The Way the Wind Blows

The winds tend to prevail from the South down here. All the time, I see visitors on bikes blasting North, with the winds at their backs. The beach transport of choice for the visitor is the Single Speed Rental Bicycle. These are big, black, and heavy, and are built to take serious abuse – precision machines these ain’t. So when it comes time to turn around and head back down the beach, these happy-go-lucky cyclists get an unpleasant surprise. Hair flapping in the wind, their faces a mix of pain and grim determination, they wheeze and strain down the beach, leg muscles ablaze. (“Boy,” they must think, “I’m sure earning a great big 2000 calorie dinner tonight!”)

If I get the chance, I always tell folks starting out to head into the wind first. One lady was struggling, and asked as she rode by if I could “turn the wind down.” Which would have been much funnier if everyone else who griped about the wind or the weather wasn’t also a wise-ass. There must be a perpetual smart-aleck convention on Hilton Head. Hearing crack after crack really makes you realize how unoriginal people are with their wise-assery. (If everyone’s special, no one is…)

P.S.  I had thought about capitalizing ‘Visitor’, making it a proper noun, but then it would look like I was writing about extraterrestrials.