Bear Sighting

What guy doesn't have the desire to go 007 once in awhile?? This is a story, as told by my friend Eric, of how we got our fix last week:

About 6 months ago, Ben, Tyler and I were talking, and we realized that a) Tyler received a gorilla suit for Christmas last year, and b) we are part of a weekly forest night ride group, so we get an email every week detailng exactly where and when the group will be in the forest at night (thanks to Craig Cole's very detailed itineraries). It dawned on us that our not taking advantage of this opportunity was bordering on offensive.

Last night, the plans went off as well as we could have anticipated. The only hitch was as I was waiting in the bushes for the group to approach the meeting point, Tyler said, "You know, Jason is riding with the group tonight, and he's bringing his dog." Jason's dog Maggie runs on our rides a lot, and is an excitable, fast dog that loves chasing animals in the forest. Needless to say, the most scared anyone during the ordeal was me, in the ape suit, giant mask turned around on my head, dog snarling at me, me blindly scrambling up the bank through the bushes to save my own life. Fortunately the riders urgently called Maggie off so she wouldn't get eaten by "the bear". The culmination of the "performance", however, produced only marginally less fear in other participants. In the end, neither the gorilla suit nor anyone's bike pants were irreversibly soiled.
The Bear

As Eric put on the performance of a lifetime, Tyler and I hid in the trees with our faces buried in our knees to muffle our laughter. My favorite quote from one of the riders: "oh yeah! that was a typical black bear side step scurry up that hillside!" I nearly wrecked myself after that. The retaliation for this little antic may be severe...