Friday was a fantabulous weather day – today, not so much.

I started out my trek this morning, by eyeing the sky and figuring I’d be lucky to get an entire walk in as it looked as if it would pour any minute.

Just like yesterday, I headed over to Memorial Park to see if “The Healing Field” flag display was there, and it was not. The event is usually sponsored by the Exchange Club of Lincoln Park, and is an impressive array of uniform rows of well over a hundred U.S. flags on eight-foot flagpoles; each one honors a fallen service man/woman or first responder. I just looked on the website http://www.healingfield.org/ and discovered Michigan’s tributes are only in Benton Harbor and Coldwater this year.

Our City’s Memorial Day parade is tomorrow, and, at Memorial Park, the grass had been freshly mowed, and all those dandelions lopped off so the grounds now look presentable. In the pavilion, there were two brand-new flags, still with their creases intact, hanging limply on their respective poles by the memorial that honors the City’s war dead since World War I.

I circled around Memorial Park once, then continued on my trek to the tracks. But I never even made it to the footbridge that separates Lincoln Park and Wyandotte before big raindrops splattered down on my coat.  I quickly changed direction and started for home, thinking, that if the rain stopped, I’d just walk in the neighborhood.

There were no walkers, with pooches or otherwise, on my route today – they were either sleeping in, or had eyeballed the sky, and stayed inside.

A few blocks from home I saw a sight that made me smile. Even if I had my camera handy, I would not have been able to capture a photo of the pair as they rolled by too quickly.  It was a woman perched on an oversized motorcycle and that bike was very wide, perhaps twice the size of a normal motorcycle.  Behind her, she had a companion – a friend who was not hanging on for dear life, or complaining about getting “helmet hair”, nor forgetting to lean with the bike at each turn.  Nope, it was a blonde-colored teddy bear that was easily the size of a small child and it was strapped onto the bike, behind the seat.  So, I guess you could say it was riding “bearback”.  Though the biker was dressed for riding, her friend was bear-naked … no leathers, boots or a helmet … not even a do-rag on this cutie pie.

I chuckled over this biker chick and bear, especially since I’ve collected teddy bears for years, so I have a special affinity for these cute and cuddly toys.

Today yielded a measly 2 ½ miles under my belt, before I gave it up and just came home to hibernate the rest of the day.

[Image from Johnny Automatic at openclipart.org]