Chapter 6 - A Handy Field To Carpe Diem

Thursday 29^th June

Next morning I was down early to breakfast. Dad, of course, was long gone, and Stef was still out on her ride, which meant it was just Mum and me. She was busy with her coffee and toast, and I had just sat down to a pre-breakfast orange juice when the kitchen door opened and Stef came in, dressed in white Lycra with lime coloured tiger striping, helmet in hand, and covered with a light sheen of sweat. That sweat was the only clue she’d just been exercising as she wasn’t even breathing hard even though I knew she’d just been on a ten mile sprint. Up hills.

My sister is fit in more than one way!

So far, so normal. Like every family, I guess, we have out little routines, and ours was that Mum and Dad had got down to breakfast first, Dad was the first to leave for work and Mum would still be eating her toast when I’d come down to scout out a bowl of cereal and orange juice (with bits because I’m tough!) just in time to wave ‘bye’ to Dad as he left. Depending on when she went out, what the roads were like, and how she felt about her morning ride, Stef would get back anytime between 7:00am and 7:30am, ready to shower, pull on one of her over-sized tees, and join Mum, with Mum leaving before 8:00am most mornings, IT over-runs excluded.

Today, however, normal was about to change.

Stef had just greeted us – “Hi, Mum! Hey, Little Brother!” – when, as she breezed past, she paused to kiss me on the top of my head, before she disappeared in a cloud of metaphorical dust, headed in the direction of the upstairs bathroom.

I’m sure I blinked like a cartoon character

WTF?

What was with that kiss on the top of the head? She’d never done that before. Ever. Even when we were just a pair of kids copying our parents’ displays of affection without understanding what we were doing until we were told not to, she’d never done anything like that.

The problem wasn’t with the kiss on the head as such, but rather that this something very new and very out of the blue has not gone unnoticed by Mum. She’d watched the whole thing, and was now watching me, pinning me to my chair with one of her patented ‘you’re not going anywhere’ stares. Yeah, she was one of those Mum’s who misses nothing and wants to know everything.

Gulp.

“What was that all about, Honey?” Mum asked, her tone so casually innocent sounding that for a moment I thought it was going to be okay.

Until I remembered, this was Mum we were talking about.

“All of what?” I asked as I tried to be as nonchalant as possible, hoping that mirroring her light tone just might deflect her inquisitorial instincts.

It was optimistic of me. Doomed to failure, but endearingly optimistic.

“Luke, your sister just kissed the top of your head. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t notice?” she asked, as curious as if I hadn’t noticed a rainbow and sounding even a little concerned that I might not have noticed. Anyone else hearing her would have been fooled, but I knew better. What gave her away was that she held her cup in the air, neither putting it down nor finishing the intended sip, signifying that her interest was now fully engaged. From there she would go into full-on Miss Marple mode, only younger and more tenacious.

I was in trouble now and I knew it. So, too, would Stef be when she got back down here. I hoped her shower wouldn’t be long and indulgent – I needed the backup. Isn’t the elder sibling supposed to protect the younger one, or something like that?

Meantime, I shrugged. “Yeah, odd that, wasn’t it?” I said, trying to dismiss Stef’s actions as nothing of any importance whatsoever, and certainly nothing reflecting a deeper level of affection between us, or calling for any kind of parental curiosity.

That, of course, was yet further proof of my stubbornly unlearning optimistic streak; I couldn’t even trust my own inner monologue to keep me straight when it had advised me what course to take.

Mum smiled slightly, and when I saw her put her cup down, unfinished, I knew that things had escalated from ‘curious’ to ‘serious’. Miss Marple was gathering the suspects in the library! “And when, Son, was the last time that ever happened?” she asked.

Oh no. I’d gone from ‘Honey’ to ‘Son’. My only hope was that she hadn’t used my full name, though I felt that was only a ‘yet’ away.

Quickly I tried to think on my feet. “No idea, Mum. Maybe she took a blow to the head out on her bike?” I joked. Humour is meant to deflect things, isn’t it? Please say ‘yes’.

For a brief, fleeting, wonderful moment I thought I’d succeeded when, to my credit, Mum actually chuckled. Well, actually it was a singular chuckle – a chucklet? – but then her eyebrow twitched.

I couldn’t help myself – I winced.

