Inigo Montoya:
"He's
dead. He can't talk."
Miracle
Max: "Whoo-hoo-hoo,
look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY
dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is
slightly alive..."
Every new
year brings with it, however briefly, that false sense of optimism and hope,
the resolve to be and do that which all prior years of experience have
demonstrated to be out of reach, but even I had the good sense not to put GORP
on my list of 2014 reclamation projects.
GORP, when last we visited her, had just run into the buzz-saw of
conflicting calendar commitments that comes with every passing of the vernal
equinox; she lay prostrate and lifeless amidst the (still totally
unidentifiable) shoots and blossoms of spring, the bongo drums of Inuksuit
banging away endlessly overhead. True love it was not, and prospects for a deathbed miracle seemed remote.
But here at
GORP headquarters we take very seriously our characteristically American
commitment to doomed enterprises (e.g. disco, dieting, child development,
democracy). Also, our children haven’t
seen the sky in months. What passes for
nature in our neck of the woods is a 4x8-foot plot of turf on the back porch,
put there for our puppy as an alternative to the kitchen floor. This seemed like a good idea at the time, to
me anyway, and did for a few weeks increase by several orders of magnitude our
family’s regular exposure to natural grass.
Most of the grass soon died however, thanks to the highly active Newfoundland
bladder, and this unfortunately water-tight enclosure is now, three rainy months
later, a frozen block of mud and urine. When
it thaws, it will be a pit of despair far worse than anything conjured up by
Count Rugen.
 |
| Hubble's Pit of Despair |
So with a
warm-up forecast for this weekend, now might be a good time to get out of the
house – or at least away from it. On Sunday
morning we plan to spend a few hours in the city’s East End exploring Gillies Creek Park and the
surrounding neighborhood. We’ll bring bikes, frisbees, horseshoes and
an open eye for anything else to do, but mostly this is an excuse to have lunch
at Bottoms Up Pizza, where we plan to fall back to at the earliest sign of
trouble. (Gillies Creek Park is home to
the city’s only BMX race track, so bikes for the kids – and phone numbers for
nearby orthopedists – are encouraged.)
Meet time is
10:00 a.m. near the BMX track (here); but this will be a loosely
structured affair, so don’t worry if you’re running late. Anyone inspired to scale the heights of
Church Hill, en route to Bottoms Up, should be at Gillies Creek Park by
11:15. Otherwise, just come when you
can, if you can, and follow the police cars and ambulances to wherever we are.
G.O.R.P.
