Jay-- that trip does sound amazing! Your getting lost and falling reminds me of when my family did a walking tour in Italy. My girls were much younger and we were walking 8-10 miles a day (imagine the complaining at times). It was a self guided tour meaning we had a guide book that we had to read and follow (we were by ourselves). One day we got hopelessly lost. The directions would say to go through where the cypress trees make a fork or turn right at the abandoned bathtub. We were arguing about the directions and going in circles through a forest. We wanted to give up but we were in the middle of nowhere! We didn't have a cell phone or a GPS (I think they give you those now on these trips). Eventually we made it out but there was much yelling and blaming going around!
Jay, you're weirdly reminding me of when I was a fat girl, and I'd be in the midst of a crowd at summer outdoor events, gaping at the SuperCouples & imagining how perfect their lives were. The SuperCouples would be a pair of athletic people, tanned, often Nordic-looking, usually in khaki or army-green, and from looking at their leg muscles & their leanness, I just knew that they spent their weekends outdoors strenuously hiking and biking, while I'd been inside reclining someplace, reading or writing, eating & eating, and maybe baking. I thought they were an entirely different species from me.
Now that I'm a bit more athletic, and actually know halves of SuperCouples, or even whole units, the glamour has worn off & I know they are often sore & bruised, or limping after their bikes break down, or they have to go off & pee in the woods & get poison ivy on their legs. To that list, I will now add biking 20 miles in the wrong direction. But listen ... the fact that you went out there & did all that ... it really is super. And not in a sarcastic, envious sense. It's part of really being in the world & in the landscape you're passing through, rather than viewing it from up high through the window of a tour bus.
I've nervously chewed through an entire pack of Stride gum over the past hour as I try to negotiate my email inbox on Monday and wait for something urgent & painful to hit. It hasn't yet; this Monday isn't like last Monday. Still, I'm braced for it.
469 posts. Time to start tossing around some new themes? "Maintainers watching the Scales "Fall""? "You Autumn Be Losing those Pesky 5-10"? . Whatever it is, I'll be here!
Welcome home.
Has my vote.
