Restored Faith in Mankind

Well today was an adventure by accident. My friend, Julie, and I decided to get together and go for a bike ride around The Landings. I know- it was scorching hot, but we're both sticking to our Rock N' Roll (half)-marathon training, so biking is better than running in this mad heat. Secondly, let me say that neither one of us live at The Landings & didn't know which way was up, so we were just planning to follow one straight trail & not deviate.

The plan went perfectly for the first half of our trek. After about 30 minutes we were getting hungry & tired so we turned it around. "Not so fast," says the old man on the golf cart, wagging his finger at us. He proceeded to tell us that we were not allowed on the cart path while biking because it is a "safety hazard." Such a rule follower he was. Julie and I heeded his warnings and kindly exited the path onto the traffic ridden street. Much less of a safety hazard, I'm sure. (Sarcasm). In retrospect, we should have let him ride on by and hopped back on the path.

Long story short, we got all turned around, tried to navigate our surroundings on bike for a good 30 more minutes, then ended up at a Marina within The Landings, clearly nowhere close to an exit. Fail.

There in the marina parking lot was just one lone man, grey-haired, standing outside of his car, smoking a cig, and looking off into the distance. Julie took matters into her own hands and approached him, asking if he could give us a tip on how to get ourselves back on track. Sadly, he informed us that we were a long way from our destination and it would be a pretty good haul on bike to get where we needed to be. He must've seen the defeat in our eyes because the next thing out of his mouth was: "Want me to just throw your bikes in the back of my car and drive you there?" What an angel. Not to mention that his "car" was a brand new Expedition and he was just in the parking lot trying to regulate the compass on it. It was that new. And he still offered to fold his seats down and squeeze our dirty bikes into the back.

The bikes barely fit and I'm sure they dinged up the inside of his car. We couldn't even shut the back window. Julie and I sat in the back of his Expedition on his folded down seats and hung on to the bikes while we did a slow ride all the way home. That's right, he drove us all the way back to where we started. We chit-chatted all the way...him saying that we were welcome back to The Landings anytime and he wished people weren't such sticklers about the cart path rules. So, one man ruined our bike ride only for another man to restore our faith in mankind and give us a lift all the way back.

There really are good people in this world :) Thanks Nash!

Caroline