Walk It Out

So yeah, due to the fact that I’m not a big traveler, there’s oftentimes a fair amount of free time for me on the weekends. Last Saturday was no exception to this. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon, and I literally had NOTHING to do at all. I had just finished eating what I’m sure was nothing short of an awesome lunch with some great peeps, and prior to that I had hit up some Toledo museum action with Danielle, so I had some extra energy from all that coolness.

It was nothing short of gorgeous outside, so there was little doubt that I needed to be in the afuera area. Now I talk a lot about what I miss from back in ‘Sota, but I can assure you that one of those things is definitely NOT the winter. Spain wins that round by far at this time of the year. Ugh, screw those 9 months of dread and anguish back stateside. Anyways, I decided that running wasn’t the best option for me as I had gone out and done such a thing the day before and had plans to do a leg workout on Sunday. So I needed to have some sort of recovery in there so I could brutalize my legs again the next day.

Thus, what else to do? Well, that’s just an easy and stupid question. Like if I’m going outside and I’m not going to run, it’s pretty obvious that I’m going to walk. Reminds me of how easy all my midterms ended up being. Dag-nab, I wish that my ridonkulous test scores were indicative of my understanding of this stupid language. But meh, I digress as I’d much rather pwn the exams than speak the lengua. I mean, both would be best, but let’s play para realidadsies here, I don’t care enough to become good at Spanish, so let’s just shoot for killer test-age, and so far so good.
Moving on, so I decided to go for to take myself a nice little walk. Yeah, that’s an interestingly crafted sentence, I know. But it’s basically poetry in word form. Think about it… So I threw on my TKD sweatshirt (gots to rep, ya feel me?) and headed out. I was greeted by the always awesome Danika and Lauren upon my leaving of the Fund, and after an enjoyable, brief-little serenade and accompanying dance from them, I was off.

I wasn’t entirely certain of where I wanted to end up, so I just followed the general direction of my normal running path. Not that I really have a standard route for such a thing… well… I sort of do. I basically just run toward the river. Doesn’t matter how I get there, as long as I do. After I arrive at the flowing water area, then I have a rough but general route. But that’s irrelevant right now. So I just marched myself down toward the river.

T’wasn’t (double contraction like-thing FOR THE WIN!) too long before I decided what I wanted to do. See it’s hunting season these days in Minnesota, and I’m REALLY missing partaking in that action, so it hit me the second I got to the river and saw the trees way friggin’ off in the distance that I needed to go toward them and how you say… become one with nature. And just going to throw this out there. There’s a HUGE lack of legitimate nature out here. Trees and grass are definitely at a premium. So yeah, I’ve been scratching a lot of imaginary bugs lately as I’ve clearly been going through quite a bit of withdrawal.
But before wandering off to the tree-age, I decided a nice walk along the path next to the river would serve as a solid starting point to ease into the wilderness. This little path pretty much always lends itself to my runs out here. It’s just a really pretty area. It starts with some fairly decently sized steps that lead down to an area right alongside the river. Awesomeness. The path itself varies from dirt, to sidewalk, to brief stepness, to small log-like bridge, to rocks, and probably some other crap I’m forgetting. Darn fine place. The elevation is pretty inconsistent as well, so it’s really good for optimal running.

I didn’t take the steps down that I mentioned, though, this time. I just walked into the dead grassy area moderately near them and went down the hill leading to the river. I paused along the way to sit on some old rock/wall structures and stare off toward the trees that seemed so very far away. I noticed some people standing probably 274.32 meters away (that’s 300 yards for all my American friends – i.e. ALL OF YOU). I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing at first, but they were definitely standing on some sort of artificial grass next to what I can only assume was the house that at least one of them lived in. It seemed like a very modern (for Toledo) and well kept place. They had a pretty large area as well that seemed to belong to them.

