The Open Door

WEATHER THERE: partly cloudy, 6C, 6 km/hr headwinds
WEATHER BACK: overcast, 11C, 15 km/hr crosswinds

Now that I have a strong, sturdy mountain bike as my trusty steed, I've been trying to get back into the habit of hauling my daughter to daycare in the bike trailer. She doesn't mind it too much - sometimes she finds splashing through puddles and going over bumps quite fun - and I'm sure it's great for her to get into the habit of bike-commuting with Mommy. The downside is that it adds a few minutes to my trip compared to driving her there, and dealing with that big double trailer can get quite awkward (which is why I've been seriously contemplating shelling out the - shudder - $300 for a narrower, lighter single-child trailer).

I have to back-track past my house to get to work, and on my way home from work I look longingly to my home as I pedal past it to get to the daycare. Normally this isn't much of an issue, except for the occasional slight pangs of desire I feel at the end of a long workday to stop at my house and be done for the day instead of having to continue on to the daycare. Then again, my desire to take in that glorious sight of my daughter running at me with arms wide open and a big smile on her face far outweighs it and I keep trudging on to get her.

As I was riding home on Tuesday I cast a longing eye towards my house as I was pedalling past it. But something was very different - and quite amiss. The front door was wide open. Robbers!! In a panic, I pulled my bike over and clamoured up the front steps, afraid of finding my house ransacked and robbed. Or worse - finding someone in my house and willing to hurt me to get out. I darted through the front door and looked around the porch.

"Odd," I thought, stopping in my panicked tracks, "They didn't touch the road bike." Mike the Bike was parked up against the porch wall where is always was, completely unmoved from when I saw it last. That would have been so easy to steal! Why didn't they take the bike? Looking around, I noticed that, in fact, nothing looked out of place on the porch. Well, okay, maybe not here - but I have more valuables inside the house. I peered through the window into the house and saw my purse hanging off a chair back right in front of me. It was still there, untouched. Nothing was out of place inside my house, either.

So - not robbers, then? What the Hell could have happened? Then it occurred to me:

"Oh CRAP! Did I leave my door open this whole freakin' time??" Maybe after fighting the bike trailer out of the front door in the morning (where every day it succeeds in ripping more chunks off my weatherstripping because it's too damn wide for the doorway), then bringing my bike out, and hooking them up, and putting my daughter in the trailer - maybe I just forgot to go back and shut the door. Maybe I just mounted my bike and took off. Could I have possibly been so careless? Me, who has had a different home broken into? Me, who is usually fairly paranoid about that sort of thing and always keeps all windows and doors locked even when I'm at home?

I thought back to the events of the morning and realized that it may have indeed been the case. My daughter was being difficult and putting up a fight about going into the trailer and going to daycare all morning. I remembered her aiming her yelling, thrashing anger at me as I was strapping her into the trailer, even as I feebly tried reasoning with her about how fun daycare was going to be and how much she always likes it once she's there. Maybe I was distracted, tired, fed up with her tantrums. Maybe I was just focused on getting her to daycare on time. So I mounted up and pedalled away, still trying to reason with her over my shoulder, while the front door to my humble abode remained wide open like an invitation. And it remained like that for the next nine hours.

The most remarkable thing is that nobody stole anything. Not my bike on the porch, not the purse just on the other side of the inner door, nothing! Kudos to everyone for leaving my stuff alone despite my incredible safety blunder. I feel a lot better about the trustworthiness of my neighbourhood now. And that sound you just heard - that was my faith in humanity jumping up a notch.