A prophet in his own town

Paul thinks he may be Jesus. At least for this day, and at this time, with these things happening on this river, in this boat. He thinks of those stories of Jesus in boats on the water. When he calmed the storm, when he walked on the water, when he told them to fish on the other side of the boat. He rehearses what he might have to do if things go wrong, which he' s sure they will.

It's happened before when he's had this feeling. He and his friends are walking down the Main Street in the small Canadian town they live in after school. They notice the friend of an older brother of a boy whose Dad owns a car dealership in town driving a racing style Japanese motorcycle with nearly one thousand cubic centimetres of piston displacement. The boy whose Dad owns the car dealership says to the others how powerful the motorcycle is, that it's just as fast as the ones they actually race with in Europe. Paul watches the teenager on the bike scream by, engine whining, gears shifting, so that the front wheel lifts and the biker rides the back wheel. After watching the it pass Paul says, "That guy's going to crash," and thus it comes to pass, with all of the boys watching, that the bike's front wheel indeed dips, rises again, then dips and falls to touch the pavement. The rider has turned the wheel off of straight such that it grabs the pavement and wrenches the whole bike over to the left. The back wheel whips out to the right and slides along blacktop until the rubber catches and grips and by force of momentum the bike lifts up again into the air, tumbles once with the rider still on it, before the forces of nature rip him free of it and he rolls, then slides along the grit and fine gravel that accumulates along curbs on the edges of streets. The bike bounces along and at last scrapes to a stop too.

"Whoa!" says the boy whose father owns a car dealership, "did you really just say that that was going to happen?" The other boys generally smile and laugh and congratulate Paul, who squints at the scene unfolding up the street.

"It's going to be okay," he says and smiles. "It's just a lesson the guy needed to learn about how not to ride." With that Paul becomes a celebrity of prediction - a prophet in his own town. The boys spread his story around town and tell of other close calls like it that he's predicted. They tell the stories with such conviction that Paul starts to think before he speaks.

Ride report

in:        4'C wind 25ks NW

out:     6'C wind 35ks WNW