Chased by a wolf!

I am interning in Irvine, a beautiful city in Southern California. I got a bike, and I started biking to work daily.

The cars have an alarmingly high velocity, so I stay off the roads, even though there are bike-paths marked on almost every road. I stick to a bike/walk way next to a stream, which takes me to my workplace. The stream is quite amazing. Egrets abound, and so do cranes. So there must be fish, too. Hares jump around everywhere. And frogs croak in the night. I slowly bike along the curved path. Its a delightful ride!

Today evening, however, I was late when I left the office. I went to the bike-way, but there are no lights along the way. So I turned back, and started riding on the Laguna Canyon road, where my office is. A dog followed me from the bike-way onto the road. Lot of the residents take their dogs to walks in the evening, sometimes not on a leash. I thought it must be one of those dogs.

It was a fairly silent dog, though. It followed me for a while, and I sped, so it moved to the middle of the road, away from me. I looked at it, and kept biking.

It turned, and came towards me. Then it struck me for the first time that this might not be a dog. It had no dog collar! It was not barking, either! I could really feel the shiver in my head, right below my helmet. I shifted to a higher gear, and pedaled hard. And, yes, it chased me. It chased me as I turned from Laguna Canyon Ave onto Barranca Rd. It chased me almost a full block on Barranca. And finally it gave up.

One hell of an adventure. Ooh, my rear hurts!