A Swim, a Stroll and Super Icecream

A high school about three miles away has a pool for use by the general public, so today I set off for a swim.  

As with all journeys from here, it started with the one mile steep descent to the bus stop.  I left a little later than I should have, so walked at knee-cap popping speed.  In spite of my haste, I noticed a couple of things on the way down.  In one place a tree root had rippled the tarmac, like someone's leg pushed under a blanket.  I had a closer look, and as I did so, a long, black, shiny, cylindrical entity scuttled in front of me.  It was a centipede, looking so evil as to suggest it had been scraped from one of the Devil's nostrils and flicked loose from his finger nail.

I carried on to the bus stop, and almost had to hop onto the bench to avoid being run over when it arrived.  'I have to pull right off the highway' the driver explained, 'you have to stand far back'.  

At the school, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was an outdoor pool.  I started doing my 'laps' or 'lengths' (I'm starting to get confused, is a lap a 'there and back' or a length - if I tell people I did 50 laps will they look impressed thinking I had swum twice as far as was the case?).  One thing I learned was that it is unwise to do enthusiastic back stroke in a pool without a ceiling to mark your progress and alert you to the end coming up.  I haven't hit my head so hard for a very long time.  I actually felt one of my neck vertebrae complain.  I changed to front crawl, which is always better in open air pools in the sunshine, as it helps stop spots burn on your retina when the sun hits the drops of water on your eyes.

After the swim, I walked down the highway to a hippy coffee shop.  The Amercians are not really geared up for pedestrians, and I vowed not to repeat the exercise as trucks came scarily close and I wasn't sure whether or not I was walking in the motorbike lane or the sidewalk.  I will start a kerbstone appreciation society when I get home.

After my coffee I was tempted by the icecream - moose hoof icecream to be exact.  I thoroughly recommend this, the moose hooves were made of chocolate and encased in caramel, slithering around in toffee icecream (who needs any other excuse to come to America?).  Then I decided to walk another mile to the state park as I wanted to try a trail I had seen on a map, that should bring me round, back to the bus stop.  

I have absolutely no sense of direction, and the trail wasn't signposted well.  After going down several dead ends, I started to feel rather concerned that I might be lost, and was having day dreams about search and rescue helicopters coming for me.  I was pleased I had had the icecream, as it might well have been the last meal for 48 hours.  Fortunately, with my hopeless sense of direction I hadn't noticed that I had gone in a circle, and arrived back where I started - and still a mile from the bus stop.