It's dark around here these days. Really dark. And as any veteran Northwesterner knows, it's not going to get better any time soon.
If you ride a bike or run or or do just about anything outside AND you have a kid and a husband and a job and about 5 million other commitments, you have two options: grit your teeth and continue your activities in the dark or move it all indoors to the gym, with its access to cable and fake lights and machines.
Lately, I have been choosing the darker side of things, mainly because I can't seem to motivate myself to sit on my bike trainer and sweat buckets in front of Jersey Shore. Even the rain seems better than that.
The dark is usually cool with me. By nature, I am not a scaredy-cat. I attribute this to several things: My mom was the antithesis of the freaking-out-OCD-Mom. With four kids, being scared of everything just isn't sustainable. I have many years of experience in the outdoors and I am a ski patroller, where one must be prepared for the possibility of something going wrong at any time. Lastly, I am a middle school teacher. One cannot freak out constantly and successfully teach middle school. At least not anyone who wants to maintain any sense of sanity.
Some years ago, when I was training for half-ironman triathlons, I routinely did my long trail runs in Forest Park in the dark, protected only by my headlamp and my Labrador Retriever. While it justifiably scared the bejeezus out of my husband (and yes, even my mom), I barely gave those nights on the trail a second thought.
Many years later, I feel the same way about my current forays in to the dripping, pitch-black forest on my cyclocross bike. A good 99% of the time, I am more focused on getting home in time to make it to work or to make dinner than I am on safety. Besides, what kind of deranged pervert would hang out in a sopping wet and cold forest to take down girls on cyclocross bikes? That would be some kind of deranged pervert idiot and I am pretty sure I can outride one of those.
But tonight? Tonight, as I climbed Saltzman, I let my mind wander and then it decided to play tricks. Lots of tricks. Within a minute, I imagined people jumping from behind every towering tree (and there are a lot of trees in Forest Park), wielding knives or machetes or worse. I plotted my escape, which would involve a 180 degree turn back downhill and wondered if I could make the turn in time. The gravel beneath my tires crunched and I was sure someone was on my tail. I could barely breathe without doing a scan in to the forest with my headlight to make sure no one was there.
Stupid, I know. But once your mind runs away, there's not much you can do to catch it, other than safely arriving at your own front door.
When I showed up at the intersection with Leif Erickson, I didn't think twice: I turned right. Instead of continuing my hill climb, I chose the safe route- towards home (albeit 8 dark, obscure miles away). And I didn't feel even a tiny bit bad about it. I don't really think I have much intuition about these kinds of things, but I knew that if I kept going, I would be so afraid, my workout would suffer tremendously.
On the way home, I shook my first at the park. Score one for the rainforest and zero for NoPoGirl.
But I cannot let it remain this way. It might just be the right time to apply for my concealed handgun permit.
Which I think might scare the bejeezus out of Barkernews. So maybe not. Maybe I just need to suck it up and get out of my own head.
