Relative Something

Hey, cycling friends, look what Cyndie found for me while we were cleaning out the nooks and crannies of our house:

Do you think there will be enough open space on this year’s trip to make it worth bringing along?

To the uninitiated, the Foxtail throw-and-catch game achieved legendary status one year on the bike trip when it became snagged high in a tree. The exact details have grown foggy over time, but the hilariousness of the event remains strong for me. It isn’t the fact that it got stuck in the tree that is so funny, but what happened after that. It was a scene right out of a cartoon.

In attempt to free it from the branch it was caught on, heavier objects we thrown, trying to knock it loose. It was as if we were dealing with the kite-eating tree from the Charlie Brown cartoon.

The branch was so high, it was at the limit of distance that we were able to throw things. The challenge was to find something that could be thrown that high. I think the first thing was a ball of some sort. Easy to throw. However, since the height was near the top arc of how far a person can throw, the ball lost all momentum when it arrived at the apex of its trajectory. Eventually, the ball made it high enough to be over the branch, and then it gently settled right there on that same branch.

That seemed pretty funny, at the time. Little did we know what would come next. Pretty much everything we could find to throw, seemed to end up with the same fate. I recall a water bottle being grabbed by the branch. One after another, as the object would go up, and then not come down, we would find ourselves wracked with new levels of laughter over the ever-increasing fiasco. Each attempt to fix the situation, actually ended up compounding the problem, with comical display.

I wasn’t able to throw anything that high, so I just watched and laughed. I remember Curt taking the most turns throwing. Eventually, I think there was a split log from the firewood pile that was being thrown. By that point, there was a certain amount of exhaustion that developed, and since increasingly heavier objects were deemed necessary, the effort was nothing short of heroic.

I don’t remember if all the objects eventually came free and returned to earth, but I do know we gave up and wandered off to some other activity, probably dinner, while the Foxtail still dangled above.

Upon returning, as I leaned down to zip open my tent, I discovered that Foxtail, placed nicely in front of my door. I think the tree eventually took pity on us and just gave it back, after we left. Someone then found it and deposited it for me to find.

There is probably a lesson in that, but I still am so caught up in how funny the situation was, and how deeply it made me laugh, that any lesson gets thoroughly lost in my guffaws.