Buttercup

Cupcake versus Buttercup. Part one. Buttercup always wins. Wait, no. Backtrack that. Buttercup always wants to win. Together they are the ‘Adventures of Buttercake’!

Wait. What? Buttercake?

One day Buttercup and Cupcake went out for a little bicycle ride. The weather was perfect. The sidewalk-less road was treelined. They looked over upon a glistening lake. Cupcake gained a foot on Buttercup. Buttercup pressed harder... gained two feet.

It wasn’t uncommon for them to not work together riding although on occasion they would catch a draft off each other. Neither being very fond of team sports, this was just fine for them. It was primarily an issue of gear. Buttercup has an old Specialized mountain bike that may have been pieced together and is pretty beat up and has no front derailleur. The front crankset does have two or three chain rings... but who needs those anyway?

Buttercup reveled in the fact that he killed the hills. Due to machinery, Cupcake would often glide down the downhills easily at 35-45 mph or coast past Buttercup out of his saddle on the flats at 20 or 25. Buttercup rarely uses the saddle actually. He seemed to like it that way. Cupcake was glad Buttercup had a crappy bike. When the downhills and flats subsided and gave way to a grade, preferably a 5% - 12% grade, Buttercup muscled up hill still in the big chain ring. Whooszh. Whooszh. Whooszh. The knobby tires whirring on the purplish pavement between the fir trees, dodging small quartzite rocks, sticks and pinecones. Up he went while Cupcake was, well, a cupcake and downshifted. Only maybe an eighth of the time Cupcake could overtake the Buttercup going uphill.

They weren’t competitive at all.

They headed back to main space having limited riding time so as not to be disrespectful to the non-riders. They spoke to each other casually and laughed. The wind blew in their ears. They couldn’t hear what each other was saying.

“Let’s get the car and pick up our friends at the beach,” said Buttercup.

“Yes, let’s pick raspberries. I love them,” said Cupcake.

Buttercup laughed heartily not hearing a word Cupcake said figuring it was long enough to be a witty comment of some sort.

Cupcake added, “We really got in a lot of miles today. it’s a good thing because I have been waiting for this, but I really need a tune up.”

“I didn’t see that film,” Buttercup replied. “Is it good?”

“Oh, it’s great! Working really well, yea!” Cupcake said enthusiastically.

“Good, good,” said Buttercup. “We need to knock out ten thousand feet this weekend. I’ve calculated it all and which roads we need to take.”

“I want to go to Calcutta too. When did you go?”

“Yea!”

Luckily, for Buttercup and Cupcake cars started to come up the road and they formed a single file line as they inched up the steep grade to get to the parking area so the conversation had to end there. No one mentioned another word about Calcutta or Raspberries.

Reprinted from: https://etherealbeings.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/buttercup/