Going For a Loop


What? What are we doing? Shouldn't
you be paying attention to driving?

It's not often I have a car to drive around. It's also not often one is missed. Portland has almost everything I could want. There are amazing restaurants, good friends, a baseball park, grocery stores and my place of employment within easy walking distance of our home.

What it does not have is places you can go for long runs in the woods. This is the failing of just about every major metro city, with the exception of Salt Lake City. When The Wife and I were preparing to leave Utah, we rented a little one-bedroom place next to the state capitol. In an easy five-minute jog, I could drop down into a canyon trail and be lost to civilization pretty quickly. That kind of access is unique. That kind of access also requires living under the laws passed under that state capitol dome, but we won't get into that because your head might explode.

(OK, fine. A little aside: You can't show up in a restaurant (or most restaurants) and simply order a drink. You have to show intent to eat. It appears the state itself doesn't exactly know what it means by "intent to eat.")

In Utah, I ran and skied because that's what you do when you live in Utah. We lived in a house for three and a half years that was a five-minute drive from wide-open hiking lands. Our first dog, Duke, used to bark and chase cattle that were grazing on that land. Yes, I've seen a chocolate Lab start a cattle drive. He was a big, weird dog.

For two years in Maine, I lived a two-minute jog from a small park and a 10-minute jog from a much-larger hiking area. It wasn't the same as hiking in Utah, but I went there often. It was better than running the streets and crooked, brick-and-mortar sidewalks of Portland.

Yup. Dog videos, too. You're reading THAT blog.
Family members teased me when I was a little kid because I didn't like being at our cabin. There wasn't anything to do there but light a fire and eat hot dogs and shoot BB guns.

The only thing I haven't enjoyed about living Maine, some 20 years after being a bored cabin-ator, is I rarely get a chance to be outdoors. In truth, I very rarely leave the six-mile-in-circumference peninsula on which downtown Portland sits. The Wife takes our one car to work; it would require a mammoth run by me and Daisy Duke just to get to the woods.

That's what made today such an unexpected joy. The Wife got a ride to work with a co-worker/bestie for life in order to leave me with a car for the day. Resigned to a long run, I set up with water bottles, put on my running shorts and let Daisy Duke ride shotgun. Daisy Duke always used to ride shotgun when we lived in Portland. I even had a spare key in my wallet, so I could leave the car running with the air conditioning on while I went into a store on a warm day.

We rode out to Cape Elizabeth, where a wooded family plot sits preserved for hiking and nature observing right next to the ocean. The trails are much to short for my taste, with just over 2 miles between the parking lot and a little fresh-water pond, if you go the long way. Daisy Duke and I went the long way. Then we ran back to the car. Then we refilled my water bottle and ran back to the pond a second time.

The pedometer on my phone says I took 18,000 steps during the one-hour and 40-minute run. I'm not going to argue with that.

After an hour and 20 minutes of running, Daisy Duke finally did something she almost never does. She reminded me of Duke. Duke, her male, athletic predecessor, would *FINALLY* start to run slowly behind me after cartwheeling up and down the mountains of Utah for a few hours on one of our long hikes. After an hour and 20 minutes today, Daisy Duke fell in line behind me as I finished the last two miles of our jaunt.

It was an unexpected joy, being reminded of old Duke. He was an annoying, farty jerk of a beast, nothing like our dainty princess of a dog. (Sidenote: Dainty princess tried to eat a cheese packet Monday for my mac and cheese; she was nearly strangled).

These are the moments you miss out on by being city folk with one car. I get that and I understand that I would probably hate things about having a second car. But I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I've been comparing gas mileage and prices of vehicles tonight.

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