Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: Tundra Ice

Day 2.5, Chatham, Mass.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous—I caught Dad calling it “summer,” and it’s the best kind there is: sunny, warm, no humidity, clear skies in which you can see for miles. A perfect day, in fact, for a 26.5 mile bike ride on the Cape Cod Rail Trail.

Unfortunately, I forgot my helmet, but I braved the mean streets surprisingly chill-like on the way to the rail trail (which is completely separated from cars and very nice) and didn’t fall once.

What did happen, however, after a pleasant jaunt through Eastham and Wellfleet and Orleans and, finally, Brewster, was we got hungry. We found a cute little cafe/market, and Mom and I shared a lobster roll which was, by all accounts, delicious.

We noticed that we could rejoin the trail by peddling down a stone path behind the market (in fact we’d seen others coming up that way earlier) and so, after lunch, we headed on our way, enticing some big, rather angry seeming dogs in the next yard (which was a fair enough piece away to assume they would not consider us on their turf) to start barking frenetically.

But they were penned in—or so we thought.

Full disclosure: I am, actually, very much afraid of big, barking, pissed-off seeming dogs. There have been one too many walks out in the boonies of my Alabama hometown that led me to face off with a nasty beast who I was pretty sure wanted to rip my throat out. I don’t go jogging in rural areas nowadays, and even though I live in New York, where most dogs are urbane and civilized or at least on a leash, I have vestigial fears and have been known to cross a street if a particularly vicious pit bull type is heading my way.

But when Cujo & Co. came headlong at me this afternoon with bared teeth, OH, SHIT, my fight or flight response went AWOL.

I froze. And then my legs got all wobbly, and my mom kept telling me to get on my bike and go as she yelled at the dogs and waved her own bike at them. “If that sucker bit my tire I was gonna be pissed,” she said later. Did I mention that she is a good person to have around?

I couldn’t get on my bike; I could barely move, so instead I turned away from the dogs and just stood there. I kept muttering “I can’t.” Finally, I managed to walk my bike into the woods, where I kept expecting the dogs to pop out of the bushes and mangle me.

I didn’t cry, but man, that sucked. Worse than getting fired. And really, why does anyone need to keep wild dogs in any sort of remotely populated and non-crime-spree sort of area? Like, what if there had been little kids around? Also, how many calories does a near-death experience burn? Cause I’m ’bout to drink ‘em.

I felt very pathetic about my inability to fight back, by the way—so pathetic that I Googled “what to do when dogs attack” when I got home.

Get this: You’re actually supposed to remain still, put your head down, perhaps turn away (although not completely like I did) and hope the monster eventually retreats. (Or, you’re supposed to carry a weapon.) What do you know, maybe I’m not such a wimp after all. But I certainly am glad M. was there.

And now, I must excuse myself to get a glass of wine so I am suitably numbed before the lobsters go in the pot. Because even though I love to eat them, I am not so fond of meeting them. Sorry, guys. But if one of us had to go today, I’m glad it was you.