Mum held my gaze a moment longer ... before she slowly picked her cup back up. “Maybe she did, Luke, but she seemed otherwise okay, so perhaps it would be best for all parties if we were to dismiss it as a passing moment of insanity, don’t you?” she said.

“Yes, that!” I said, painfully aware how over-keen I sounded, a drowning man grasping at anything he can find and praying that log is not a crocodile.

Mum gave a cockeyed smile ... and she went back to her breakfast.

That was it!?

Internally, I was as confused as it’s possible to be. That was not how Mum behaved normally. Look up the word ‘tenacious’ in the dictionary and that’s her photo you’ll see.

Had I somehow woken up in an alternate reality, the kind where the parents are as gullible, believing, forgiving, blind, unaware, etcetera, as we teen-agers hope and wish them to be?

There could be no other explanation. None.

Cautiously I watched, but Mum simply got on with her coffee and toast with no outward sign that anything was untoward.

To say that I was relieved would be to understate things on a Biblical scale.

I was also and equally baffled, too.

I didn’t for a moment think I’d or we’d got away with it. I had to speak to Stef as soon as we were alone. We couldn’t do anything like that again, it really didn’t do to spook the parental horses. Don’t get me wrong, our parents were, well, like everyone else’s parents really, nothing out of the ordinary, not hippies or counter-culturistas, or anything sic like that. But their un-hippy-ness also meant that there was no way I could imagine they would ever be happy, accepting, or anything else with the idea of Stef and me getting naked together, much less anything more such as her letting me put sun tan oil on her everywhere, and not just on the slightly excusable back! That was already just too far out of the ballpark, so far out, in fact, that you couldn’t even see the ballpark. From the top of a hill. If you had a ladder. A big one. There we’d been, doing our little ‘thing’ and both of us knowing that it was ‘our little secret’, and then Stef had come along and cheerfully dropped the most humungous of hints she could that there was now some kind of increased intimacy of between us.

And in front of Mum!

That was seriously risking the kind of parental attention neither of us wanted.

Thankfully, Mum really did seem to drop the subject – there is a God! – and breakfast resumed in typical silence aside from Radio 3 in the background.

I still had my head down and was concentrating intently on my cereal when, a few minutes later, Stef came in, dressed in the oversized tee of ubiquity, this one in a warm pastel orange colour that looked nice against the glow of her tanned skin.

“Peachy tee,” I said as Stef breezed past, the perfume of her apple shampoo wafting behind her.

“Bastard amber,” Stef corrected as she helped herself to a well-doused bowl of muesli.

“Uhm, what?” I asked. It felt as if I’d just been insulted, but that didn’t seem right as I thought I’d complimented her, so I was confused. Again.

“Not ‘peachy’, Luke. It’s called bastard amber,” she explained.

“Oh.”

“How ... quaint,” Mum observed as she nibbled away the last of her toast, today free of marmalade. Her tone suggested Stef should find another name for that colour. Quickly. Mum and Dad weren’t naïve and they knew we knew how to curse; they simply would not have it done in their presence. I guess Mum felt that ‘bastard amber’ should have an alternate name, one she was happier with.

“Sorry, Mum,” Stef said as, clearly hungry after her morning ride, she was about three spoons into her muesli when she muttered ‘bananas’ as she retrieved one from the fruit bowl on the table, chopped it up with the edge of her spoon, and plonked the jagged medallions on top of her cereal before she resumed eating. If she was puzzled by the quieter than usual quiet of the morning, she said nothing. She also failed to notice my out-of-Mum-shot eyebrows and winks as I tried to get her attention. Eventually I gave up and concentrated on the application of Parkinson’s Law to my breakfast so that it would outlast Mum’s presence, my head as far below the parapet as I could get it.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of nail-biting and tenterhooks, ten-past-eight rolled around and Mum got up to head off to work. “Okay children, you know the rules. Stef, you are in charge, and Luke, you are powerless. No wild parties, and your father and I will be home at our usual times,” she said as she ended her little speech with a kiss on the top of Stef’s head.

My heart sank.

Oh. God. No.

Here it comes...

“Hmm? Oh, bye Mum,” said Stef as she looked up and smiled quizzically.

“Yeah, uhm, bye, Mum,” I said as Mum smiled at me so knowlingly she made the Cheshire Cat look dull-witted as a rock.

