Scared Straight?

Tonight I was scared. I stayed really late at the office so I could get some work done and hopefully take the time off at the end of the week with my folks. I was the last one in the building and I was trying to map out a path to ride my bike on foot, which is sort of a dumb idea when you don't really know where you are going and when you didn't actually ride the bike that day.

I walked along the Rhine intending to find the way to catch the bridge and walk across it. I started on a wide well lit industrial street, perfect for bikes, not much traffic, but it soon got creepy. The road dead ended into a fence after some railroad tracks no way to tell if that was open normally or not... so I kept going closer to the river. I was funneled narrower and narrower into a walkway. I got darker and was misting. Then the concrete ledge narrowed even further, only the cold slippery river on my right and a brick retaining wall for some train tracks on my left. I then came upon A large piece of metal something was blocking the path so I skinnied up to pass it and the walk got even narrower and my footing more unsure, then my concrete dock turned to a metal see-thru grating. I was a little freaked out and it was starting to rain. The boats tied up along the Rhine, were dark and I hoped vacant. Sailor Magoo, the toothless wonder, could have been counting his loot down below and come up for a wad of tobacco in his corn cob pipe at any moment, but Magoo stayed below deck. I pressed on thinking I would clearly not use this as a bike path as I had originally intended but I perhaps at least could get back to civilization where things became normal again and things that go bump under the bridge near the graffiti didn't stike terror into my heart and perhaps the bats and moths would turn back into birds and bee once more. I am having a dialog with my idiot self right now.. WHAT are you DOING? You don't know your way at all. At least take someone with you next time so you don't drown, get kidnapped, smacked in the face with a bat, or worse, drop your computer in the Rhine. I pressed on, however, sure that I could find away out on the other side of the bridge that was more well lit. I get to it however and find the green metal door locked. Through the grate I can see freedom, lush and green with a few normal looking people strolling by and there is a tram stop nearby, but I cannot get there. The grating is high and not wide enough for footholds. The edges are wrapped with barbed wire... foiling my original plan of swinging myself around over the open water to the concrete slab on the other side of the gate. You bet I would have climbed it straight over had I figured out a way to get out easy, but no, in order to free myself I had to walk back thru the mess I had created and double not only back to the main road, but back to the starting point.

All the way back to the beginning.

After that, I also still had to go the normal way home, which is another 10 minute rain-walk and I missed the tram that would normally have been waiting for me. That late in the evening they are much farther apart and I would have had to wait for awhile after passing this man who, I swear, was wearing a Grim Reaper hood (i'm not even joking.. had there been no one else around seeing it too I would have ran screaming toward him or maybe attempted to whack him with my bag or beat him with my shoe.. or maybe I would have just started crying realizing that after all this, I am still going to Hell.) "Excuse me...Death? Yes, hello, I have this itch.. right there.. if only you had a... yeah a sickle...thanks you're a peach." "But of course... and now right this way.."

After seeing that weirdness I kept walking down the street as far away as I could get from that and I caught a glimspe of myself. What am I doing? I look like wet dog, I am hungry and tired and have walked and waited for about an hour and a half at this point. Gotten nowhere almost slipped into a river where no one would miss me for days, given it's a holiday week. Magoo may have used me as bait or worse.

I can't help but think God was talking to me. I don't get to crank myself in to an alley and climb out... I have to turn and face it and step back thru it and start over. I might miss what I had waiting on me in the meantime had I taken the right turns. But I'll never know.

Anyone been there?

Crazy or not?