ONE WAY CYCLIST

We were sitting on Applewood Manor’s Rocking Chair Porch one afternoon, watching a young fellow ride by on his bicycle. What caught our attention was how he passed by at nearly the same time every day. The strange part? We never saw him return from the opposite direction. Naturally, being three old-timers with not much else to occupy us, we started speculating about his activities.

Howard Chartwell was the first to voice his curiosity. “It’s strange,” he declared. “It’s like he’s going someplace, but we never see him coming back. Something weird is going on here, I tell you! How does he get back to wherever he came from if we never see him return?” That set off a chain reaction of wild theories.

Jimmy Lee Wilson suggested one thing, Howard came up with another, and soon they were bouncing ideas back and forth like a game of speculative ping-pong. Was he selling drugs? Meeting someone for an illicit affair? Scouting the neighborhood for a gang of thieves? Jimmy Lee even floated the idea that the cyclist might be an alien with a hidden spaceship nearby.

That last theory was a bit much for me. “You fellers are overthinking this,” I said. “Usually, the simplest answer is the right one. He’s probably just on his daily exercise route or heading to work. All your wild speculation reminds me of a story about another cyclist.”

I launched into the tale. “There was a guy who rode his bike across the border to Mexico from San Diego every week, carrying two saddlebags. The border patrol would stop him every time and ask what was in the bags. ‘Sand,’ he’d reply. They’d open the bags, and sure enough, it was just sand. Week after week, this went on for six years. The guards never found anything suspicious.

“One day, the guard who had been searching him was retiring. He said to the cyclist, ‘This is my last day. I know you’ve been smuggling something, and it’s driving me crazy. Please, just tell me. I promise I won’t report you.’ The cyclist grinned and said, ‘It’s so simple you couldn’t see it.’ The guard thought for a moment, then his eyes widened, and he blurted, ‘Bicycles! You’ve been smuggling bicycles!’

“The cyclist just smiled, winked, and pedaled away.”

Jimmy Lee and Howard sat quietly for a moment, clearly chewing over the story. Finally, Jimmy Lee broke the silence. “Well, if you’re so smart, explain why we never see our cyclist ride past Applewood in the opposite direction. If you ride out one way, you’ve got to come back the other way eventually, don’t you?”

“Fellows,” I said, “the simplest explanation is this: his route is circular. He rides past us, loops through Asheville and Montford, and ends up back where he started without having to backtrack. That’s why we only see him going one way.”

“Oh,” Howard said, settling back in his chair. That was the end of our detective work. We went back to rocking, and it became clear that Jimmy Lee and Howard were better at rocking than sleuthing!