I looked closer and noticed that they were golfing. Yeah. They were golfing. And by that I mean that they were just hitting balls into the water. Not going to lie, that pretty much baffled me. I mean, I saw a golf course a couple weeks ago somewhat between Madrid and El Escorial, but that was a friggin’ course that’s got to be hard as FRIGG to maintain with the lack of rain here. Toledo doesn’t even have grass for the most part, let alone the capacity for golfing. Crazy rich Toledanos and their putting green-like things that when combined with a river double as a driving range.
After this nonsense, I trekked my way down to the path to walk around for a bit. Well, I didn’t actually walk around once I got there really. I found some ducks swimming around near the shore, so I just grabbed me some ground and had myself a seat. I’ve gone out duck hunting with my dad since literally like (yeah, “literally like”) kindergarten, so I’ve seen my fair share of the flying creatures, but I’ve never really just parked myself and watched them do what they do. Turns out they’re fascinating little guys. Just the manner in which they swim is enough to enthrall me. Watching their little legs paddle along is really interesting from a physiological perspective. Just like little feathered, swimming Gary Colemans. They had no issue with my being around them either. A few of them even swam right up to me to take a little gander (pun) at what I had going on. As such, I stared at these little birds for a fair amount of time before I decided that it was time to move on and head treeward.
Along my way to the Puente de San Martín (AKA the bridge that leads out of the main/casco/old school area of Toledo and into the less fortressy part of town) I walked past many a person fishing. Now I’m going to refer to this group of people as fisherman. Not in a sexist manner, mind you, but that’s just what I’m a-going to do, so if you have a problem with that… well… then… yeah, then I guess you just do. Now from a non-Spain perspective, that doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary. However, since I basically own this town, I’m privy to all sorts of privileged information. Thus, I know that in terms of cleanliness, the Tajo River basically makes the Mississippi look like mineral water extracted from the highest, snowiest peak in all of Sweden after being blessed by all of the world’s major religious leaders and getting an endorsement from Oprah. So yeah, it’s safe to say that the Tajo’s a bit sketch.
Right before leaving my perch (another pun) after watching the ducks, I decided to dip my left hand in this sewage-water concoction just for the frigg of it. I figured that it would alter my DNA in some form another. Either I’d get some horrible space-disease, or I’d become some sort of a superhero. I figured the odds were about 50/50 overall, and as a poker player, I’ll take that chance err’time the beat go. Let me tells you, I’m waiting on proverbial pins and needles for the test results to come back from the lab to let me know exactly what irreparable damage I’ve done to myself.
But yeah, every time I go out along the river, I always see a TON of people out fishing. This just straight baffles me. I’ve never seen anyone pull a fish out of that cess pond. Ever. Which isn’t too surprising given the absurd toxicity level of it, but still, you have to wonder why people even try. Infierno, the only thing I can ever imagine being dragged out of there is something like the three-eyed fish known as “Blinky” from the classic Simpsons episode. In fact, if I were to tell you of all the mutant creatures that probably dwell in the Tajo, I assure you that you would flee from your computer in terror.
Anyways, I continued on my journey to the trees that appeared to be oh-so-far away. Of course, with all the grace of a wildebeest on crack, I decided to jack my toe into some sort of protrusion sticking out of the street that I assume was meant to slow down cars. It was actually pretty convenient, though, as I’d crunked the same toe on the opposite foot the day before whilst running. So no longer did I walk with a limp, but rather a banging strut. As such, I strutted my way along the road, up the hill, and out of the city. A steel-town man on a Saturday afternoon looking for the fight of his life. Ok… maybe not so much. I actually wasn’t limping or strutting at all. The toe smash-age damage wore off in about phi seconds, so it was all hood, but whatevs.
I’m not going to lie to you, my friends, one of the pervading thoughts in my head as I walked just off the side of the street doing my best to avoid all the refuse on the ground (which consisted of broken glass/CD’s/lightbulbs/other random objects) was, “I hope Toledo doesn’t have drive-bys.” Yeah, I know that in writing when you talk about someone’s thoughts you don’t put them in quotation marks, but I have creative license here, kiddies, so I’ll do what I want. *scoffs at you* Like, I know that the crime rate in this fair city is apparently extremely low, but you never know. I mean, I’m some dumb blonde American out walking just off a major highway on a Saturday afternoon wearing a University of Minnesota sweatshirt, so there’s probably some sort of a catalyst there…
Turns out that I didn’t get shot at. Like not even a little bit. Yay! I did have 7 cars honk at me, though. But all of them seemed to be happy about the thing. Todas las personas in the cars would just smile and wave at me. Actually made me pretty happy to know how chill the peeps be around here. You don’t get that kind of stuff in Minneapolis. Perhaps in Olivia, but of course, everyone knows me in that town, so that doesn’t really count.

So with this very valuable piece of información in tow, I continued on in my walking. Directly to my left was a wall-like apparatus that separated the road from all the trees I’d been wanting to go check out. I considered jumping it just to see what was up going up in there until I found a posted sign that stated the following: COTO PRIVADO DE CAZA. Which of course translates to “PRIVATE GAME RESERVE.” Intriguing. I definitely still wanted to get up in there, but yeah… maybe not the best idea…
I kept on walking in hopes that the wall would open up somewhere/end, and awesomely and unrelatedly enough, it wasn’t overly long until I got outside of the city limits of Toledo (heck yeah!) and was greeted by a little opening-kind-of-thing that went underneath the highway and appeared to go all the way through to the other side. I paused briefly here and stared at it. Obviously, I mean I just described it for you (albeit poorly), so I clearly had to take at least a quick peek at it. Dumb. Sorry for wasting your time with that last statement. And that one. And that one… I pondered going through there because let’s face it, it’d just be cool to go under the street and pop out on the otro lado. But apparently better judgment kicked in, and I decided against the idea. I’m such a tool of the establishment.
At this point the time was approximately 4:41:23.56, so I was thinking that I should probably start heading back relatively soon to ensure optimal time to continue doing nothing in my room before dinner. I turned around a corner on the highway and found that the little side grass/dirt thing I’d been walking on expanded greatly in this area. Sweetness. I hiked up and around this place until I got to the highest area I could, and I took a look back toward Toledo. You know, from the outside it’s quite the pretty looking place. But yeah… from the inside, not so much. My sweet, suitemate Tom made the observation the other day (in a stroke of comedic genius), that Toledo is basically Spain’s Mankato. Think about it. It’s an hour away from the biggest city (Madrid), it’s hilly as frigg, and the town is unbelievably poorly constructed from a modern planning perspective. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there (sorry Amy and Paul!).

