Lost in Transition

It's been one week since I started walking and already I can feel the difference. Yesterday was a breakthrough. I walked about 45 minutes without stopping to catch my breath once - and I even tackled a few steep hills. (Mind you, my definition of stopping is very precise -- a full and complete lack of movement. Shuffling the feet forward even a few inches does not constitute stopping.) The best part of yesterday's walk was that I went into parts of Greenwich where I haven't been before.

So today I decided to move it up a notch and also further explore this place we've lived in for eight years. Feeling fitter and ready for a good walk, I headed off. My mobile phone needed charging, so I left it at home. Didn't bother to pick up my wallet or keys. Just me and my iPod.

I didn't expect to get lost so close to home.

Silly me. I didn't know that you could walk into Wollstonecraft, the next suburb over, without some sort of indication that you're doing it. Oh, I wouldn't expect a border crossing, but at least a sign that read "You are now leaving Greenwich. Have a good day and come back soon," would have helped me to turn around fast.

But no, on I walked, secure in the mistaken belief that Greenwich Road where I live was just one block to my right. I didn't even question it when I got to a little wooden bridge built in the 1800's. The sign said I was entering Smoothey Park.

Anyhow, I exited Smoothey Park eventually and saw the sign for Shirley Road. I realized I was at the bottom of the Wollstonecraft peninsula at Berry Island Reserve. It hit me - no phone, wallet. No choice but to keep walking. And, frankly, I had by now walked further than I had intended and climbed more hills than the von Trapp family.

It's not like Greenwich was all that far. I could see it from the Reserve. Unfortunately, there was a small body of water between me and home. So I started walking back up the hill toward civilization when I saw a sign. It was the Gore Cove Track --- to Greenwich!

Now I had worked with Seppi, a guy who was a bushwalking fanatic. He was known for nearly killing people who went for these walks with him. (Obviously he was German, and believed that if it didn't kill you it made you better.) He is most famous as the guide who miscalculated how fast his group could get out of whatever place he had brought them. As dusk turned the trail dark, the young daughter of one of our co-workers forlornly asked, "Mummy, are we going to die?"

Hearing the reports of Seppi's bushwalks, I had vowed to never take one - with or without him. And at the time, the odds were pretty good that I would have kept to that vow. Today changed everything.

Tired and just wanting to get home, my slightly cooked brain thought "Shortcut!" not "Bushwalk!"

More tomorrow on the consequences of that mistake.