Daryl, Daryl, and Daryl

We were on our way to yet another lazy, rocky beach afternoon in the sun on Lopez Island when my friend and I stopped at the local summer rental bike "shack" to get her a new water bottle. The shack was set back off the road with a wide lawn in front of it. There were about two dozen hybrid and beach bikes for rent on the lawn, neatly stacked into rows in their bike racks. Two lazy looking fellows whom I immediately dubbed Daryl and Daryl were laughing at each other as one Daryl rode a beach bike in circles around the other Daryl. A straw sun hat adorned his head. He only needed a set of overalls and chew in his cheek to complete the outfit. "Oh boy," I thought. "Let the merriment begin." Just walking across the lawn with Rosemary, I knew I'd be in for some sort of needless attention. In the city, fixies aren't given much of a second glance, but here in the hilly boonies, she'd be looked upon as a pink freak, and I as the mother of such mutant spawn.

I leaned Rosemary up against one of the bike racks and followed my friend into the shack. She picked up a clear water bottle and paid for it. The owner asked us, "Do you know what the picture is on the bottle?" We tried to analyze the black spotted graphic, but came up empty. "Um, the earth?" we asked. Not like we really cared. "Nah! It's the San Juan Islands!" he shot back, amusing himself that he stumped yet another set of stupid tourists who had come to patronize his island. “Whatever,” we thought, as we tried to forget the encounter and walked down the shack's ramp to our bikes.

As I pulled Rosemary away from the bike rack, thinking I was getting away from an idiotic conversation about my bike, one of the Daryls asked, "Hey is that is singlespeed bike? You riding that thing around here?"

"Yes, I am."

"Ooooooh, well that'd be something if it was one of those fixed bikes, ya know," the one Daryl said to the other laughingly.

"She is.....fixed," I sharply noted as I lifted Rosemary's back wheel and kicked her left pedal to set the crankset in smooth fixed motion with the wheel.

"No way!! You're crazy! You riding that thing around here in these hills. What kind of gearing you have? You done Mt. Constitution? hahahaha yeah you done Mt. Constitution on that thing? You got extra cogs in that there bag? hahahaha yeah you better have a whole bunch of extra cogs to change so you can do these hills."

"No, I just have one. That's all I need and I've been doing just fine with it, thankyouverymuch."

I was tired of their existence after their first words, of their personal inabilities projected onto me. Their mocking of Rosemary and me taking her on this trip raised my heart rate more than a few points, but I knew they weren't worth the conversation and I just answered that Mt. Constitution is one of my goals and I'd like to do it on her, but we didn't have time for it on this trip.

At that point, the owner came back out from his shop when he heard the conversation going somewhere other than where to eat or how to use this beach bike. He came over to us and dropped down on one knee and examined Rosemary like a horse, picking up her rear wheel to check out her dropouts and hub, asking questions while feeling over the pink steel and rolling the wheel. "What kind of gearing do you have? Do you race? Really? At Marymoor, huh. Well good for you. You must be a really strong rider to be taking this bike around the islands."

At that point I was tiring of the freak show and started to turn Rosemary toward the road, when my friend commented on his last remark:

"Yes, she is strong. She's a very strong rider."

And with that we left Lopez Island's Daryl, Daryl, and Daryl and went on our way to the beach. And I rocked up a few hills extra hard just because they couldn't.

Trackstanding Rosemary while waiting for a ferry