Bicycle Outlaw

A few days after I received and assembled our new “Doggie Ride” bike trailer, I rigged our bikes onto the van, put the dog trailer inside, and drove with Richard and Willie up to the Ashokan Reservoir.

I’d once lived in this area for eight years, with the mountains and water a daily feature in my younger life.  I walked and ran and skated and biked atop the reservoir’s dam wall and dividing weir, enjoying storms and sunsets and full moons with friends, former friends, late friends, late family, and a late – and beloved — dog.  She was a lovely Golden Retriever/Collie mix named Jolene, and she logged many miles walking beside me on these paths overlooking the reservoir and mountains — a place of great natural and manipulated beauty where I’d never before felt quite so at home.  The Ashokan is where some of my ghosts will always reside.

In the parking area, I rigged the trailer to my bike, and Richard secured Willie inside.  We started out on the smooth paved road and the sun dropping in the west transformed the surface of the water into glittering silver.  I put on my sunglasses and took a deep breath of pine and faintly fish-scented air.  As we approached the bollards spanning the road beside a tiny toll both, I saw the sign: NO DOGS.

I hesitated, but only for a second.  Surely this exclusion can’t apply to a tiny, harmless dog contained, harnessed, and zipped up inside a bike trailer — a mutt the size of a house cat whose feet will never touch this ground…

I pedaled on, with Richard alternately beside and behind me.  Every so often I glanced in my rearview mirror where I could see Willie through the screened flap of his trailer.  This seemed discreet enough, with few of the other bikers or walkers we encountered seeming to notice I was trailering a dog through a NO DOG zone.

At the eastern end of the dam wall – a circular parking area called “the frying pan,” I asked Richard to wait for me for a moment as I passed a second NO DOGS sign to read a historic interpretive panel about the construction of the reservoir and the towns that were relocated or destroyed in the process of securing this the water supply for a growing New York City.  Then I looked up and saw the police car, cruising slowly around the opposite end of the circle, where other people and families were gathered to bike or walk or picnic on this late summer Saturday afternoon.

Uh-oh.

Hoping the police hadn’t taken any particular notice of me or the contents of my trailer, I turned the bike around and pedaled back onto the dam wall – in the direction of back toward the car – and hurry!

“Did you see the police?” Richard asked as I zoomed past him.

“Yes, I did.”

When I checked my mirror I also saw that Willie – despite being strapped and clipped into a safety harness – had managed to stand up and stick his head and shoulders through the sunroof, transforming his trailer into something resembling a parade float.

How could the police have missed that? I thought.  I checked the mirror again, glancing at Willie’s lolling pink tongue and flapping ears, his face a picture of bliss, and I couldn’t help smiling, even as I wondered: what would be the penalty for flouting the rules – the law – if we get stopped?

I knew these roads, and knew that if the police had seen the dog – and wanted to cite me – they had plenty of time to turn around and beat us to the dividing weir, and the long sight lines from atop the dam wall would enable me to see a police car far in advance of my arrival.  If so, what would I do?  I couldn’t turn around again, and of course I’d have to admit I’d seen the sign prohibiting dogs.  Though surrounded here by greenery and mountains and endless sky, I was in New York City’s jurisdiction, uncertain how the scenario I imagined might play out.  Would I be arrested?  Would the fine be less than $250?

I needn’t have worried.  Willie and I made it through the barrier and back to our vehicle without incident, and Richard arrived a moment later as I unhooked the harness and lifted Willie out of the trailer.   All three of us had a drink of cool water, and as he unbuckled the strap of his helmet Richard said, “How about next time we try the rail trail?”