Generally I love getting lost. I mean, eventually this road will come out onto something I recognize, right? And if it doesn't, I can just go back! *breezy wave of the hand*
Yeah. It's a little bit different when you're on a bicycle. My legs are going to be RUBBER tomorrow.
I mean, the concept is good: let's see where this comes out! That was EXACTLY my thinking when I whizzed* right past the known cutoff of the Watershed Bike Trail. It was 3 p.m., plenty of sunshine, and it's a bike trail! How lost can you get? You just follow the old railroad right-of-way until it meets up with something familiar!
*Here "whiz" means "to move rapidly," not "to urinate." Although that's a complication I hadn't thought about.
Drawback here is, you have to know the area for anything to be "familiar." And there's a further problem in that the old railroad right-of-way is bordered by deep ravines: no way to cut across to something more populous.
I crossed an overpass over a familiar highway, but there was no way down to it. Then the path took me across a godawful bridge over Cahokia Creek (I have this thing about bridges) - a REAL body of water, not the happy, burbling rivulets in the ravines. Current objective: not to have to cross that bridge again.
ME: This has to come out onto a road sometime, right? I mean, people have to park their cars somewhere when they get ON this trail, right?
Right. There was a road. I didn't know what road it was, but I took it. It wound around but refused to give me any crossroads back over to the campus. Eventually it delivered me to a local landfill, where I asked a skinny old road worker how to get back over to New Poag Road. I heard a banjo picking out a ditty as he replied, "I have no idea," grinned and spit.
I gave up and turned tail. Cahokia Creek, here I come. Again. Between exhaustion, road construction, campus traffic and heavily graveled shoulders, it was a long ride back. But hey, the sun was still up and I didn't have to whiz.
Boys and girls, if you go exploring on your bike, just remember: do it at the BEGINNING of your ride, not when you're already tired.
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