'm having Second Breakfast."
Damp, chubby, tree-bitten, constantly eating, rootless wanderer: I'm a flipping Hobbit.
oh dear
But hobbits are so cute and loveable...and capable of saving the world
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