CTAS 1: Cycling Through a Storm

Serializing a Work of Fiction

Vic should have rechecked the forecast before bicycling to the marina. One click on his phone would have revealed the storm system closing from behind, faster than he could ride. Walking to the bike rack he certainly sensed the sudden barometric pressure drop and the flatness of the daylight on what had been a cloudless day, but it didn’t register. Numb. He pulled his helmet on, pedaled the bike.

The day had seemed perfect for bicycling. There’d be plenty of time between his oncology appointment and the Tuesday night sailing club race, so he’d stuffed his gear into his pack and ridden to St. John’s. But Dr. Gopu was behind schedule. Nearly an hour Vic had waited, staring into the saltwater aquarium. He wondered, does every oncology waiting room have a saltwater aquarium? Watching the tangs and cleaner shrimp, he formed a contingency plan. He’d have to keep the demo bike an extra day. Instead of riding from the hospital in St. Paul to the bike shop in Stillwater, he’d ride straight to the marina. He might be able to ride back up to the bike shop after the race. If he got there before the cafe part of the shop closed for the night it would be the same. He’d have to skip hanging out at Squid’s Bar with the crew after the race, but it was his best shot at avoiding trouble with Bob, his boss. And brother-in-law.

He hadn’t ridden far when the first big drops of rain started. Big drops usually mean a lot is coming, but Vic was confident he could skirt or outride the worst of it. The word Uber surfaced briefly amid the contents of consciousness, but, in the moment, it seemed easier to pedal harder. The demo bike had no fenders, of course, so water sprayed up from the tires and Vic was quickly soaked through.

“Do you want a ride?!” An SUV zoomed up beside him and then slowed to his pace on the county road down the big hill halfway to the marina. The driver clutched his steering wheel and leaned to yell at Vic through the open passenger window.

Vic looked at him quickly, shook his head, kept his grip on the bike’s handlebar. His riding glasses were fogging up from heat dumping off his face. The SUV sped ahead. Vic swerved to avoid more road-spray from the car’s tires. He kept his head down to avoid the rain’s icy sting and followed the pavement’s white fog line the way a swimmer uses the lines on the bottom of the pool to stay in his lane.

More cars whooshed by and then another slowed next to Vic, this time a little shadow of a sedan. “Let me give you a ride!” It was a woman shouting from a little red car pacing very close to Vic’s elbow. Ringlets of hair bounced around her face and shoulders.

“No thanks!” Vic yelled back, trying to smile. Nice people want to help, but deflecting ride offers while holding a line racing downhill with skinny tires on slick wet pavement was stressful. He was sure that stopping now, trying to wring his soaking self off and load a filthy bicycle inside some well-intentioned stranger’s car, and then needing that stranger to drive him to the marina in Hudson—on the far side of the river—was not a better plan for getting to the dock on time.

The woman in the red car didn’t speed ahead. Others were queuing up behind her, forced to wait while she paced beside the bicyclist. “Please!” She yelled again, her eyes pleading.

“I’m fine!” Vic yelled, waving her off.

Ahead, cars were slowing. Taillights reflected red streaks across the shine of wet pavement this side of an intersection at the bottom of the hill.

They reached the line of cars taking their turns at the stop sign, and, continuing on the shoulder, Vic got ahead of the red car. He coasted through the intersection with a different car, then stood to pedal and regain momentum as cars resumed passing him.

The woman in the little red car crept up beside Vic again. “Please! Stop! Let me help!”

Vic shook his head. “I’m fine!”

Her eyes bulged and she thrust her jaw forward, like this bicyclist was the most frustrating person she’d ever seen.

Vic lifted one hand to offer the woman a friendly salute.

She waved her hands in little circles about her head as the window glided shut against the rain and finally the little red car moved ahead. Vic resumed his focus on the fog line, but he could sense her still watching him in her rear-view mirror. He tried to ignore her while she hovered a few car lengths ahead, letting other cars pass. Finally she accelerated away with the flow of traffic.

