Notice
"And it seems to me to the contrary of all the crap they're gonna put on the page
That a wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age"
1)I do some really stupid things.
2)Most of them are a lot of fun.
3)Tonight I went out for a nice, leisurely bike ride.
4)Or I meant to, but then I started to worry about my computer.
5)This was before I'd even left.
6)I was like, "You know, I haven't heard the fan in a while."
7)And I feel like many computer-y friends have said, "that's bad."
8)Or more, "when the fan stops working, that's bad."
9)This computer has worked so well for two years that I feel due.
10)Anyway, still not convinced about the fan but it's a boring story so I'm going to move on.
11)I ended up leaving later than I expected because of this random bout of concern.
12)And then I detoured off my nice leisurely route to go by the track.
13)That was really fun, but it was as I was falling into ruts I couldn't see that I realized the sun had set an hour before.
14)So, you know, still light, but shadowy.
15)And foggy, too. Did I mention the fog?
16)It's so humid today that finally it just started raining cause the air couldn't hold the water anymore.
16.57)Naturally I was outside when it started, and when I came back in Korac was like, "Is it pouring out?"
16.58)I refrained from telling him that no, I had been taking my fish for a walk, and he said, "Well, you never know. You might have dunked your head in the river."
16.71)I agreed, quite seriously, that yes I might have, to which he replied, "I know."
17)So I started home from the track, but I took the trail instead of the road, which meant lots of trees and less light.
18)And more fog, since the trail goes straight through the swamp.
19)And black flies so thick you could swallow them without opening your mouth.
20)And of course all the gates were closed, which, thank goodness the trail is banked.
21)I have this phobia about going through the gates anyway, which would just make you laugh if I told you why, or be really creeped out cause it kind of creeps me out when I think about it objectively, so I usually go around them.
22)But in a foggy twilight swamp, it's hard to see the trail around the gates, let alone stay on it.
23)And if you go off, it's not like you just hit a tree.
24)First you fall in the swamp and then you hit a tree and if you're lucky you land in some brambles.
25)Route 88 is a paved two lane road with painted lines and everything, and it felt like the autobahn by the time I reached it.
25.1)I don't actually know what the autobahn is, but a friend used to have a computer game where you had to race your car down "the autobahn" while all the other cars were going the other way and if you survived long enough it turned into night or you went through a tunnel or something so you had to basically be psychic to make it through without getting hit. It was fun.
26)Route 88 does have the occasional streetlight, which doesn't really illuminate the street so much as it marks where other paved roads branch off.
27)Did I mention that my bike doesn't have a headlight?
28)I'm pretty sure this is illegal, given how often I end up on the road after dark, but oh well.
29)I only just got a water bottle, so a headlight is still kind of far down the list.
30)Someone did give me a lock, which prompted me to think, gee, I should get a better bike.
31)But no, I shouldn't really cause "new" is like society's one enduring fad.
32)"Would you get a new doorstop if the one you had worked perfectly well?"
33)Of course, by the time I got to the highway I was still six miles from home, so I had kind of a while to think about how *I* couldn't even see my bike, so how was anyone else supposed to?
34)There's no breakdown lane on Route 88, by the way.
35)Of course I was fine, and I didn't even get pulled over, which Kurt did once for riding too late at night without a headlight.
36)But when I do stupid things there's often a particular moment of awareness that imprints itself on my memory, and comes back to me later, usually when I'm doing something else that's also stupid.
37)I think of this one a lot, plus it makes me sound cool, so I'm going to share it.
38)I was hiking in the Pemigewasset wilderness with some friends, and there was this river that I don't know the name of but the campsite was called Thirteen Falls.
39)We decided we were going to go skinny-dipping at the top of one of the waterfalls.
40)Inexplicably in retrospect, we took our clothes off at the bottom and climbed up naked.
41)Climbing wet rocks without clothes isn't much more dangerous than climbing them with, but it feels more dangerous.
42)And of course, our less adventurous friends were standing at the bottom with cameras.
43)So there was this moment when I looked down and saw them taking pictures and all of a sudden I was like, "You know, if I have to explain this to someone later, like say an EMT, it's going to be difficult."
44)Luckily I didn't.
Run Away