the blog that got away

That's not all that got away. But I'll get to that. I've been meaning to share this story forever. In December of last year I shared a video of Gemma and I enjoying our morning bike ride here. We still enjoy hitting up the river bike paths whenever weather permits. But now, whenever I hit a certain point on our regular route, I have flashbacks of an unfortunate day last spring.

It started out like any other normal day. And as we biked along we saw a man flying his remote control airplane. Cool, but nothing we hadn't seen before. Didn't think too much of it and continued on our way. We hit our turn around point and started back. Once again, passed by the man flying his plane. Shortly after, we saw a little pack of stray puppies. I stopped to let Gemma get a closer look. I was vaguely aware of the plane and realized it was getting closer to us. It was about the moment when I figured out that the man was flying the plane toward us thinking we stopped to watch, that the plane obviously went out of range of his remote control and started a long, out-of-control drop downwards. "oh no. oh no. oh no. Come on. " I whispered to myself. But no, he never regained control of that plane and it plummeted down and landed smack in the middle of the Danshui River.

What would you do? He was so far away. I couldn't decide if I should bike over and attempt to communicate with him about the terrible tragedy of it all or if I should play dumb and bike away. I chose the latter. I felt kind of responsible. Even though I know I really wasn't responsible. I just felt terrible because I'm sure after I left, he probably walked over to where it went down in the river and saw the puppies. And then he would have realized and felt more embarrassed than I'm sure he already was! And then there's the money factor. Those airplanes can be pretty pricey. After a quick search online though I see that they start out pretty cheap. Let's just hope it was a cheap one. I mean, obviously, I'm sure it was because had he spent a lot on it, it would have had some sort of fancy alarm system to warn the operator when the airplane was getting dangerously close to being out of range. Right? Right?!?

Ok, I'm playing up the drama of it all a little bit. But this seriously is something that comes back to me EVERY single time I bike past that spot now. For some reason I'm the kind of person that just loves to hold on to the guilt, when I think I've hurt someone. While biking together there today, my friend Crystal reassured me that I made the right decision by choosing to bike away. She said it probably would have embarrassed him more had I gone over to try and talk to him. Thanks Crystal.

I hope one day I can put this behind me. And I hope that man was able to recover from the loss of the plane that got away.