“Goodbye, children,” she said ... and that was that. A moment later, the front door rattled shut, her Polo started up, and she was gone.

I was so keen to get into it I’d hardly put my spoon down before I said, “Okay, Sis. What was that all about?”

“Erm, what?” Stef asked, not quite getting ‘it’.

“The kiss on the head?!”

Stef shrugged. “That? You mean like Mum just did? You didn’t like it when I did it to you?” she asked, her tone suggesting she thought I had but now she wasn’t quite so certain.

“Sure I liked it, Sis, I guess, but it’s not something we’ve done, oh, ever, and you know how you noticed it, just, when Mum did it to you? Well, Mum also noticed when you did it to me, and she not only noticed it but ... she ... also ... asked ... me ... about ... it,” I said, spacing my words with Shatner-like diction to try to get her attention.

It worked.

“Ah,” she said, her manner now serious as she began to see the implications and the importance of what had happened, and who had seen it happen. New things going on between Stef and me are one thing, but those things being seen by Mum or Dad is another thing altogether, and when they’re of the nature of displays of affection which we’ve not done before? DefCon One. At least. “Erm, what did she say, Babes?” Stef asked, her voice having lost its chipper edge.

“Actually, she asked me the same thing I just asked you; what gives?”

“Oh-kay, Luke. We both know Mum and so I’m guessing that’s a paraphrase, but what did you tell her?” she asked, cautious of the answer. I knew she wasn’t worried that I might have thrown her under the bus or anything like that – we weren’t that kind of brother and sister – but rather she was anxious about what had been said and how Mum had reacted.

“What did I tell her? I didn’t tell her anything, Sis. How could I? There was nothing I could say, really, was there? I mean, your head kiss was as much a surprise to me as it was to Mum. So when she asked me about it I, uhm, I kinda panicked and joked and said you’d fallen and hit your head.”

Stef chuckled. “Underplayed and witty. I like it. Big thing, though was ... what did she say?”.

“Nothing. It was too weird. She just looked at me for a moment, then dropped it.”

“She dropped it? We are talking about the same Mum, Aiofe Rowden, married to James Rowden, of this address, you know, the woman who just left for work in her nicest trouser suit with a silky lemon blouse and probably a pair of excruciatingly sensible black heels?” Stef asked, all shoes being corralled in the hallway or storage.

“Uh-huh,” I agreed, agreeing Mum’s dropping of the subject, not her clothes. If Stef said that’s what she’d been wearing, that was good enough for me. Me? I didn’t even know peach from bastard amber!

Stef slowly shook her head. “Come on, Luke. You know Mum. She doesn’t drop stuff. Ever.”

“I know, but this time, uhm, she did, uhm, well I thought she did...” I said, now a lot less confident about what had just happened.

Did I say my optimism flies in the face of reality? Like Icarus on a really hot and sunny day? With a run up.

Stef shook her head and sighed. “No, Luke, you know better than that. She just put it on hold. She was off to work, remember? You know what’ll happen when she gets back from work?”

I shook my head.

Stef grinned mischievously. “That’s when you’ll least expect it – The Welsh Inquisition! Oh she’ll start off nice and easy, asking about today, and then she’ll casually segue into asking about this morning, what happened, claiming she needs you to refresh her memory.

“It’s not true.

“That’s just the start of it.

“She’ll want to know what it was all about, from you, chapter and verse, everything.

“And then?

“And then I’ll be called in for my version.

“To corroborate.

“To check for any telling inconsistencies.

“And we had better get this right, Little Brother, because if our stories don’t agree we’ll be grounded until, well, until we’re old enough to leave Wales and hide up a mountain in Tibet.

“And you know what the worst part of that will be? I’ll never get rid of my tan lines!” Stef comically wailed.

Wow. “You think it’s that bad?” I asked, really worried that we’d overstepped something or done something wrong and that we were going to pay for it, probably for forever.

Stef sat back a little, thoughtful. “Maybe not. Mum didn’t seem mad to you?”

I shook my head. She hadn’t.

“You’re saying she wasn’t cross with me doing that?”

Again, I shook my head.

“Huh,” Stef said thoughtfully. “And then she did the same to me, didn’t she?”

This time I got to nod. It felt nice, the change.

