Queen of the mountain by day, rescuer of bunnies by night

QOM is a well known achievement. In the cycling world. For those who use the app, Strava. Okay, maybe not that many people.

To explain. When you go for a ride outside, you can record it to Strava. It logs your route, speed, effort and things like that. Certain areas on the map are marked as ‘segments.’ These are usually very challenging climbs, very steep descents, or long straightaways where a top speed can be reached. Whoever completes a segment the fastest earns a Queen (or King) of the Mountain badge.

During this off season I have made it my goal to attain as many QOMs in my area as possible. This is a team effort with Hubs, because I suffer from the very rare Cartoflummoxia Disorder.
Definition: A fictional disorder characterized by a profound and persistent inability to comprehend maps, directions, or spatial orientation. Symptoms include confidently walking in the wrong direction, misinterpreting landmarks, and mistaking “left” for “the other left.” Patients often exhibit compulsive reliance on GPS devices—only to still somehow end up lost.

The very act of looking at a map, or worse, hearing turn-by-turn directions, causes my eyes to glaze over and my mind to wander.

Therefore, Hubs is my guide. Plus he cares a lot more about routes. He tells me where the known segments are, I go out and get them. This week I achieved two crowns! I had to delay this post by 2 days to give myself extra time to grab that second one.

There’s a lot of risks going out and riding as fast as you possibly can. Mostly, wildlife. I’ve had small dogs run between the wheels of my bike. I’ve had big dogs chase me up huge hills. I’ve had bears run alongside the road. I’ve had deer poise for springing.

Most recently, the greatest wildlife threat I faced was inside my very own house and not on a bike. ‘Twas election eve. My oldest and I were watching the results when we heard a crash from the garage end of the house. She immediately went into fight or flight mode. In her case it should really be called flight or flight mode, you do NOT want this girl as your back up during a surprise attack, she’s only got one response.

She’s halfway launching over the couch while yelling at me, “WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?”

I said, “well, it did sound a bit like someone coming in through the garage door but Dad is in California this week so I suspect it’s just the cats. I shall investigate.”

I investigated by wandering towards the cat room. This is a very small sunroom that we use to hold the cats’ food/water. We keep one of the exterior windows, about 4′ off the ground, slightly cracked so the cats can come and go.

Note: the window is 4′ off the ground.

I approach the cat room and see Bob, the black cat, staring at me. This happens from time to time, it usually means their auto feeder is empty. They’ll go in there and make a ruckus to get our attention and we refill the feeder.

I began gathering food/water in the laundry room and heard an aggressive thumping against the wall. Unusual. I returned to the cat room, hands full of supplies, opened the glass door into it and saw a fully grown rabbit throwing itself against the wall.

This caught me off guard. Bob was giving me this look of, “oh good, you’re here. let’s DO THIS THING.” After all, the rabbit was bigger than him. Somehow, he carried this jackelope from the woods, jumped up the 4′ window, and released it into the cat room.

In my pause and not quite rapid enough assessment of the situation, the rabbit saw an opportunity. It bolted for the door into the house, which was ajar. I yanked it shut, and trapped the rabbit’s front end in the house and rear end in the cat room. Bob stalked closer, giving me an approving glance.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, there were 2 dogs losing their ever loving minds at the sheer improbability of the situation and 3 children shrieking. Bob started swatting the end, dogs started nipping the head, it was all bad.

My hands were full of things, my elbow was holding the door semi-closed to trap the rabbit and I simply did not know what to do. If I opened the door, the rabbit would be in my house. To be honest, I don’t think I could catch a rabbit in my house, which means I would have to let the dogs do their best and probably bring the cats into the action too. That seemed….messy. To say the least.

I had no choice but to gracefully drop all the things, while kicking at the cat, yelling at the dogs, and telling the kids to scram before this psycho rabbit escaped. I then grabbed its rear legs with my bare hands and chucked it out through the window.

Bob was outraged and the dogs were pretty disappointed in me. But I bet I made a lifelong friend in that rabbit.

I was in the middle of a text conversation with a friend and had to respond with, “sorry for the delay, I had to go throw a rabbit out the window.”

To her credit, she was unfazed.