Plans

Over my breakfast of egg on toast, I decided I was going to do something fun today.  I planned it all out: I’d get on my bike, enjoy the fall colors on my way across town, then call up a coworker and see if we could have lunch.  I got out my bike and set sail.

It was a gorgeous fall day; just the right shade of warm, just the right degree of breezy, gathering the leaves up and tossing them so they swirled around me in tame tornadoes.  I stopped to let a fuzzy black and white caterpillar scoot past me on the road, then stooped down to give him a lift into the grass.  The little Woolly Bear ambled gracefully through its jungle, looking a little odd in his thick coat on such a warm day.  

I coasted along the edge of Lake Monona, which shone brilliant blue in the sun, and wondered. How many steps would it have taken me to cross that road?  Six or seven?  This caterpillar would have needed fifty to a hundred scoots (insert technical term for caterpillar movement here) to navigate the same space.  Perhaps the cottonwood leaf was thinking similarly as it hitchhiked for a moment on my finger, using the wind first as an elevator up to the height of my handlebars and then a seatbelt as it rode with me.

I stopped to swing, at a playground right by the lake, and then sat for an hour just enjoying the view.  I walked down to a pier, where I was given a quizzical look by a passing seagull.  I watched a garter snake slither hastily away from me when I got too close.

Before I knew it, hunger had driven me home with the plan of cooking an early dinner.  So much for my plan of a fun day and lunch out!  Maybe next time I’ll make plans with the caterpillar.