My boss asked today if I was planning on doing what Matt Lauer of the Today Show had done.  I wasn’t aware of what he was talking about until he explained that Lauer had had a bicycle accident with a deer last weekend.  This allowed me to recount an episode involving a deer that had happened on the Katy trail.  In this episode I was riding along the Katy and spied a deer about a quarter mile ahead.  I cranked up my speed and started closing on the deer.  The deer started to flee, but I was still closing on it.  This section of the trail had a steep embankment on the right-hand side and an even steeper wall on the left-hand side.  These obstacles seem to channel the deer and kept it on the trail.  I closed to within about twenty feet and was starting to wonder what I would do if I caught the deer, when it bounded up the left-hand wall.

On another trip along the Katy I did have a bicycle accident.  The cause of this accident was not a deer, but a snake, a black snake (non-poisonous) to be particular.  It was early on a summer morning and there was some fog about.  There were also quite a few toads about too.  I took pains not to run over them, even though they seemed drawn to the trail.  I had gone for a while and was cruising along pretty fast.  All of a sudden a black snake struck from cover, from the side of the trail, its target one of the morning’s toads.  I saw all this as I was about to pass over it.  Acting without thinking, I locked up both brakes and went sailing over the handle bars and landed in a heap, on both the toad and the snake.  I came to a second later and leapt up, but I was all alone.  A couple down the trail saw me and stopped to render assistance.  She was a nurse, she checked me out and thought that I was alright, but should head home.  I did, with a killer headache to boot.

Last week lance Armstrong dropped out of his European bike race, after crashing and suffering a broken collar bone.  Last weekend my friend crashed and also hit his head.  Today, Anne safely bicycled thirteen miles and I survived another day of overtime.

Today’s header and the picture with today’s post were both taken at the botanical gardens last Saturday.  Today’s header shows some redbud blossoms that are ready to pop.  The picture with today’s post show shows a rather noisy black bird, roosting in a Japanese cherry tree.