Rust Never Sleeps

 I was attempting to tightrope ride a narrow strip of flooded trail. I shouldn't have, but didn't realize it until my handlebar snagged an unbendable branch. In the next instant I commenced that slo-mo wheels-over-head summersault that is oh so familiar to a certain class of riders. Somehow I managed to twist just enough to come down on my side rather than face first. That was a good thing (although my side is still sore this morning). 

As I wallowed around, deepening what had been a rather shallow mud bog, the coyotes started their yapping and yowling; oh great, I thought, they saw all that. They'll never let me live it down. Never the less, I considered that a good thing too since I had neither seen nor heard a coyote in the Out There all summer, and was a little worried that they, for one cause or another, might not be around any more. Then I heard the sigh-reens and realized that sound had set them off, not my flub. When I had made it back onto my feet and had picked my bike up out of the muck, I glanced down and... oh, man, that is one smashed up cholla there. I craned my neck around to look at my back and didn't notice any thorny new appendages sticking to me; that made a third good thing. Nothing seemed unduly out of order so I got back to riding, satisfied that I had, perhaps, got crashing out of my system for a while.

Anyway...

Rust never sleeps and, apparently, neither do rust-colored plants; it seems as though the California buckwheat has been covered in oxidization all year. Every trail out there has some buckwheat growing along the twists and turns, some in sparse bunches, others in great walls.