All is well and good at 6:55am, but I nearly ran into 2 parked cars in the pitch black streets. Yaaaa!
I didn't realize how 'the dark before the dawn' seems extra gloomy and dense especially under over-hanging tree limbs; that and the fact that several street lamps were either burned out or few and far between. Luckily I didn't show up for work with my two front teeth bashed out or anything despite the denseness of dawn (or my brain).
I've walked home from a couple football games lately; it'd been warm enough for flip-flops (not a good idea when it's over a mile), and also discovered a couple unlit areas. The sports field is just outside of town, but you can walk down the road, then find a couple side streets connected from the country and get into town. On one of these ventures I was hustling right along (I leave before the 4th quarter because frankly, I am a crowd-watcher, not a game watcher, yawn), and I was on the lookout (for weirdos) for chunks of gravel that would hurt through my thin soles....
Hmmm... I vaguely see a tree branch...wait...those curves are too curvy and uniform for a stick....must be....a SNAKE!
It had come up on the blacktop for warmth and I circled it a couple times and poked it with my toe (heck with those flip-flops) to see if it was still amongst the living. (Pardon me but Beetlejuice was on TV this week!) Yes indeedy. No road-kill for me. I kept circling, crouching lower, trying to distinguish what type it was. No luck. It was just too dark to see much at all....but still, I am a perseverer!
I tried my darnedest to see-- what if it was poisonous?
Finally I just tried to determine which end was the head and which was the tail and since I couldn't really tell, I had to pick it up. (If one end had looked way different I would of assumed it had 'the tell-tale triangle head' of a harmful snake. )
I continued on...snake in one hand, flip-flops in another...and as that stinker warmed up, it went wild! Talk about wiggly and frantic! I could hardly hold on to it's berserk little 18” body... but I managed to make it home and containerize it. NOT for the 
freezer, but just to show Briggs and let it loose the next day... It was a pleasant mild brown color.
Speaking of snakes, one morning in the mid-90's, about 6:00 am, the house-hold was awakened by a bloodcurdling scream from the bathroom. There was Bailey, dripping in a towel, mad as heck-- a huge black snake had escaped the night before and was whipping around the bathtub in a frenzy...she had stepped in and turned on the water...and then it went crazy! Why she didn't notice it before...well it seemed pretty funny for a few moments, but not to her—trying to get ready for basketball practice.
Back to the bike...as I was leaving work, I'd only gone a block when part of the gear/brake contraption thingymajig on my right handlebar fell apart. Luckily a knowledgeable kid helped me fix it because I couldn't quite figure it out. He tightened it up with his fingers, enough to make it home anyway-- all I could think of was 'thank God it worked this morning'-- I really would have bashed into something without a decent brake!
Then I would be lithping thith blog and I don't know how to type in lithp.
