Do you remember Charlie Brown, and how he always dreamed about the little red-haired girl? Well, after a week, that’s kind of where I am with the tall red-haired man. He was nice-looking, and nice, and went out of his way to mention his “ex”.

And I fumbled the ball. I stood there with my daughter, knowing I needed to somehow mention I was single, yet oddly incapable of doing so.

For a week, I kick myself. I try to look him up on Facebook, since I know his first name and can assume he lives in either Redmond, Kirkland, or Woodinville, and that red hair will be hard to miss in a profile picture.

Nothing.

I search match.com, too, but he’s not there either – although that’s probably for the best.

I mention to my friend at work that I’m an idiot – how could I not mention MY EX?! How could I not give him an opening when he was so clearly looking for one?

This is why I marry jerks, I tell her. I meet nice guys and don’t give them an opening, like, at my age, let them know I’m not married, which is … kind of key, especially when you have a child standing next to you.

She says, no, that’s not the problem. You’re just out of practice. Go bike more. Get back into practice, biking and dating. Just do better next time.

And stay off Facebook, she says. That’s kind of stalkerish.

I feel better. I am getting this advice from someone who just ran into her ex with his two new babies at the supermarket. She’s planning her own second wedding. It must get better.

Go bike that trail again, she says. Bike that trail a lot.

So the next Sunday afternoon, at right about the same time, it is blissfully not raining and I say to the Child, come on, we need to go ride again.

I’m tired, she says.

I don’t care, I tell her. We need exercise.

Okay, she doesn’t really need exercise but I do. I need it right now, on the Sammamish River Trail, just in case.

I get her going and we head north. We don’t see much today – it’s completely empty on the trail. The Child is tired. We discover very quickly that we’ve forgotten the water bottles.

The Child is thirsty and tired and wants to head back.

No, I say. We biked 8 miles last Sunday and we need to do the same or better today.

Fine, she says. But I don’t have to have fun.

Okay, I say. Hey – maybe we can find that red-haired man and see if he’s seen anything else that’s cool. He seemed to like finding cool things.

He didn’t have red hair, she informs me. It was brown.

It was red, I tell her, and anyway, he knew where the otter lived.

The otter lives at the four and a half mile marker, she tells me. I’ll show you.

We trudge along, as much as one can trudge on a bike. I’ve had my bike serviced so it’s running a lot more smoothly now – in fact it runs like a new bike.  The Child’s knees are nearly hitting the handlebars and I can hear it squeak, squeak as she pedals and crunch as she shifts gears.

I cannot afford a new bike, child, I think. Please don’t grow. Please do your best.

We hit the four and a half mile marker and don’t see the otter, but that’s surely where we had seen him last week – I see the barn across the road, same as before. A big red barn.

We head north. We made it to the six-mile marker last week, I say. So we have to go at least that far this week.

She cycles forth unhappily.

And then on an underpass, we pass him from behind. Tall, red-haired, carrying the same grey backpack I remember he had his camera in the week before. There was no way to stop, to accidentally see him and greet him, and we’ve just gone downhill so we’ve picked up some speed and are whizzing further away.

And The Child spots a rest stop with a water fountain. I’m getting a drink, she says, hurling her bike to the side of the path. I stand and look at the river and peek out the corner of my eye for the red-haired man, who appears and gradually comes closer. I catch his eye – he does notice everything – and he recognizes me.

I make inquiries about the otter. He saw it again today, he says, and got some photos. But the albino otter wasn’t there.

He does not cross the path. We chat for a moment, and then The Child returns, despondent that the water fountains are nonfunctional. I turn my attention to her and he disappears. She and I talk for a moment, and I notice him again – still across the path, getting a drink of water out of his backpack. He’s kept his eye on me.

I have a very unhappy, thirsty child. He’s got a bottle of water but I don’t know him, so although I want to say, hey, can my kid have a drink? I don’t.

He smiles at me as he gets ready to head off. I wave goodbye.

The Child and I head home. She doesn’t want to see the otter again, she doesn’t want a drink, she just wants to go home. I’m okay with that. I’ve gotten my exercise, and I’ve gotten my second chance. It doesn’t bother me that nothing came of it. I can stop kicking myself, at least.

In the car, I glance at my watch and realize: he came out at exactly the same time on exactly the same day of the week. Same as me.

Either he’s got a routine, or …

I wonder if I’ll find out the answer.

The Child and I decide we like biking – we like it a lot, as it happens. We live not far from the Sammamish River Trail, which is flat, scenic, and this time of year, at least, relatively empty. You can pick up some serious speed if you want to, which is extra fun if there are some leftover puddles to ride through.

We head out on Sunday afternoon. I notice there are mile markers and start to count how far we’ve gone as we head north toward Woodinville.  The Child seems to be outgrowing her bike, I think – but she seems happy and maybe I can eke one more year out of this bike. I don’t have the money for a new one.

My own bike, meanwhile, is fifteen years old, and although it’s barely been ridden in that time, it’s also barely been maintained in that time: when I shift, the gears make a crunching noise that can’t possibly be right.

Still, we’re out and about and seeing things around us. Ducks in the river. A heron. Someone has knitted colorful striped sweaters for some trees. We stop and take pictures.

We head further north. We count mile markers.

We pass a man looking at something in the river – I don’t notice him, but The Child does, and whatever he sees, she wants to see it too. We screech to a halt, then backtrack.

A tall red-haired man is standing at the side of the river, taking photographs of what appears to be an otter. He points it out to my daughter, who starts digging through my pockets for my camera so she, too, can take a picture.

There’s another one I saw before, he says. I think it’s an albino otter? I don’t know if there is such a thing. It’s all white. It’s disappeared now.

The Child is moving closer to the water, down a fairly steep incline. The tall red-haired man notices this and heads off after her.

Be careful, he says, don’t go much further. It falls off pretty quickly from there.

His tone is gentle and polite. The Child stops. I walk over closer to them.

We chat a bit. He prefers walking to biking, he says, because you go more slowly and can see more. I compliment him on spotting the ferret.

He says, no, not a ferret – an otter. We had a ferret once in our backyard, though.

We, I think. Too bad.

He clarifies: My ex and I, I mean.

Ah, I say. I think I may be smiling a bit but I don’t feel stupid or obvious. I try to think of a way to mention that I also have an ex.

It does not occur to me.

The Child returns. I got a lot of pictures! she says proudly.

I’m Barry, he says, reaching out to shake her hand. We introduce ourselves.

We run out of things to say.

We go our separate ways.