Summer Days

Adam rode across town, with beads of sweat dripping from his chin. He was burning up and breathing hard in the heat of the day. The brakes of his sturdy mountain bicycle wined to a stop, and all was silent in the neighborhood.

            Dismounting and walking his bike over to a little tree, the boy stared at the windows of the house. Seeing none, he looked on toward the tree, unhooking a cable from the bike as he walked. With the cable free, the boy, fasted his bike to the tree trunk and glanced around the neighborhood for thieves. Seeing no one around, Adam left his bike alone and walked to the front door. The door to the house was open, but the screen door was not, and in not knowing the intention, Adam chose to ring the doorbell.

            Mere moments passed before Mrs. Smith, Brandon’s mother, answered the door. “Are you looking for Brandon?” Mrs. Smith asked. “Yes,” Adam replied. “He’ll be out in a minute,” Mrs. Smith continued. “Okay”, Adam nodded and sat down on the step. From the front door of the house, Adam looked across the empty yard. A little crabapple tree sat in the right corner of the yard, closest to the house. Behind the Crabapple tree there was an old blue spruce, standing 50 or so feet in the air. It provided a certain level of privacy between Brandon’s yard and his neighbors yard.

            In any case, on the opposite side of the yard, there was a little concrete driveway leading to a light blue garage door. The driveway was weathered, but still intact despite jagged edges and protruding rocks in the surface. In any case, most people spent very little time considering the driveway. There was a little blue Chevy Cobalt and a medium sized, white Toyota Tacoma covering most of it.

            The garage door squeaked and Adam jumped to his feet. Jogging over to the outside of the garage door, he saw Brandon lift the door from inside. Between Brandon and Adam, the door came up easily and Adam finally saw his friend face to face. “How’s it going?” Adam began. “Not bad,” Brandon replied, “just hanging out.” Without a word more, Brandon grabbed a bike from the piles of keepsakes scattered all over the garage floor, and lifted it over the mess. The wheels were flat when he set it down outside of the garage. Adam pulled a bike pump from his backpack and filled the tires, as Brandon closed the garage door and told Mrs. Smith that they were going biking.

            Unlocking Adam's bike from the Crabapple tree and waving to the house, Adam and Brandon left Brandon’s house, riding down the neighborhood drive to a path between the houses. The path began as a level sidewalk between the houses. Then, about a mile out, the sidewalk lead right into a canal along a major street. This canal took Adam and Brandon under roads and past open fields for many miles.

            By the time they reached the end of the canal, Brandon was winded and Adam was hardly better. They took a breather at a gas station near the canal, and sat in the shade, watching cars drive through a busy intersection. A half hour passed like this, and Brandon was content with going home.  That is, he was content with going home until Adam started talking about an ice cream shop a few miles further down the road. As painful as riding down to the shop sounded, the alternative of no ice cream was enough to motivate Brandon down the path.

            Forty minutes after taking a break, Brandon and Adam continued on their journey, intent on getting ice cream. Just after the canal, there was a bike lane down one side of a thoroughfare. It continued south for about a mile, and after that mile there was another canal, where Brandon and Adam resumed their journey.

            While getting to the second canal was easy enough, Adam and Brandon were mildly prepared for the canal itself. What started off as a moderate trek down the suburbs, turned into a slosh through the canals.

            It just so happened that a few days before the journey there was a big rainstorm in the city. Most of the rain water left the city within a 24-hour period of time, and the canals did a wonderful job of directing its exit. However, on the second set of canals where Brandon and Adam rode, there was a section where the river bed dipped down for no apparent reason. That is to say, underneath one of the roads, there was a tunnel about 12 feet in diameter that sat lower than the rest of the canal. Neither Brandon nor Adam realized this. So, when they came to a tunnel that looked about 10 feet in diameter, they thought nothing of it's potential depth. The water inside of it did not seem that deep from where they sat. So they rode on, straight through the tunnel.
             Riding through the river was easy for the first few feet, as the water lapped against the rims of their tires. Then, five feet along in their ride, Brandon and Adam were up to their thighs in murky storm water, unsuccessfully trying to peddle out of the pool.

            While walking through the storm water was unpleasant, it was nothing compared to the resulting swamps in their drenched shoes. Adam tried to air out his shoes on the other side of the puddle, but after another 30 min of sitting, they figured it was of no use. Brandon and Adam continued on with soggy feet for the rest of their journey.

            That could have been the miserable end to a story, but it turned out to be one of the ride’s biggest highlights. As Brandon and Adam sat in the sunshine, outside of an ice cream shop called BJ’s, they laughed at the whole event and at their overall exhaustion. It was a good day, and at the end of it all, Adam and Brandon called it in and took the easy way home, via a white Toyota Tacoma.