Page 55 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
She takes a couple of wobbly turns around the practice track outside the shop, getting better with each circuit. She manages to stop and then start again without falling off.Good enough,I think.All she needs is practice.
Julia is another matter. She’d not even had a tricycle in her life and is more than a little worried by the idea of balancing on two narrow wheels. The shop attendant grins, and he says, “No worries. Lots of kids have trouble with their first bike. That’s why we have training wheels.”
The training wheels are two long arms with small wheels. They attach to either side of the back wheel, bracing the bike in its upright position.
While it is possible to take a spill off a bike with training wheels, it is much more difficult. When the bike is in full motion, the training wheels are off the ground and the bike would go down the road on two wheels as was normal for a bicycle.
When the bikes are purchased, we stop at a food vendor and buy a gastronomic disaster of a lunch. We sit at the picnic tables in the square and watch other people trying out bikes. Some people buy one, others just walk away shaking their heads.
After lunch, we buy water bottles, place them in holders attached to the bike frames, and head off down the trail that runs parallel to the shore.
I’m so proud of Julia. She quickly gets the hang of pedaling fast enough for balance, but not too fast for control.
Lee manages. I don’t pay as much attention to her as I do to Julia. Lee is truly an adult, even if some of her responses to the world are childlike.
It is as if she really had lived under the sea, or perhaps in a sequestered school for girls run by nuns. From one or two chance comments, I suspect that the latter isn’t too far from truth.
I’d forgotten how free it feels to ride a bike down an open path. It is a dedicated bike trail, so there aren’t any motorized vehicles to worry about. The ocean trail is the perfect place for two novice bike riders to get the feel of their mechanical steeds.
Ark paces along beside us, his tongue lolling out in a doggie grin.
Then, suddenly, he shoots into overdrive, sprinting ahead of us to dive into the underbrush alongside the trail. His dive is followed by a falsetto scream. I nearly go into overdrive myself when he hauls out a skinny man carrying something on a long stick.
My discipline holds. Just in time, I recognize that the object is a microphone on a boom, and that the man carries a professional camera with a bulky zoom lens.
I brake to a sideways stop, raising a rooster tail of dust. Julia slams into my leg, and I catch her before she can topple over. Lee must have hit the brakes, because she sails over her handlebars and into the loose gravel along the edge of the road.
“Hold!” I tell Ark.
He holds, gripping the man by one arm, muttering growls under his breath. The man freezes, lying on the ground, one arm over his throat.
“Lie still, and you’ll be fine,” I tell the man.
Julia runs to Lee. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m okay,” Lee mumbles, struggling to sit up. Blood is running over her lips from her nose. She has a scrape on her cheek, and it looks as if her right side is abraded and generally banged up.
She’s holding one hand to her face, while trying to use the other to push herself up. Julia is trying to help, but is mostly getting in the way.
I gently help Lee into sitting position. Nothing seems to be broken, but she’s scraped both hands, elbows, and knees, and it looks like she’s got a good bit of road rash on her right side.
“I’m okay,” she mumbles. Then, “Get rid of the guy, can you, Austin?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I can do that.”
I stalk over to the intruder. “Just what did you think you were doing?” I ask.
“Getting pictures,” he says. “I’m a P.I. Word is, there’s some guy hanging out with some fat cat’s girlfriend, and he wants to catch them in the act. I thought she might be the girl.”
My smart little girl, Julia, has a roll of gauze out of the first aid kit, and Lee is holding a big wad of it to her face. “Me?” she mumbles. “I’m nobody.”
“Lee’s my girlfriend,” I say. “She and I are riding bikes with my daughter. You don’t have permission to take pictures of any of us.”
“Public place,” the photographer snarks at me. “I can take all the pictures I want.”
“As it happens, this isn’t public property. It’s private, and I own it.” I take the camera off his neck, open it, and pop out the film.
“Hey! You’ll ruin . . .”
