My mother was born in the U.S., but as the first American-born child in a recently-arrived immigrant family living in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, her first language was not English, but Yiddish, and that's the language which she used when speaking to her siblings and to my grandmother, even into adulthood. Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, I learned a lot of Yiddish phrases, such as "alter kocher", which translates pretty closely to "old fart". Which brings me to last week's bike ride. I lead rides for the bike group within Arlington's 55+ program. While the group is officially called the "Tour de Friends", if you follow me on Strava, you'll see the entries for those rides titled as "AK Ride", "AK" being an abbreviation for the aforementioned Yiddish phrase. The participants in theTour de Friends rides are generally well on the "+" side of 55, and so it was a matter of some concern when one of my riders disappeared in the middle of a ride. Not that I wouldn't have been concerned if a younger rider had gone missing, but there's a wide range of harm which could befall someone who is, well, 55+++.
It was a cool, drizzly morning and I was pleasantly surprised to see about ten people waiting when I showed up at our meeting place of Barcroft Community Center. The rain was supposed to be stopping shortly, and while I had a few cancellations, there were more stalwarts than I had expected. We did give the rain a little time to dissipate, and by the time we started riding it was just misting, but the trails were definitely wet.
We headed down the Four Mile Run Trail to the Potomac, then south down the Mount Vernon Trail. At the top of Old Town I decided to stop and wait for the whole group because there was an unexpected trail detour. The group caught up, including my sweep, but we were short one rider. We tried calling him, and on the first time the phone was answered, but there was no one on the other end of the line. We tried texting, but no response. At this point I started to imagine that my missing rider had slid out on a rain-slicked section of trail and was lying in a ditch by the side of the trail somewhere, injured and barely able to get to his phone. The only consolation was that he hadn't been the last rider in the group and no one had spotted him as they rode. We had a planned stop under the Wilson Bridge just on the other side of Old Town. I conferred with my other trip leaders and we decided to continue on to that point and see if he'd show up there.
We got to the Wilson Bridge and, well, no missing rider. By this point the rain had stopped, but it was still a wet, grey sort of day, so a few participants were more than willing to turn back and retrace our steps, looking for our missing rider along the way. I continued leading the remainder of the group south, though we too turned around a little short of our original planned destination of River Farm.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. When my group met up at Peet's Coffee in Shirlington with the folks who had turned back early, they reported that they had finally been successful in contacting our missing person. He hadn't dressed for the inclement weather, was getting cold, and just decided to turn around and head home without telling anyone. So, I was able to close that Missing Person case, and I didn't have to report anything back to the county Recreation Department. Whew!
So please, dear reader, if you ever decide to leave a group trip early, please let someone know!
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