No sun just yet, the late spring day and the long blasts of cold air from the southeast all slow down this rattlesnake, near a giant cellphone tower, set as a relay between the capital and the largest city of New Mexico.

Did the snake strike? No. Coil? As if the playback were in slow-motion, and I and my brain were analyzing the nuances of a big play, it coiled long enough after I moved safely away. Did it bite me? No. I didn’t see it until it would have been too late, but it did not coil, it did not strike. My adrenaline spiked as if it did coil, as if it had made a lunge towards me. I was lucky. The ground around it was a slightly yellow white, like limestone gravel or the dust left over from the act of breaking granite rocks with blunt instruments. The snake was perfectly camouflaged. I never saw its head, and the rattle started very late – I walked a good seven feet away before it rattled. It disappeared underneath this great jagged concrete remnant from the train track construction, and I never met the slightly dazed bugger eye-to-eye.

The thought, recurring over and over again in my head as I made a clumsy retreat in cycling shoes, was it would be terrible and funny in a way if I received a bite on a road ride, rather than the slightly more conventional mountain bike ride.

The season is young. Typically I have great riding seasons when the strangest things happen, so maybe it was a sign of good (strange) riding ahead. Or maybe I’ll be bitten by something else.