Vic stood on his pedals again and pushed harder to generate heat, stay warm, get focused again, but before he could regain that groove he realized it wasn’t just the chill in his legs holding him back—his rear tire looked spongy.

You get more flats in rain. Rainwater lifts old oil from pavement along with tiny debris that clings to tires. Probably just a slow leak, but the tire was mushing out from the rim. Vic wouldn’t be able to finish the ride before repairing the flat. He coasted to a halt on mucky gravel by a four-way stop sign. There was a small flash flood racing along the ditch and splashing into the culverts. Dark ripples traced the shapes of wind gusts atop the water flooding the soccer field next to a school building.

A pickup truck pulled near, its wheels sloshing on the gravel shoulder. The truck’s bed was covered, so Vic couldn’t see whether there was room for a bike. The driver considered the cyclist for a moment before scrolling the window open to ask Vic if he needed any help. He seemed resigned about it.

Vic shook his head. “I’ve got what I need here—it’s just a flat tire. Thanks for stopping.”

The driver nodded, Shifted the truck into gear again as the pickup’s window scrolled shut.

Numb. This time his fingers. Vic fumbled some with the repair kit tools from the pack strapped beneath the saddle. He pulled the punctured tube out of the tire and slipped the spare one in, then fitted a CO2 cartridge into the portable inflater and attached it to the valve stem. He twisted the valve to release gas into the tire, and it farted a blast of carbon dioxide fog that was instantly sucked away in the wind. Crap.

Vic carefully threaded the next cartridge to the valve stem and gently turned the valve. A gentle hiss, the tire plumped full and hard.

Vic considered calling Stewie to tell him he was going to be a little late, but that would just cost more time. On race days the crew of the racing sailboat Corvus tracked one another’s locations on their smart phones, so Vic knew Stewie could see where he was if he was worried about it. Vic stuffed the repair kit tools inside his jersey pockets, slotted the wheel into place, and resumed pedaling. Hard.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, Vic thought. Some obvious cosmic message that he should have been open to already. That’s when the hail started. The loud cracks of dime-sized stones pelting down on his helmet didn’t exactly startle him, he’d been caught riding in hail before, but it is a noise that makes you pause, whatever you happen to be doing. Vic laughed. At the absurdity of the situation he’d gotten himself into. Because he almost never rode with a backpack. Vic had a huge canvas pack that he usually strapped under the Brooks B17 saddle on his own commuter bike. This time Vic had taken his backpack because the demo race bike had no functional clearance between the skinny saddle and and the skinny rear tire. Vic laughed because, although he was sure most everything inside the backpack must have been soaked through already, the backpack was shielding his back from the driving hail. And he laughed because he saw, looking down through the hailstones skittering and popping up from the pavement, that his rear tire was spongy again.

There was a big tree ahead: White oak—the kind with globby leaves shaped like elongated catchers’ mitts. Vic pushed toward it, across the sloppy gravel shoulder, splashed through a mushy strip of grass, and tucked in close to the lee side of the tree’s trunk where the wind and rain were blocked and most of the hail was deflected by the tree’s branches.

He clawed his phone from a jersey pocket. “Hey Siri!”

Siri couldn’t hear Vic’s voice through the howl of the storm.

Vic pressed the phone near his cheek and said it louder. “Hey Siri!”

Da-ding, the phone responded.

“Call Stewie.”

Silence, then another da-ding, then, “I’m here!” Siri chirped.

“Call Stewie!”

Silence. No dings, then “What’s up?” Siri asked, and another ding.

“Crap.” Vic looked at the phone to see whether Siri was still waiting. A big hailstone shredded through the oak’s leafy mitts and knocked the phone from his hand. He scooped it from the grassy puddle at his feet. A new hairline crack creased a jagged diagonal across the wet screen, but still the phone lit up. He pressed on the Contacts icon, but the phone didn’t respond.

