COVID WALK MISADVENTURE (AND RANT)

All I am trying to do is take a walk.  A simple walk.  I am trying to take a simple walk without having to wear a mask, breathe in my own C02, and cause myself to pass out on the sidewalk and crack my skull when I keel over. 

That's all.  Just a walk.

I am up early enough.  It's Sunday, so maybe people will be sleeping in, like they apparently do every day of the week now because days don't matter anymore.  I decide to head up the street that's relatively quiet and has sidewalks on both sides of the road.  Bear in mind that if a person, whether walking or jogging or bike riding, comes within six feet of anyone else for whatever reason, it will be a $300 fine, and the world is full (and I mean FULL) of people ready to narc you right out like they be part of the po po.

I leave my house, turn left, and want to go right at the crosswalk.  Nope.  No can do.  There's a car waiting, and the driver's window is open.  Must turn left.  After the car goes by, I swing back around, and proceed the way I wanted to in the first place.

But, wait.  Someone is digging up around a tree on her property at the sidewalk line.  Okay, time to cross the street.  As I cross the street, a family comes down the other sidewalk, gets within four feet of the gardener, and my brain starts screaming, "Watch out! $300 fine per person!  That's a $1,200 'hello' right there, folks.  Run!  Run from the po po!"

As my eyes search for any narc with a phone (they're everywhere -- I crap you not), I realize that there is a woman I shall soon be overtaking at my pace versus her snail's pace.  There are dog walkers coming toward us both.  She veers off into the school parking lot and I dash into the middle of the street, pass the dog walkers, and, as I retake the sidewalk, see Slow Woman, who has suddenly decided to become Fast Woman, marching right at me down the sidewalk coming from the school parking lot.

Oh, Hell no, Bitch!

I pick up my pace and dare her, actually worm over the the left side of the egress and will her to come within an arm's length of me. 

Bitch, I will own you.

I huff and puff up the hill because now not only am I starting to sweat from the pace, but I am sweating from zigzagging in several directions and hopping in and out of the street.  I get up to the top of the hill, hoping to swing left then right and take a quick but quiet stroll through the small cemetery (and say hello to Harriet and the Stowe family), but, no, there's a family there with kids running loose and another in a stroller. 

I give them some lead time, but they decide to stop and rearrange baby bottles and check on diaper rash and talk about the merits of early college admission for their infant and toddlers.  However, the toddlers are running amok every which way, and there is no way I can pass them without coming within six feet of at least half of them, so I again swerve wide of my target, jog quickly to avoid a car that is careening down the semi-closed street right toward the family members (who are no longer my concern because they prevented me from my cemetery stroll).

I decide to hustle my arse up the ramp and head into the academy quad.  I stand briefly in front of the shuttered art gallery while a huge sign waves in the breeze, hanging lazily from the colonnaded front entry: Come see this famous photographer's limited-time exhibit...  Oh, geez, bummer, man.  No, for real.  You finally get yourself a show, and everything shuts up tighter than a politician's fist full of money. 

I continue to walk, but wait for it -- at the crossing of the campus sidewalks, there are people walking, jogging, running, biking, sunbathing, and more.  How am I going to conquer this?  It looks like trains approaching North Station while praying that the switchers are paying attention to the tracks.

With a few feints left, right, forward, back, then a fast shoot-through, I am able to avoid the people and the goose-poop-laden lawn and make it to the crosswalk.  Thankfully, the area in front of me is blissfully empty of humanity.  I can pick my poison at this point: right on the short sidewalk to the street, or left to the long sidewalk under the trees and then to the street.  Naturally, since tick season is starting, I pick the trees because, hey, at this point I am less likely to die from varmint bites than from people breathing, and if I get to the street too quickly, someone is sure to drive by with their windows open, forcing my hand and making me spin around yet again.

Finally, I reach the street again.  This is the part of the route that I like best.  It's a slow grade downhill with sidewalks that crumble into nothing about halfway down, and I get to legally field-bomb on people's property.  Years ago I stretched out both of my Achilles tendons during a mud run, and my tendons to this day hate my guts most of the time, but they are perfectly happy going downhill fast.  I jog at a reasonable clip the quarter or third of a mile from top to telephone pole at the bottom.  I realize that for the first time I am not actually praying to see the telephone pole, and, after dodging another jogger (going uphill, the masochist) and a car plus loose macadam and tree limbs, I am sweaty but not as winded as I usually am.  In other words, I am not sucking air so hard that residents ask me (from a safe and legal distance) if I need an ambulance.

Walking back toward my end of town, I see a person on my side of the street, so I head across the street.  But wait.  Someone is doing lawn work.  Hmmmm. What to do?  Apparently, walk right down the middle of the damn street is the only available option, so that's exactly what I do.  And since I seem to be cheating death and the virus, I decide to go the long way home and walk straight through downtown.  Yup, why not, right? 

But first, I must cross the street by the churches because someone is coming my way and the po po are parked about fifteen feet away from me, watching, waiting, ticket pad in hand.  Of course, I must jay-walk to accomplish this massive maneuver, then jay-walk right back again to regain my turf.  Honestly, I have my ears on high alert waiting for the officer to chase me down and hand me a jaywalking ticket, but then he would be within six feet of me, and, as I stated at the very beginning of this diatribe:  I. Do. Not. Have. A. Mask. With. Me.

Surprisingly, the side of Main Street that I choose has no one on it.  I don't know where everyone is because Starbucks and Dunkins and Cafe Nero and Perfectos are open, and no one is at church because all of the churches are locked up like the state penitentiary.  No, that's not true because the prisons were let loose. 

Ironic. 

I do, however, have to get back to my side of the road because, well, damnit, that's where I live.  I see my opening, take a chance, cross the street (in a crosswalk this time), turn right, and... a person with a mask walks out of the coffee shop and right at me.  There's no place for me to go because the coffee shop line is all the way out the door, on the sidewalk, and into the street.

I can see my house.  I'll be damned if I am going to zig-zag now.  Screw these people who are okay to stand in line for caffeine but won't let me by.  I am the one without a mask.  I am the enemy.  So, I plow on by, making a five-foot turn rather than a six-foot one. 

Hah!  Take THAT, Convid sheeple!

But then, as I near my driveway, a family of mask-wearers approaches me.  Clearly, the have no intention of giving up the sidewalk for one walker.  They expect me to take one more risk of death by walking the double-yellow line of fear.  Instead, I catapult the stonewall, point to my porch, and yell, "It's okay!  I'm just going here!  Fear not, strangers!  You are safe to go get your coffee with the others, who are all breathing the same air and touching the same door and drinking coffee poured out of the same carafe!  Go and be with the Coffee Bean Coalition!"

I sit on my front porch, relaxing and trying to cool down, and I look at my phone app, which has been mapping my walk.  My time and pace and distance (over two miles, hooray) are fine.  However, when I bring up the track of my route, it looks like a psychopath walked it: Left, right, backward, forward, zig-zags, circles, triangulations...  

A walk.  That's all I wanted.  A simple, quiet, direct, uneventful, stress-free, non-$300 walk.  Damn.  Apparently even those don't exist anymore.  I hate this "new normal" shit.