The moment we left the protection of the trees, I realized my mistake. No protection. No shield. Nothing between us and the wind. We shifted to an easier gear and rounded another bend. We were just about to the beach area, when the wind went turbo on us. Ernesto had been waiting for us, just behind the jetty. He didn’t just push us or shove us, he rammed us. He assaulted us. And he had a secret weapon.
The road runs RIGHT next to the beach in Southport. As we inched along at maybe a half a mile an hour, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a sandstorm. The wind hurled huge handfuls of sand in our face. It raked across my skin, flew into my eyes, my nose. Like sandpaper it scraped across every exposed part of me. Now, on top of wetness, fatigue, and chill, we added stinging pain to our list of troubles. We turned our heads to the side, squinting, and breathing through our noses. “This is crazy!” I screamed.
“I need a windshield wiper!” Emma yelled back, “or goggles!”
“Now I know what it feels like to be sandblasted,” I shouted back.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Every time I opened my mouth to talk I got a mouthful of sand.
We pushed forward. This was completely insane. “We leave home in a drizzle, and an hour later we’re in a freakin’ hurricane!” I thought. The sand tore at my legs. I felt the grit in my gears. In my ears! “We are insane!” I said to myself. The pedals ground with every pump of my legs. My legs burned. I had sand in the back of my throat. I tried to breathe through my nose. Still, we crept forward in slow motion.
But then the weirdest thing happened. I saw a flash of myself, as though in a movie, a small heroic figure on a bicycle fighting his way along the shore into a storm. Then I saw the bicycling witch in the Wizard of Oz. I stifled a laugh. I realized, that in all my misery, I was actually… starting…to enjoy this. I was tired. I was in pain. I felt like I was pedaling for my life, but it was exciting, and maybe a bit comical. I felt a giant yell swell inside me like a wave.
At that same moment, we made it past the most open part of the beach. Now a beach house blocked the sand. Relief, at last. In unison, Emma and I let out an enormous whoop of triumph. We knew we had just made it through the worst that Ernesto could throw at us. With less than a mile to go, we realized we were going to make it home. We rolled down Pequot Avenue, crossed the Post Road, and dragged ourselves up Dave’s Lane.
I looked over at Emma as we rode side-by-side. She was drenched. Her sweatshirt looked like a soggy towel. Her face, covered in sand, resembled a cinnamon sugar doughnut. I knew I must look similarly whipped and tattered. I hoped I hadn’t ruined biking for Emma forever. As we pulled up in front of the garage door, Emma turned to me.
“That…was…awesome!” she yelled. I shouldn’t have worried so much. Emma knew we had just done something amazing. We just took everything Ernesto could throw at us. And we made it.
Now all I had to do was survive the rage of the angry mother. Would Nancy ever forgive me for putting Emma in this kind of danger?
We hung up our bikes in the garage, shook off as much sand as we could, and tried to look as normal as possible as we entered the house. Nancy was just coming up from the basement. “We’re back. Safe and sound,” I said. “So, no need to worry,” I added quickly.
“Worry about what?” she asked. Then seeing our drenched clothes, she added, “Oh, did it start to rain already?”
“Uhh…you could say that,” Emma replied. We looked at each other and winked. Perhaps the story could wait. In the meantime, we had sand to remove from our ears.
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