December
10 , 2001
© Darrell Noakes
Each winter, I teach a first aid class for ski patrollers. On my way back from class this evening, two parkas rode past me on bicycles. They nearly mowed me over as I walked along the sidewalk. I tried to look into their faces as they rode by, but in the darkness, it was like looking into the face of the Ghost of Christmas Future in that 1951 black and white British version of A Christmas Carol. Unlike the Ghost, the parkas did not terminate in a bony hand to point at Scrooge's grave. Instead, one puffy sleeve of each parka grasped a tall, steaming paper cup of 7-Eleven coffee, while the other held a death grip on the handlebar. The bikes crunched over the frozen slush encrusting the sidewalk, turned, then bounced over the curb and into the street. There was a green light at the intersection I had just crossed, and traffic was moving steadily along as the parkas and their bikes zigzagged away from the left side of the roadway.
Hope I don't need to open my first aid kit tonight, I thought as I glanced back at the traffic. A parade of frosted windshields concealing legions of mall-weary Christmas shoppers streamed through the intersection. Plumes of exhaust condensed in the frigid air, swirled about and settled in an orange fog under the sodium streetlights. The ghost cyclists, in their dark clothing and without lights or reflectors, would be invisible to the other drivers.
I turned back toward the parkas. They made it safely to the refuge of the opposite gutter, turned onto the sidewalk at the next alley, then disappeared along the sidewalk up the first side street.
Borealis
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