The Breakaway(14)
Back in the park, Abby realized there were a dozen people looking at her expectantly, including Jasper, who’d finished handing out the vests. She swallowed hard.
“Let’s quickly do some introductions. Tell everyone your name and where you’re from.” Abby pointed toward the quartet of senior citizens. The hard-of-hearing fellow—tall, a little stooped, with pale, freckled white skin, skinny arms and knobby knees—gave a wave. He had a fanny pack looped over his shoulder and tucked under his arm, purse-style; hearing aids in both ears, and a turtle-ish aspect, with a round, sunburned face jutting forward from the wattled stalk of his neck.
“Good morning,” he began, in a slightly louder-than-polite volume. “I’m Ted, and this is Sue.” He indicated the gray-haired woman beside him, who waved at the group. “We live in Rye, New York, and we do a trip every summer with our dear friends, Ed and Lou, who live in Ridgefield, Connecticut.” Ed was as short as Ted was tall, with a bald head as tanned and round as an acorn, and a belly that stretched his Lycra jersey in a taut curve. Lou was even shorter than her husband, with a cap of white curls and rosy cheeks.
“So it’s Ted and Sue and Ed and Lou. But if that’s confusing, we also answer to…” He turned around to display the words THE SPOKE’N FOUR emblazoned over a line drawing of four bikes with riders, all in a row. Mild laughter rippled through the group. “Good one,” Jasper called.
“The four of us have our own sag wagon.” Ted pointed toward the street, where a monstrous RV was parked—probably illegally—by the curb. “We take turns driving it. So, every day, three of us will be on the road, and the fourth will be behind the wheel. And, of course, you’re all welcome to come aboard, if anyone needs a bathroom break, or if it’s hot and you want to cool off, or it’s raining and you want to stay dry.”
The woman beside him—Sue, Abby reminded herself—grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward her so she could speak directly into his hearing aid.
“Oh!” Ted said. “Sue has reminded me to tell you that I’m a little hard of hearing. Please try to look at me while you’re talking and speak slowly and clearly.”
“Thank you, Ted,” Abby said, slowly and clearly. Lizzie had filled Abby in on the RV situation, explaining that the Spoke’n Four used it as a safety net on their self-supported trips, in case one or a few of them ended up being unable to complete the day’s mileage. “Can’t they just use our sag wagon?” Abby had asked, and Lizzie had said, “I think they like knowing they can take care of themselves.” She’d shrugged. “Or, who knows? Maybe one of them just really hates using Porta Potties.”
“Everyone hates Porta Potties,” Abby said.
“No lies detected,” said Lizzie.
Abby nodded at the woman who’d looked relieved about the bridge news. She introduced herself as Lily Mackenzie, and said she was riding with her daughter, Morgan. Lily was petite, with bright blond hair, big, blue eyes, and long manicured fingernails. She wore black Lycra cycling shorts, but instead of a stretchy cycling jersey with pockets above the hips, she had on a long-sleeved tee shirt top. Abby also spotted a cross on a fine gold chain around her neck. Her daughter, Morgan, was taller than her mom, with shiny light-brown hair that, Abby guessed, uncharitably, had probably been her mother’s original color. Morgan wore biking shorts, with a baggy tee shirt that hung almost to their hem, and a necklace that matched her mother’s. A gold ring on her left ring finger caught Abby’s eye. Could the girl be married already? It didn’t seem possible. She was just a kid.
“There were supposed to be three of us, but now Morgan and I are doing a little mother-daughter bonding, while my husband’s leading a men’s retreat in Arizona.” Lily smiled at the group, and Morgan gave a little nod, licking her lips as her gaze slid toward the ground. The girl’s posture was almost furtive, shoulders hunched, with her left hand cupping her right elbow and her body leaning away from her mother. It was a pose Abby remembered well from her own teenage years.
“Welcome.” Abby hoped that the Spoke’n Four, with the KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OUR BODIES bumper sticker visible on its RV, right beneath the Bernie Sanders sticker, would be able to play nicely with the Mackenzies, and resolved to keep the conversational topics confined to biking, the weather, and what everyone was watching on TV.
“I’m not really an experienced cyclist,” Lily was saying, “but I’ll do my best to keep up.” She looked at Morgan fondly. “I’m just happy to be spending time with my daughter.”
“No worries,” said Abby. Morgan, who appeared decidedly less thrilled, managed a wan smile as she shuffled farther away. “And that reminds me to remind all of you that this is a vacation, not a race. You’re not here to win a spot on the Olympic team or qualify for the Tour de France. Don’t worry about going as fast as you can. We want you to enjoy all the things being on a bike lets you see and hear…” (and smell, Abby thought, but didn’t say, as she recalled certain sewage plants she’d ridden by, during her cycling club’s annual New Hope–to–New York ride, which passed through some especially redolent sections of Elizabeth, New Jersey).
Abby already knew that, in some cases—mostly male cases—her little speech would be ignored. Between the apps you could download to your phone and the devices you could clip to your handlebars, bikers had real-time access to reams of data: how long they’d ridden and how far they’d gone, average speed and cadence count and feet of elevation, how many miles they’d gone on a trip and how many miles were left and how fast they were going compared to previous rides on the same route, or compared to other riders that day, that month, or that year.