Cyclists on a shopping spree
I took off on a bike ride on Sunday towards the closest stretch of remote country road I could find. I was remembering from my recent bicycle tour how calming and peaceful a quiet road can be.
There’s a 15 mile or so stretch of frontage road along I-80 west of Salt Lake City and that’s where I was headed. It’s flat, it’s mostly well-maintained, it’s quiet (except for the I-80 traffic), and it’s perfect for an easy, nothing-to-accomplish, meditative spin — the cycling equivalent of “navel-gazing”, I suppose.
I passed a few cyclists as I headed west on the frontage road towards the Salt Lake Marina. There was the occasional solo cyclist out for the same kind of relaxing afternoon in the saddle I was in search of. I passed one group of five or six riders headed in the opposite direction.. I remember them because they were yelling and screaming and swerving in the road and seemed to be having entirely too much fun.
I didn’t think about this group again until I was headed back towards Salt Lake City. The frontage road, like I said, is long, straight, and flat. I could see a good distance ahead of me. In the distance, I saw what looked like a car stopped in the middle of the road. As I got closer, I realized it was a group of people. I wondered if it was the group of too-happy cyclists fixing a flat — that’ll take some of the fun out them! Closer still, I realized they were huddled around something. Oh no, I thought, somebody crashed. That would be bad. I kept approaching and saw that whatever they were huddled around, it wasn’t moving. That’s not good, I thought. Then I got close enough that I could see it wasn’t a person after all. It looked like cloth or a bag. Were they covering something up? That’s really not good.
I finally coasted up along side the group and could see it was a large duffel bag. I thought, “Hmmm. What a strange place to open up a duffel bag.” I asked “What’s going on?” thinking I could offer some help if they needed any. Except their response made it clear they didn’t need help at all. One of them said “We found this duffel bag on our way out to the Marina, so we stashed it here. Now we’re seeing if there’s anything good in it.”
I thought back to my recent bicycle tour and how vulnerable I felt carrying all my possessions in four small panniers, none of which could be locked or secured in any way. I would have been devastated if somebody had walked up to my bike while I was in a store or something and taken one or more of my panniers. Depending on which ones they took, it could have been the end of my tour or it could have been a medical emergency. If I had some place to securely store my belongings, I would have done it. But, I didn’t and that’s part of the adventure of a bicycle tour, I suppose.
I couldn’t help but think about one of our fellow human beings who owns that duffel bag and how he (or she), like me on my tour, would have stored the bag in a secure place if such a place existed for them. To store it along the frontage road clearly meant to me that such a place didn’t exist.
And now, six fashionably-attired cyclists on their $2000+ bikes had discovered the bag and were going through it like a discount bin at a road-side yard sale.
I had seen all I wanted to see. I don’t know, maybe there are salvage rules for this kind of thing like there are on the high seas. If there are, I’m not aware of them. All I know is it didn’t leave me with a good feeling. As I was leaving one of them called “It’s not yours, is it?”
I shook my head no. Then, as it popped into my head, I added “But I’m sure it’s somebody’s!”
The rest of way home, I thought about what is the right thing to do in that situation. Does anybody know? What would you have done?
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