Thousands of miles of touring at this point, and nobody ever talks about the roadkill. Not as a hazard, as a mirror.
You pass a raccoon with its hands splayed on the asphalt and your brain whispers those look like human hands and suddenly you're not thinking about cadence anymore. You're thinking about how you're in the same category. Soft. Breakable. The physics don't care what you're wrapped in.
Found a beagle outside Tulsa once. Red collar. Tag said "Biscuit." I sat on the guardrail for twenty minutes. Nobody stopped.
Finally wrote about it. The accumulation. The bell I ring now for the fresh ones. The bridge in Nova Scotia where I had three seconds to understand I was about to become what I'd been riding past all summer.
Wondering if anyone else carries this stuff around, or if it's just me out here like some idiot priest of the shoulder.
by djrivard1