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m quite enjoying my time here, but that’s not because of how great the city is, because believe you me, they’re ain’t a lot to do here for someone who doesn’t drink… and even for those that do… I like it here because of the fan-friggin’-tastic people here that I’ve been blessed to get to know and to call friends. So thanks to all my peeps here for keeping it real. A’ight, that’s enough of the sentimentality for one post. Let’s get back to the random pointless story of some punk kid taking a walk along the highway on a Saturday afternoon. That just SCREAMS ratings, doesn’t it!? I swear if I keep up with this blistering pace of epic tales there’s no WAY that I won’t get picked up for a second season of “Living the Dream.” YES! *does victory fist pump*
So I’m looking around the area and paying special attention to this little private game reserve dealy going on to the side. Friggin’ A, am I NOT going to hop this wall? What’s wrong with me? Yeah… there was no doubt that I was a-get myself up in there. There wasn’t a good place to do it there, so I started my pilgrimage back toward Toledo knowing that there were several places where the wall was quite short.

Along the way, I passed by the little under-the-highway place that I’d pondered entering before. Ok, time to man up and get down. It was just one of those days, ya know what I mean (man, that jacket is tight! – if you get that reference, you’re friggin’ awesome!). I looked around and saw that there were no cars around at that time, so it was now or never… or rather, then or never, but you feel me, I’m sure. I crouched down and headed in. For a second. Yeah, there was no way that I was going to ramble through that mess. Looked kind of intense in there, so like many a stupid person, I pulled out quickly to avoid any sort of mishap. Definitely not 100% effective, and it surely is something that should be avoided, but I figured that once, just once, it would be ok. Turns out it was. But do NOT try that at home, playas. Bad stuff WILL happen. But yeah, now I can say that I went under a highway in Toledo. Not that that means anything at all, and there’s not even really a good story behind it, but meh, whatevs, it made me feel happy, so that’s what it do.
So yeah, I continued on my merry way until I found an area that looked suitable for wall hopping. It was only about as high as my waist, so it posed no problems at all. A bunch of cars were driving by at that point, so I just kind of sat on the wall and chilled. A looked inside to try and gave myself an idea of what was up. Firstly, there was definitely a lack of animal looking things in there. I spotted some bird hopping about and perhaps a rabbit as well. I couldn’t really tell if it was a shadow or a living creature as it was shaped like a long-ears but it stood stock-still. I quickly grew weary of staring at this creature/shadow and turned back to the highway to see that there were no cars anymore, so I dropped myself down into the reserve to take a little peak about.
No voy a mentir, the place wasn’t that impressive. There was definitely a fair amount of nice pine trees, though; I can say that much. Reminded me of home in that sense. But other than that, there was nothing. No real grass, just dirt, and certainly no animals that would be even the least bit interesting to see. I walked about this place for a short period of time, pa-sha, I even ran for a couple seconds just for the heck of it before I decided that there was no point to being in there anymore. The risk was a tad-bit higher than the reward at that juncture, so being the business guy (for some stupid reason) that I am, I knew the correct decision was to exit the area. But nonetheless, my goal of chilling in the trees had been accomplished for the day. Cool beans.
But alas, my day was not yet complete. I had to cross the street at some point in my slogging back toward Toledo, so as a gangsta, I defs had to do it in style, yo. Had to finish this walk right. So question: What’s a hood such as myself to do, you ask? Answer: dance!. Yep, I awkwardly crip walked, glided, and c-walked my way across a major Spanish highway. You know, no biggie, it’s just how I do. All day, baby, just gangstando!
And yeah, my tense usage is all screwed up in this post. I totally jump from past to present in a ton of places, but yeah… that’s just how it’s gotta be. I mean, I’m a grammar nazi, but I’m lazy first, so no way am I heading back to fix over all those errors. So y’all (and by “y’all” I mean Amy) just going to have to deal, son… err… sister…