In the Pitch of Deluge

About halfway across the Broadway Bridge tonight on my way home under sheets of rain, a tall helmet-less woman rode up along side me. “Isn’t it just the night for riding?” she asked, smiling widely.
“Yes,” I said. “Those people in cars think they are the happy ones.”
She rode beside me for the duration of the bridge, but veered off on another subject. “I feel like I should warn people if I’m going to pass them,” she mused aloud.
“Me too,” I answered heartily, as she had tapped into the vein of one of my favorite gripes. “I think people should ding a little bell as they pass, so that you don’t swerve to the left at the wrong moment.”
“That’s a good idea,” she agreed. "I should get a little bell.”
“I was going to get one,” I told her, “but then I realized I never pass anybody. I need to get everyone else a little bell.”
She threw back her head and laughed like a whinnying horse and rode off ahead of me into the raging sea.