22 miles of biking under my belt, and I was breaching the city limits of Belfast after a long daytrip up to Carrickfergus and back. It’d been spitting rain for the past eight miles, I was rather regrettably without a raincoat, and my boots were keeping themselves together only by the grace of some higher power. Under the thick clouds I found myself lost, as I often am on such adventures, and wandering somewhere in a shipping yard.  I’ve never even seen a shipping yard previously in my life, but I very quickly discovered that getting back out of one isn’t nearly as easy as getting in.  After a few disorderly circles ridden in solitude, the combined total of which surely added another mile onto my ride, I glimpsed salvation on the horizon—a man in a yellow jacket.

I sped ahead, disregarding my growing fatigue and the rain which continued to cause my weary tires to scream in aggravation at every attempted stop, until I reached the man in the yellow jacket, panting and more than a little disheveled.

“Sorry to bother,” I said, “But could you tell me how to get to Belfast City Center?”

“Sure,” he said, “Just keep on the trail.”  I, of course, hadn’t even realized I’d found the trail again.  My uncertainty must have been written plainly across my face, for he added graciously, “I’m headed that way if you’d like to follow with me.”

Thankful, I joined the man.

We chatted quite a bit while we rode, as the city center was a ways away and I was barely keeping pace after my long day.  The man in the yellow jacket told me a story. I’ll admit that my memory of the tale may be warped by my fatigue at the time, but I’ll attempt to recount it with as much accuracy (and as little ambiguity) as possible.

There is a small river that runs through a neighborhood just north of Belfast, one that perhaps more aptly could be called a creek or a stream.  Legend has it that once a man of great wealth dumped a box of silver coins into the river.  The children who live near the creek grow up hearing of the riches in the river, and so every summer they go through the water in search of the precious coins.  They never seem to find any, but they always keep looking.  I believe, if I recall correctly, they call the creek Silver River.

The man told me another story—a young boy in Belfast wrote his name on a rubber ball and tossed it into the bay.  It was discovered by a fisherman in the Mediterranean. So many years had passed, that the boy had grown up and had a job and a family.  He’d forgotten all about his ball, and yet half a lifetime and hundreds of miles later it had come back to him.

The man in the yellow jacket escorted me all the way into downtown Belfast, and offered to take me farther, though by then I recognized my surroundings and was confident in my ability to get back to the apartment that my fellow young writers and I were using as a crash pad for the weekend. When it rained, he offered me his waterproof jacket, which I politely declined, though I appreciated the gesture.

It would seem to me that the man in the yellow jacket was a truly remarkable person. He was willing to help someone who was lost find their way, and the stories he told were full of hope and good old fashioned Irish character. He was a kind man, and a good cyclist too. I should hope there are more people like him riding about in the world.

We shook hands and exchanged names before we parted, and I told him about this blog.  He smiled and said he’d read it (which I sincerely hope he does) and he said, if I should write about him, to simply call him the man in the yellow jacket.