Go ahead, make my day

Cyclists, like ballerinas, tend to have body image issues. It’s easy to forget when you’re stressing about being three kilos above race weight that you’re probably still pretty fit.

This morning while I was changing my clothes after skiing, a task I performed (as usual) in the parking lot at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, as soon as I peeled my shirt off, I heard a car honking behind me. I turned to look, and a man and a woman were seated in the car. The man opened the door and yelled at me “come over here.”

I was naked to the waist, so of course such a request seemed odd, but he repeated himself--speaking with a European-sounding accent--multiple times. As I walked towards them, now in plain view from the front, he said to me “Thank you—you just made her day,” referring to the woman in the driver’s seat. “She’ll be smiling all day long because of this.”

As they drove off, they honked, waved, smiled, and gave me the thumbs up. I was flattered. In the process of making her day, they made mine. At least, that is, until I realized that by walking towards them, I was merely no longer obstructing their view of the ground squirrel frolicking on the hillside behind me.