They stayed on the trail. It wasn’t his property, after all. But he noticed how the sound of rubber on dirt became a daily presence. It broke the stillness. His dog, Taffy, started barking more. The garden windchimes, once soothing, began to feel drowned out.
Still, he kept his routine. Still planted, still watered. But the cyclists kept coming. The trouble began when a section of the nearby cycling lane was closed for construction. Orange barricades popped up overnight.
A sign read “TEMPORARILY CLOSED – DETOUR AHEAD,” but the detour wasn’t clear. And cyclists, as Clarence would soon learn, didn’t like losing momentum. They looked for shortcuts. His yard became one.
At first, it was one or two riders—young, fast, darting through the edge of his grass like they were barely touching it. Clarence saw them from his kitchen window, his spoon pausing in mid-air. They zipped across the corner of his lawn like it was nothing.