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Day’?s Verse:
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Hebrews 2:9
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Sometimes when I ride my bike I think about all the things I don’t want to run over. Usually I start with the obvious things, and usually long pointy screws top the Obvious list. Then I add unpleasant things like broken glass bottles, pieces of metal, nails, pointy rocks, small sharp pieces of wood, and deep, wheel-bending potholes.

Then I move on to the More Obscure list of things, which includes extremely unevenly paved sections of road, shoulders less than six inches from the sidewalk, extremely gravelly/road-dirty shoulders, large icy patches, pop cans or papers or other discarded trash, storm drains sunk into the ground, and shoulders with a sharp drop-off into a ditch.

Finally I think of Really Weird things I would rather not run over, and inevitably fresh roadkill squirrels comes to mind first, followed by other squishy objects like slugs and snails, dried-out roadkill of any kind, extremely thick patches of car exhaust (as when somebody starts a car in the morning to warm up and leaves it running in that one spot for a long time), pieces of string or rope, thick piles of leaves, discarded plastic grocery bags, and bungee cords.

…Which reminds me:

I also used to spend the first mile and a quarter looking forward to passing one particular house, which until a few weeks ago, was set back a long ways from the road with a vast, tree-studded lawn between it and Farm Road. In this vast and sweeping lawn, presumably owned by a rather quixotic family of animal lovers, I often saw one lone sheep getting in some early-morning grazing. The passage of cars never fazed it, but as I rode by the sheep would hear me coming and look up in alarm. This look, however, was always accompanied by what appeared to be a physically impossible leap straight up into the air that raised all four of the sheep’s feet off the ground. The sheep would then high tail it back up towards the house, where I imagine it had a special modified doghouse in which it hid from my threat.

Then, the next morning, there would be the sheep, grazing in that vast lawn again.