Vic heard something shrill and reedy cutting through the noise of the driving rain. He looked up from his phone. The lady with the bouncy hair in the little red car was parked on the shoulder across the road. She was screaming at him from her open window. Words slipped between cracks and gusts while the oak tree’s limbs bobbed overhead: Hey … fucking … crazy. The woman shouted against the wind and rain, hands cupped against her forehead to protect her eyes. Hair was pasted wet against her cheeks. Hail bounced and shot skyward from her car’s roof as from a trampoline. But the car wasn’t a trampoline—it was a Prius hatchback.

She shook her head and raised a palm toward the bicyclist, hold on, or wait right there! Her window glided shut. The Prius lurched forward, made a tight u-turn onto the shoulder. Vic left the bike under the oak tree and trotted toward the car, pops of hail rattling his helmet. He pulled at the passenger door handle and an icy stone cracked sharp on his knuckles.

---

Vic slumped into the Prius. Hail drumming the car’s roof drowned blurted greetings. A mucky puddle formed at Vic’s feet as water streaming from his legs mixed with grit and dried road salt. The floor mat’s edges were salt-crusted, like in slushy springtime, not July. Vic stared at the woman, wide-eyed. She was silent, too, but her dark hazel eyes, sunken and pleading, beamed wonder and relief. There were streaks of gray in her hair. She was bone-thin with deep-set eyes, prominent cheeks, and slightly buck teeth. She was older than Vic had guessed before—seventy, at least? Thin freckled skin glistened wet and tight on high cheek bones. Rainwater streamed on her cheeks like tears.

“Thank you,” Vic said again. He didn’t say it loud for her to hear, just clear enough that she could read his lips.

She smiled brightly with tea-stained teeth and mouthed “You’re welcome.” They looked out again at the rain, then back at each other, and they laughed. She pressed one ringless, liver-spotted hand on Vic’s forearm and nodded to convey some reassurance, mostly for herself, Vic understood.

The windows were fogged and the woman pressed at the dashboard with slender fingers to switch the defrost to high. A dream catcher with frayed and dusty feathers dangling from the rear-view mirror twisted in the blast of air deflecting from the windshield. She reached to the glove box, pulled a stack of cotton handkerchiefs out and handed them all to Vic, then maneuvered the car back onto the road and made another u-turn, headed off in the direction Vic had been riding from.

“My bike!” Vic yelled, loud enough this time to be heard.

“We’ll come back for it!” The woman yelled in a voice that easily pierced the storm’s racket. “We have to get out of this hail before it cracks the windshield!”

Vic pulled his helmet off and pressed a handkerchief to his face, tried to peer beyond the flapping wipers. He looked at the woman’s white-knuckle grip atop her steering wheel while she hunched forward, squinting ahead. It was a mile or so back to the school. There, she pulled in, zipped diagonally across the parking lot to the unloading zone in front of the school, which was sheltered by a concrete overhang. Suddenly the car was quiet, save for the defroster fan’s whir.

“I’ve soaked your seat here.”

“That’s okay. I wish I had a big towel for you instead of just hankies.”

“I’ve used them all up.”

They laughed, and that’s when Vic heard another voice laughing that was neither his nor hers, a laugh that was more of a snort. Vic jerked around to see a kid, a teenager, wedged into the back seat.

“Hi,” the teenager said. He was overweight with a roundish head and appeared to be stuffed into an oversized child seat of some kind with a double shoulder harness and a rigid head rest holding his neck and head in place.

“Wow, hi!”

“That’s Dawson. My grandson. He can be sneaky.”

“Yeah,” Dawson said with a nod that involved all of his upper body. “Especially when there’s a hailstorm to give me cover.”

“We were on our way home from an appointment when we saw you. Why were you out riding in this crap, anyway? Are you crazy?”

“Just stupid today, I’m afraid. I’m on my way to the marina in Hudson. I’m a sailor.”

“Your brilliant plan for getting out of a hailstorm was to go sailing?”

“Sure!” Dawson snorted. “That way you can get hit by lightning, too!”

