Entry bubble The Ride Of My Life

By: Nancy | October 11, 2007 | Category: Home and Family

The weekend before last, I slipped away from Washington, DC and escaped to West Virginia for my family’s annual Cousins Day reunion. It’s my favorite weekend of the year with people I love, nancy hugging cousin jengreat food, treasure hunts, and the annual opportunity for my country cousins to toughen me up.

Everybody’s patient with City Cousin, who’s more accustomed to subways than pickup trucks and who has a healthy respect for (make that fear of) snakes, water and things with engines. So what did they do? They put me on an all-terrain vehicle and sent me down a hill toward the stream. And surely there were snakes in that water. Surely.

"You HAVE been sheltered!" my cousin Tim shouted after me in a sudden realization as I zoomed off, faking confidence on his four wheeler for my first ride ever at the age of 39. Already an experienced rider at 11, his son Matthew supervised my trip across the meadow, through the mud puddles and down to the stream where I didn’t see a single snake.

all terrain vehicleI kept thinking two things during my ride around Tim's 30+ acres of 'almost heaven':  boy, this is fun and boy, it was not smart for me to just hop on this thing and ride off. I knew better. Taking a look at ATVSafety.gov, ditching my pride and asking my cousins to talk me through some off-roading tips before I rode away would have been the smart thing to do.

Back atop the hill, I leapt off the vehicle feeling a little bow-legged but very pleased. Sauntering (hobbling, really) over to Tim, I announced that I now wanted a four wheeler of my own. He gently reminded me that there weren’t a lot of places in the city where somebody could use an ATV since they weren’t supposed to be ridden on paved roads. True. Oh well. I wore my mud-splattered jeans all day like a badge of honor. And my aunt pretended not to notice when I skittered around her house after the reunion, sweeping up chips of mud that left a trail behind me, all over her shiny hardwood floors.

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