The Secret Of The Paths

It's wonderful... the feeling you get zooming down a hill on a sunny day. A cool breeze blowing in your face and swirling around your entire body as you fly.

I finally got my bike tires repaired. AT LAST! The bike shop got 'em all fixed up and puncture proofed surprisingly fast. So here I am, flying down the hill from my house on the way to the park, with orders to be back home by five... *checks watch* so I've got like 40 minutes. Fairly short for a bike trip, but aw well. I take what I can get.

Once at the bottom of the hill, the few only slightly stressful seconds of my ride appear before me in form of the semi-busy street that I must cross to get to the park entrance. Actually, it's not that bad, and today it's not really that crowded. Or maybe its just cause now I have in mind what a real busy street is like after my vacation to Seattle. I duno. After watching one car pass by, I speed out into the middle of the road and in no time cross over into the entrance of Swallows Nest Park. Why they named it after that particular bird, I have never figured out. The whole place is overrun with Canadian geese. But I guess Swallows Nest sounds nicer that Canadian Goose park....lol.

The air here is cooler than up on my hill and as I ride along the trail that follows the river, I'm suddenly glad I decided to wear a sweater. While the air is still warm, there is a definite cool breeze coming off the river. It feels nice though. As I ride on down the oh so familiar trail, I wonder what I want to do... I haven't been here in months...like since November. I considered going on the swings, I always loved that. But the park is just so busy. But hey, what can ya expect? It's one of the first few truly nice weekends we've had in quite some time. Weather like this tends to bring out a lot of young families and picknickers. So I bypass the swings. The water is low enoguh, I could go onto my island. Well, not really my island. But I like to call it that, and when I'm down on a sunny weekday afternoon while school is in session, nobody is there and it really kind of is my island. Today though it looks quite likely I'd run into company on my favorite landing spot, so I ride on, looking for a spot... somewhere I can claim for me for the time being.

*sigh* I do sound anit-social, don't I?

Finally, several yards down the trail from one of the two main beaches, I find it. The perfect spot. A tiny little sandy patch, hidden behind a tree with a skiny, barely visible path leading down to it. The sort of place easily overlooked by most people. A miniature beach laid out just for me... only about ten feet wide with soft tan sand and completely unpopulated.

I couldn't imagine anything better at the time... sitting there with the sun gently warming my back and a slight cool breeze blowing in my face as I look out at the river, which is merely a foot away from me. Of course, I snap a few photos :-) I should post them some time maybe.

Time flies in my secret place... before long I look down just to see that my watch is informing me it's nearly 4:45. Dang. I really should start heading back for home I suppose. So I get up and dust the sand off my stuff and I and pick up my bike and head off down the trail again. All too soon I've made it back accross the street where the infamous death hill looms over me like an intimidatingly huge foe I can never seem to get away from. Well, there's no avoiding it. Sure, I could go back up the same, slighly less steep hill I got down here by, but despite it's appearence to be easier, it's not. Its just a little less steep than Death Hill, but it's a lot longer, and either path I take I'll be pushing my bike. So I head up the torturously steep hill. As I near the first bend I look down and realize again what a spectacular view there is from here. It's funny how something that can seem so horrible can be so good at the same time... anybody at the bottom looking at the two hills would automatically choose the one that looks less steep. I made that very mistake the first time I went biking down here. I took what looked to be the easy way...but in the end, it's a log longer of a way to go with more traffic and minus the awesome view. Then there's the oh so intimidating Death Hill. It looks horrible. Skinier and steeper by far, but it's actually better. An amazing birds-eye view of the park and it's actually shorter! Like the paths in life really. The wide road and the narrow. In the end, the least likely choice is really the better one.