Stef cocked her head to the right, her thoughtful ‘tell’. I’d learned it a long time ago, generally when we were playing as kids and she was conjuring up some penalty or forfeit for me. “You know, Babes, I think we just might live...” she mused.

“Uhm, how? And, why? And, how do you know this?” I asked. “I mean it’s good news, don’t get me wrong, but, uhm, can you show your working?” I asked, teasing her on her sometimes analytical approach to, well, everything.

“How do I know? That’s simple - I’m the smart one here, but we’ll not get into that right now, shall we.

“Oh-kay, let’s break this down logically.

“First, if we were in trouble, we’d already be in irons. You know Mum; when punishment needs to be dished out, she doesn’t hesitate, but she’s not punished us, so that must mean we are not in trouble. Somehow. Even if she was going off to work, she would still have grounded us or something if we were in trouble, but nothing, so we’re not.

“Second, if we were going to be in trouble, Mum would have said something, she wouldn’t have let the accused run free like we are. You know, the whole show the prisoner her cell routine.

“So. We’re not in trouble. And we’re not going to be in trouble. Also, none of this is making any sense...”

“So we’re okay then?” I asked, confused over which way this was going. I thought Stef had just said we were in the clear, but then she’d gone and cast doubt into the muddled muddy mix, and I was lost again.

Stef sighed indulgently. “Oh sweet innocent summer child, no, Luke, we’re not okay. When Mum gets back tonight, she will want to find out what’s going on, and we will need to be ready with an explanation that she will be okay with.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Luke. ‘Oh’. So, any ideas? I can’t just say I suddenly felt affectionate towards you, we’re not like that – well, we weren’t like that until you finally got a good look at my tits – so, erm...”

I looked at Stef.

Stef looked at me.

The clock on the kitchen wall ticked.

Loudly.

Man, that was getting annoying.

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Soo ... what if we tell her the truth, kind of?” Stef asked, sounding as unsure of that plan as I was.

“Er ... how, kind of?”

“Well obviously I’m not planning on telling Mum about you seeing me nude, me seeing you nude and hard, you oiling me up, you touching me ... erm, in all those places, you know, all the really fun stuff we’ve been doing.”

“Well that’s a relief. I didn’t plan on dying young. But if there aren’t going to be any funerals, uhm, what are you planning on saying?”

“The truth, sort of. Remember what I said the other day, how you’d passed out of your frawd pla phase?”

“You mean the ‘Death of the Plaguey Brother’, which I deny I ever was?”

Stef grinned. Wickedly. “We can debate that another time, but what if I just said that I’d realised you weren’t an annoying little brother any more, and that, having spent a bit of time with you the past couple of days or so, I’d realised I kind of liked you, and the shock of that realisation had been so profound that before I realised what I was doing, I just expressed that affection with something a bit more, erm, expressively than just a pat on the back?”

Well, it was better than what I’d come up with. Which was nothing. “You think that’ll work?” I asked, desperately praying that she thought exactly that.

“It better,” Stef said, a smirk on the horizon.

“Why?”

“This is the moment when you impress me with your Plan B. No?” she asked, right eyebrow of inquisition cocked. She knew me too well.

“I guess ‘head trauma’ isn’t an option?”

“Keep suggesting it and it will be ... for you,” Stef said darkly, though when she bobbed her tongue at me I was able to breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn’t actually threatening serious injury. Immediately.

“Okay, then I guess we’ll go with your plan,” I said. “If she needs more, maybe ‘it just felt the right thing to do’ or ‘you were trying it out to see how it felt’ kind of thing?”

“Maybe ... So, enough of that,” Stef said as she switched gears, fearless of the risks of conversational whiplash. “By the time Mum gets home she will have already decided what she’s going to do, and we’ll just be there to hear the verdict, really. So, what are your plans for today in addition to leering over my nude body?” she asked with a grin and a chest wiggle which, even with her tee, was an enchanting sight.

“You mean I get to see ... wait! Last night! I knew there was something I wanted to tell you about!”

“Last night, you say? Hmm, let me guess, were you were busy ‘creating laundry’? Again, Luke?” she asked, her left eyebrow cocked so far it looked like it might fall off.

I blushed. I know I blushed, because I could hear the sound of boiling wax in my ears. “Uhm, yeah,” I admitted weakly; there was no point in trying to play coy when I was giving myself away so badly.