“I haven’t heard any thunder yet,” Vic said. “The race’ll be canceled if there’s lightning.”

“But they’ll race in rain and hail?” Dawson’s grandmother waved one hand at the parking lot where waves of rainwater rushed atop a carpet of hailstones.

Vic shrugged. “It might pass.” Vic peeked at his watch. There was a text message.

The hail had slowed, but so much had piled up that driving still wouldn’t be safe.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere just yet,” the woman said. “You can call me Sequoia, by the way. Nice meeting you.”

“Vic.” He took her hand. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“No choice. I didn’t understand when you waved me off the first time, but after I’d gone ahead it only got worse. They interrupted As it Happens on MPR to say everyone here in the river valley should take cover. I figured you probably weren’t hearing the radio. We’d almost gotten back to the house, but I had to turn back to get you. We weren’t going to get Dawson out of the car and into his wheelchair in this crap anyhow. I’m glad you listened to reason after we found you again.”

Vic laughed. “Well, I got two flat tires after you passed me the first time, and before I got the second one fixed the hail started.” Vic’s watch vibrated again. “I should check this text.”

“Go ahead! People are probably worried sick about you, out bicycling and sailing in this kind of weather.”

The text was from Stewie.

“I bet they’re used to it,” Dawson said.

“I bet you got that right, sonny boy,” Sequoia said. They both laughed.

Vic read Stewie’s message: 30 min delay. PRO thinks storm will pass, we’ll race. Keep riding! Vic replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

“I’ve got an extra half hour to get to the marina,” Vic said to Sequoia.

“Well that’s nice. Maybe that will give me time to make up a new protest poster. What time are you supposed to be there?”

“Between six and six fifteen, now.” Protest poster?

“Huh. Well, if we can get back on the road soon, we might be able to make that, after we drop Dawson off. Liz must be wondering what’s going on.”

“Probably not,” Dawson said. “Mom’s got windows.”

Sequoia pulled on the steering wheel to lift herself up from the driver seat and twisted her neck to peer up through the windshield. “Nothing’s clearing yet.”

“Look the other way,” Dawson said.

“Can’t see that way, there’s a middle school in the way, ya goof.”

Vic caught Dawson’s eyeroll in the rear-view mirror.

But the storm did seem to be letting up. No cars had gone past the school while they’d been parked, but now there was one: An Amazon Prime delivery truck heading north at a decent clip.

“Nothing stops that same-day Prime delivery, does it?” Sequoia said.

“You know, if you can get me back to my bike soon, since the race is postponed half an hour, I think I can fix the flat tire and still make it on time.”

Sequoia gave Vic some side-eye, her hands still gripping the steering wheel. “He’s really nuts,” she said, nodding, wet curls of dark and gray hair brushing across the wheel and signal lever. “Don’t worry about that. I can get you to your yacht after we bring Dawson home.”

“Thanks,” Vic said, then added, “It’s not really a yacht.”

“What is it then?”

“Just a sailboat.”

Sequoia shrugged, lifted her eyebrows and pouted a bit. “How big? How many people sail on this boat?”

“Twenty-five feet. We usually have five crew, with the helmsman, but in lighter wind just four.”

“A sailboat is a little thing with space for one or two people in bathing suits. Everything else is a yacht.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Yachting is a rich man’s sport. Reeks of privilege.”

“I’m not rich. This isn’t America’s Cup stuff.”

“Everyone says they’re not rich—even the richest ones. Except for Bezos and Trump, I guess—they brag about it. Everyone who’s rich also thinks they’re part of the middle class somehow.”

“I sail because it’s a cheap hobby. I just crew. I’ve never owned a boat—not even a little one that you’d need a bathing suit for.”

“They pay you to crew?”

Vic laughed. “No, the guys I sail with aren’t rich, either. Sometimes after we win a race the skipper might buy us a round of drinks. That’s about it. You just have to be able to crew well enough so that someone who owns a boat will invite you along so they can be competitive.”

“Uh huh.”

