Covert Operations

Last night after dinner we realized that we were in fairly desperate need of hay for the rabbits.  Not that the rabbits were showing any signs of desperation- they never show many signs of anything.  But the hay was gone so I convinced Eli to ride his bike down to the pet store with me.  The only glitch in the plan was that it is October in Minnesota, and although our temperatures have been summery lately, the sun goes down ever earlier each night, and by 7 it was pitch black out there.  I suited up our bikes with a variety of lights, including cool green glowing boomerang shaped things that stick in the spokes, and reluctantly put on Jon's sweat-smelly reflective vest.  At first I was going to have Eli wear that and I was just going to wear a white shirt and hope for the best, but then I saw Eli's school guard vest and I thought Aha!  He can wear that. 

Not so fast.  Apparently part of becoming a guard these days includes signing a blood oath that you will not wear the vest in vain.  Or so Eli led me to believe.  I did manage to convince him that protecting his life while we went on an emergency hay run was not using it flippantly.  He countered with, "or we could drive."  I didn't buy it.  I manhandled him into the vest and took off down the road.  He followed, but he kept glancing furtively left and right, looking for undercover traffic cops (which may be the romantic branch of traffic copping, if it exists) who might arrest him on the spot.  As our friend Tim mentioned, we made it through the dragnet unscathed. 

It turned out to be a lovely ride with hardly no traffic on the back roads we traveled.  And the whole way down the hill into the village we were guided by the most lovely banana moon I've seen in a while.  I said, "Oh, it's reminding me of old Wild Bill" (my grandfather who shared a banana moon connection with me and who passed away a few Octobers back) but Eli wouldn't let me elaborate, I was making him sad.  But at least that distracted him from his fear of being caught out in the vest.  He will be most mightily upset if he knows that I am about to post a picture of him all vested up.  Sorry Eli.