“And let me guess, I was there, but I wasn’t there?”

I nodded. Slowly. She’d said she wanted to be there, and she hadn’t been. Again. Not good.

“Oh-kay, setting aside my disappointment and frustration that I was not there, again, and which we will talk about later ... I take it you are going to tell me something? So, what was different? I’m guessing this is connected with your Whatchamacallit, but how can that be different when it’s, okay, when it is mostly broken?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, it’s The Thing, and yeah, it’s still mostly broken, but yeah, it also did ... well, it did something...

“Okay, I’m going to say this so quickly that you’ll hear me but won’t kill me, I hope, but, uhm, you know when you do for yourself what I do for myself–

“–wow, Sis!” I said, my explanation forgotten as Stef went as red as I felt I was. “Guess we’ve both got dragon’s blood in our veins this morning,” I observed.

“We’ve ... oh, you mean red colour from red blood from the Welsh dragon? Haha. That’s quite clever.”

“Thanks.”

“But beyond that? Could be entirely coincidental, or anything. I’m not admitting anything...” she said as she looked away, her face still coloured up.

“But you just flushed!”

Stef just grinned and shook her head. “Nuh-huh, must have been some kind of optical illusion, or just a woman’s thing, Babes. I said I’m not admitting anything, remember? Now, you were about to tell me how you masturbated...”

“Uhm, wanked.”

“Wanked?”

“Wanked. Masturbated sounds so sorta clinical, so when I think about it, I, uhm, I call it wanking.”

“Oh. Good to know,” Stef grinned. “So, last night, you were wanking away as you thought about me, and you wanked yourself something amazing or something, and then ... then what?” she asked, knowing that saying that about me doing that would distract me from grilling her about what she did.

Of course, it worked; she knew me too well.

I chuckled. “Well, it was intense,” I confessed as I ignored the whole continuing burning face thing, mine, again, rather than hers. “But I don’t know that counts as ‘amazing’, and that wasn’t the amazing thing. That was The Thing. It chimed again, and it did it when I came of all the times. After that, it kept on ticking, this time for much longer, maybe a minute? Sis, when that guy took a look at it in Jensen’s I think it shook something loose.”

“Could be,” Stef allowed.

“But, here’s the thing. Ha. Not The Thing, but the thing that I think’s weird. Okay, uhm, tinfoil hat time, but here’s the amazing thing, Sis. What if it knows?!” I whispered.

Silence.

Three long painful seconds of silence.

Then it got worse.

Stef sighed. “Erm, are you sure you haven’t taken a blow to the head this morning, Luke? What if what knows what?”

I took a breath. “Okay, now I’ve not thought this through all the way, but hear me out? Okay?”

“Okay, Babes,” Stef nodded.

Hoping this sounded more possible that I suddenly worried it would, I began. “So, Tuesday, I went to bed, I wanked, The Thing chimed, The Thing ticked, and then it went quiet again.

“Wednesday, well, I wanked again, The Thing chimed again, The Thing ticked a lot more, and then it went quiet again. Again,” I said, feeling a little more confident I had made my case. A happens when B happens, so they must be connected, right?

Stef grinned. “Wow! It really is true what they say about teen-age boys all having the same hobby?” she teased.

“Uhm, don’t know about others, don’t want to know about others, but that’s not the thing that’s important. Don’t you see? Every time I wank, The Thing does something. It’s ... like ... it ... knows ... or something,” I said. It still sounded mad ... but it did fit the facts, so doesn’t that count for something?

Stef smiled, not wickedly, but sympathetically, sisterly, even, whatever that now meant for us. “So, you’re telling me that you ‘released some tension’ and the Whatchamacallit somehow detected it, played you some kind of fanfare in praise of you coming, ticked a bit, and then went back to being a decorative lump of metal and glass? Two nights in a row. You do know how that sounds, don’t you?”

I smiled. Weakly. “I know, Sis, oh boy do I know, but that’s what happened. I don’t know why, but I swear it, every time I come, it chimes, then it ticks, then it winds down again, and the more I do it, the longer it ticks for,” I said, perhaps a little desperately as I tried to convince her that what had happened had in fact happened. The problem was, it was beginning to feel as much like I was trying to re-convince myself as I was to convince Stef.

