Soulemama, {this moment} needs words. Without them, years from now, I could forget what’s missing in this photograph – me on my bike. This is the third week of blogging my biking experiences, and since I live in Sarasota, to leave out the Amish would be remiss. We live in Southgate but are close to Pinecraft, a mixed Amish and Mennonite neighborhood where matching clothing and a slower pace are the norm.
Drive Bahia Vista Street between Tuttle Avenue and McIntosh Road. You’ll pass by two Amish restaurants, three markets, an ice cream shop, and Everence Federal Credit Union, formerly named Mennonite Financial. There’s even a teeny-tiny Amish-run post office. And I’m not sure what goes on at the corner of Bahia Vista and Tuttle, but there are two dozen plus tricycles gathered there at times. Although a few are equipped with small motors, wheels don’t exceed three in this neighborhood.
So I fit in really well…well, not really and that’s what’s missing from this photo. I was riding home from the doctor’s office this morning and pulled up to the corner of Bahia Vista and Beneva next to three young Amish girls wearing matching blue maxi dresses and white lace caps. I smiled; they smiled back. As we waited, three more girls dressed in similar clothing pulled up–two on tricycles, one on a bicycle. The girls greeted each other, and for the first time in my Florida life thus far, I felt out of place wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
As my bright yellow bike rolled over the crosswalk in between the two sets of girls–behind the riders and in front of the walkers–I wished that the car sitting at the light would snap that picture. It would have been a good one. Instead I grabbed my cell phone and took a photo from my place in the line.
