While I'm at it . . . the strangeness of choice

Following hard on the heels of the previous post, I thought I'd offer this little tidbit for my Cycling photo challenge 5.

One morning, more or less recently, I decided to get to work early. Not terribly early, mind you, just, say, 30 minutes or so early.

I did manage to leave home earlier than usual. Perhaps not the 30 minutes I had shot for, but early nonetheless.

Opting for what has become my default route down the Levee I didn't experience anything sufficiently unusual to draw my attention. At this point, it would take a fair amount of strange to draw my attention.

Up the Florida Street ADA ramp, I take the long wide turn across the wet steel of the railroad tracks set between the slabs of new concrete. On a foggy morning like this one those two very different surfaces can be a little confounding on a bicycle.

Topping the levee I notice a person, a man, with a camera on the river-side levee steps shooting the river fog. He notices me at about the same time, swivels in my direction, and starts shooting. At least I imagine he is shooting as he has begun to track me with the camera to his eye. I can't hear the camera motor or much of anything else with the wind in my ears.

Doing my best to ignore the photographer and not stare directly into his lens, I'm almost parallel to him and gaining speed as he lowers his camera and stands up. At that point I recognize him; it's Jon Barry, local photographer.

I shout a greeting as I pass eager to get to work early, which is the reason I'm there earlier than usual. Early enough to have run into Jon who isn't usually on the Levee when I'm there for the moment passing that point at trail head. He is not usually there either but the fog that morning held promise of a good shot or two, so there he was.

So what?

Well, our coincidental meeting led to this . . .

When it was first posted a friend commented that she thought it was a planned shot, something Jon and I had cooked up and, perhaps, practiced. It was, as far as I know, completely happenstance, the two of us there at that moment for entirely different and mutually opaque reasons.

This is another example of why I love riding my bicycle. Not the image, though my ego does enjoy it. The thing I love is that it happened because of the unseen things that being us together.