“Come on, let’s think it through a moment, Luke,” Stef the Teacher said. “Now, there are all kinds of devices that can detect all kinds of things, like smoke detectors, the things they use at the airports, all those kinds of devices. What they all have in common is that science was used to build them to detect whatever.

“Now, your Whatchamacallit, it’s what, maybe as much as a hundred years old? Sure there was ‘science’ back then, but are you trying to suggest it can somehow detect when you come, that it can ‘smell’ your sperm, spunk, or spend?” Stef asked, ignoring as my face reignited at the idea of Stef talking about my sperm-laden semen. Aloud. To me. Oh God. “I’ll give you that that may be a possible thing to do now, but back when this was made? Really, Luke?”

I sighed, hoping the action would cool as well as calm me; it’s hard to think straight when most of your blood is boiling up in your face. “I know, Sis, I know, but I can’t think how else to explain it.”

Stef grinned. Wickedly. Trouble was brewing. “Well, in the pursuit of scientific research, what are your plans for this evening then?” she asked, left eyebrow twitching to comic effect.

I laughed nervously. Very nervously. “Oh God, Sis, you’re asking me if I’m gonna, uhm, if I’m gonna...”

“Well... ?” Stef asked, her left eyebrow now at full elevation.

I broke down and confessed. “Probably,” I muttered.

Stef sniggered softly. “There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Stef!” I coughed, laughed, and snorted, all at the same time. It was mildly painful. For me. Stef found it much funnier than I did.

“Haha. Oh-kay, time to be sensible. You think your Whatchamacallit is sensing when you come? So. I’m not saying you have to, but if you do do ‘it’ tonight, try and pay attention and see if it responds again, okay? Three out of three, well, that has to prove something, but if it does work, I have no idea what it’s proving other than it’s weirder than anything I’ve ever heard of.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to speak, to admit, to anything.

“Right, so that’s tonight settled,” Stef said breezily. “But what about today?”

“We could go watch a film?” I suggested, glad we were back in the land of normal things again, aside from the fact we were sat naked at the table and had just been talking about my wank diary.

Stef shook her head. “You want to go see any of the films they’re showing?”

I shook my head. We both knew what was on at the local cinema, and the choice of films was poor. Anyway, being locked indoors on a summer’s day seemed almost disrespectful, especially in Wales. “We could... oh! I know, we could go off somewhere together on our bikes!”

“Luke, I’ve only just come back from a ride, remember?”

“Do I remember you in that Lycra, followed by that kiss on the head before you went to shower and left me to face Mum the Inquisitor? Sure I remember, but I don’t mean go off on a ride like you do, I mean ride like I do. Pack some stuff in a backpack and head off up on the hills, maybe watch the funicular or something?”

“Oh, so take hours, get nowhere, eat a cheese and pickle sandwich, and then back home again?” Stef said, mortally unconvinced of my idea.

“Maybe I could ride a little more like you do...” I conceded. I didn’t have any other ideas. Well, there was always applying sun tan oil in the garden, but I felt like we should be doing... something.

Stef looked thoughtful for a moment, an expression of ‘aha!’ passed over her face, and she said, “Okay, Luke, if we are going to do this, here’s the deal. I set the pace. Don’t worry, it won’t be too hard, but I set the pace and I pick the location, and we head there for lunch, laze around a bit, and then get back in time to wash and get our dinners. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Stef grinned. “Let’s get to it then. Oh, since Mum said I’m in charge and you’re powerless, you can make our sandwiches,” she said as she headed upstairs to change into fresh cycling gear. “And don’t forget, I like mayo on my cheese and ham sandwiches, not salad cream like some heathen I could name,” she added, referring, of course, to me, as she disappeared upstairs.

I never even got the chance to contest her estimation of my heathenness, but I didn’t mind as I got to watch her head out of the kitchen and she did have a really nice bum.

With a grin I set to work as I prepared cheese and ham, cheese and pickle, and cheese and cheese, the non-pickle options prepared with options for salad cream or mayo. These I segregated into their own bags and packed into a protective plastic tub that went into my backpack, as did a couple of bottles of water to add to the water bottles mounted on the frames of our bikes, both of which I refilled. Into Stef’s backpack I also put some cereal and high energy bars plus a couple of apples for each of us, making sure the bags were tightly packed and evenly distributed for weight before I dropped them by the door out of the kitchen.