Dog Attack

The path I take for my bike ride takes me through a park near my house. It's one of the biggest parks in town and has some beautiful bike trails running through it. I have only been there once but I had a great time exploring parts of it. The path winds through deep woods and over quiet streams, and everything is still deep green, even in October.

As I rode by the dog run, I heard some yelling and ferocious barking. I saw a Doberman Pincer viciously attacking another dog. Both owners were pulling at them to separate them but to no avail. I immediately rode over to jump the fence and intervene. I spent enough time trying to catch and subdue an unruly 140lb chocolate lab that I knew I could handle this. I planned to run over, pick up the big dog and toss it over the fence. I know how to grab a dog so it can't reach me to bite me and didn't think it would be a problem. The owners were just going about it the wrong way. You can't hope to restrain a dog by holding them. You have to pick them up where their legs don't touch the ground. On their back in your arms they are helpless.

I found out there was another much bigger problem with my hopes of helping out. I hadn't been riding a bike for years and my legs were not used to the mile or so I had ridden already. They felt like jello by the time I got to the fence and wouldn't give me the usual thrust to jump a fence in a single hop like I usually can. I was looking for the entrance when the noise died down and the dogs calmed down. No one was hurt so I hopped back on my bike and went back on my way.

A Free Bike

Last weekend I was headed out the door to take my best friend to Olive Garden for dinner. On the way out, my neighbor caught me and asked if I could take a look at her computer. It was a brand new computer and the keyboard wasn't working. I figured out pretty quickly that one of the pins had been bent and was now crushed at the bottom of the plug. I grabbed my pliers and bent the pin back in and got the keyboard working. My neighbor was so happy about it she offered to let me use her bike since she recently got a new one. I was thrilled. I used to love riding my bike all the time and it's so much nicer riding around the neighborhood than it is in the gym. I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. It really pays to extend acts of kindness to strangers. Sometimes you even get repaid with things.