Vic checked the weather app on his phone. “We’re just about out of this mess.” He held the phone for Sequoia to look at the radar image of the storm passing by.

“Looks like there’s more coming right behind.” She pointed at another angry-looking mass of red, yellow, and dark green on the left side of the phone’s screen. There was a narrow isthmus of clear weather between two storm cells, and they were parked at the trailing edge of the first.

“Let’s go, then!” Dawson said.

Sequoia put the car in drive. The rain drummed hard on the car’s roof again, but there was no hail. “Let’s go get your bike.”

“How will we fit it in here?”

“The wheels come off, don’t they?”

“What about the wheelchair?” Dawson asked.

“Can we fit that in beside you on the seat if we fold it up?” Sequoia asked.

“I don’t think so—we tried that once when you had all that pottery stuff back there.”

Sequoia looked at Vic. “Maybe put the wheels in the back seat. Then you should be able to fit the rest in with the wheelchair in the back.”

Vic nodded. He might have to lock it to the tree and come back later.

Sequoia parked on the gravel shoulder and Vic trotted over to fetch the bike from under the oak tree.

The Prius’s bumper and all the surface of its hatchback lid were plastered with bumper stickers:

Ban Fracking Now COEXIST WAR is NOT the ANSWER END MASS INCARCERATION Black Lives Matter “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world” -Nelson Mandela NO NUKES ¡Ningún ser humano es ilegal! “I like your Jesus Christ. I do not like your Christians.” -Dalai Llama Pray for Whirled Peas.

It was the tattoo sleeve of bumper sticker displays.

Vic lifted the hatchback and surveyed the contents inside. Dawson’s folded wheelchair filled most of the available space. Tucked all around the chair were paper-wrapped bricks. “What about these brick things?” Vic called into the car.

“Oh, I forgot about the clay,” Sequoia said. “Toss them forward. We can put those on the floor up here.”

Vic tried to grab a couple clay bricks in each hand, but they were too heavy. He lifted them as carefully and quickly as he could manage and dropped them individually to the passenger seat beside Dawson. There were around twenty of them.

“Keep them dry and try not to tear the paper,” Sequoia said.

After dropping the first four bricks onto the passenger seat, Vic hopped around and opened the rear passenger door to transfer them to the floor in front of the back seat, but there were three bags filled with groceries wedged together in that space already. “Crap.”

“Put them on the floor up here.”

Vic lifted the bricks again and handed them up to Sequoia, one at a time, then went back and repeated the process, transferred four more to the back seat and then dashed around to the door and passed them up again to Sequoia, like a one-man bucket brigade. After getting most of the bricks out of the way he took the front wheel off the bicycle and tried to fit it through the open hatch, rear wheel first. Not even half the bike fit. He popped the rear wheel off and tried again.

“The bike’s really dirty, Sequoia.”

“Fine! Don’t worry about it!”

He tried again to Tetris the bike in next to the wheelchair. “Okay if I move your wheelchair a little, Dawson?”

“That’s fine—it’s just a transfer chair. If it were my good chair, I would have made Grams drive past you.”

Vic tugged the chair out and tucked the bike in first, then overlapped the chair beside the bike. Some remaining clay bricks blocked the chair from wedging all the way in, so he had to take the chair out again and toss four more bricks forward.

“I can get everything in, but I can’t close the hatch.”

“Fine! The rain is just about done here, anyhow—find something to tie the hatch down.”

He used a punctured inner tube from one of the flat tires as a makeshift bungee and secured the hatchback with part of the handlebar hanging over the Prius bumper. He wiped some mud from the bicycle wheels with his riding gloves and wedged them beside Dawson. Folding himself inside the Prius again was a trick, too, now that the floor was stacked with clay bricks.

“Off we go!” Sequoia clapped her hands, and they were moving again. “Look!” Sequoia’s face erupted with joy as the car summited the next hill. “A rainbow!”

Next: CTAS 2 - A House, a Boy, a Girl, a Car, a Dock, a Hug