Just when I think I'm safe, on a wide-open fire road, another predator surfaces in my field of view. A hungry-looking, curiously unfazed black bear, being watched and photographed by another group further afield. They point at the bear, point at me, and motion with their hands for me to come over. Great, they're in cahoots, and they want to feed me to the bear. Cautious as I am, approaching the bear did not seem like a winning prospect, at least not at this point: I observed the bear more from where I was. The crowd walked off, and so I began after them. Suprisingly, the bear barely made a move, except for a few adorable shakes of his head as he tried to fend off the same gnats that I'd been accosted by on Robertson. Good, I thought, we both hate gnats. As I catch up to the bear-gazing group, they give me the crucial update: "There's an even bigger one up the trail!" Wonderful, I thought, and decided to stay close to the group, in case they required my bear wrestling expertise to protect them from an imminent mauling. What's this? Now each one of the group is posing in front of the bear, and it's a cub. In pure astonishment, I stood away, far away, from where they were assembling, as I looked on in anticipation of a ferocious mother bear who would come lumbering through the forest, knocking over every tree in her way, and descend on the group, taking them back individually to be fed to her young. I only snapped a quick shot of the bear, and took off. Needless to say, by the time I began the climb of the third mountain, I was utterly exhausted. Standing by idly, I watched kindergardeners, wheelchair bound senior citizens, mannekins, all passing me at a fervent pace.
At this point, my backpack became a real problem. Allow me to diverge so that I can divulge some information about this infamous backpack. What it is, actually, is a few square feet of mesh and plastic sewn together cleverly to mimmic the appearance of a real backpack. In actuality, it's not a backpack, it's a huge physics experiment that crams more mass into a given space than was previously thought to be achieved by black-hole forming neutron stars. Even after I'd spent my gallon store of water, the backpack weighed more, than when I first donned it. How is this possible? Not to mention the unbearable discomfort, which I guess, is what I should expect when I buy a discount backpack that's two sizes too small, and not for my gender. Yeah, I'm cheap. But how can I spend $70 on a camelbak? It's basically a taut grocerry bag made of unnecessarily tough fabric that sports a comfortably fitting strap, perfectly adhering to your spine. Nothing more. If I could sew, which I can't, I'd sew one of these things for myself, for sure.
I continue up the mountain, taking gasps of air and expelling most of the water weight that my body had accumulated throughout my entire life. Nevertheless, I struggle and pass several groups en route to the top. Upon reaching the top victoriously, I do the first thing that makes sense: I lie down as near to the edge as I can and hope for a strong breeze to wisk me away, back to the comfort of my car, or the comfort of an ambulance stretcher--either way. After some very audible groaning, I writhe myself into an upright position and assess the damage. A terrible backache, and so I adjust the backpack, and I adjust, and adjust. Hike down to the shelter, take a seat, and make more adjustments. I run into a group that I'd seen at the top and they politely yield the way to my gravitationally-propelled bumbling. Sooner than I thought, I'm back at the bottom, and my long and exciting trek along a completely empty fire road begins. For most of the 8 miles back to the car, I was completely alone, save for the collective population of Virginia black bears that had all congregated in the woods to absolutely scare the crap out of me the entire way back. Or at least I suspected that they were the ones accountable for the rambunctious rustling coming from the dense forest brush that my vision could not penetrate. After several more torturous miles, the rustling subsided and I stopped to lay down in the dirt in the middle of this expansive horse trail, right there where I stood, probably in some heap of ancient dilapidated pile of horse shit--but I didn't honestly care, and for the first time all day since the pittance of oatmeal I consumed for breakfast, I had "lunch." I'm not sure what it is about having your heart rate elevated for uninterruptedly long periods of time, compounded with ceaseless sweating and a feeling that your stomach is completely in knots that is sufficient to take away an individual's appetite. So I delve into my bag of skittles, clumsily dropping each individual piece as they escape from my trembling hands, then subsequently picking them up and consuming them. The five second rule totally applies in the woods. Then a bite of my sandwich; it tastes like chalk to me at this point. As soon as I muster up enough energy to begin stumbling back down the trail, I run into another human! Yes! The first one in almost three hours. Perhaps he can summon a horse or emergency vehicle to come retrieve me from my pathetic state. Rather, it was a trail maintainer from the Center Hiking Club in DC. I try to feign fortitude, but I can't help asking him how far it was back to Skyline (where I was parked). "A long ways away. What the hell did you come all the way out here for?" I stopped, and thought, and realized I was in a conundrum. I didn't know, so I just told him I don't like the crowded parking lot at Old Rag. Some misunderstandings arise that I don't feel obligated to clear up with the man, as he was elderly, and I wanted to communicate my respect for his hard work. I told him how Robertson Mt had been engulfed by an impenetrable canopy of poison ivy, and he replied, "That's not my trail." Good response, I thought, soon I'd be back at the car.
I set off on the ride home, desparately searching through a dwindling supply of tolerable music, finally coming upon a burned copy of Calexjco. Yes! The cd that had spent a certain period of time wedged beneath my car seat. It had looked like someone had taken a pair of golf shoes and tried to scrawl their name on the underside of the cd with them. Radial spikes emanated from the hole, resulting in a cd that sounded like a derranged mix-tape, skipping from track 1 to track 14 back to 1, and so on. Oh well, I was appreciative of those couple of riffs that still could be heard, and so I drove all the way back to Northern Virginia, at which point I switched the radio dial to HOT JAMS! Yes, finally, the same ten ghetto beats that had dominated my world all week long were once again in earshot. Driving on route 66--which on Saturday nights doubles as the race track for the Drunken Daytona 500--is a lesson in enmity for all other human life. I watched as all these anxious, hormonal teens and twenty-somethings zipped by at speeds in excess of 90 mph. In front of me, one of these God-awful idiots swerved across six lanes only to nearly cause a certainly lethal high-speed collision with a car in an already occupied lane. They slam on the brakes, and retire to a slower pace for a time, hopefully to get a grasp on their astonishing stupidity. Five minutes later, another similarily suave ensemble, consisting of a guy driving with a blonde twenty-something, nearly swerves into the same innocent car that had almost been implicated in the previous accident! What terrible luck, I thought. I try to annex some justice for this poor older couple by quickly passing and cutting off the offending vehicle, while glaring at the driver. What's with these idiots? If I could just say one thing to them it would be this: YOU ALL SUCK. YOU CAN NOT DRIVE AGGRESSIVELY. YOUR TACTFULNESS BEHIND A STEERING WHEEL IS THAT OF A COLOBUS MONKEY!
I really support the Metro, but not in the capacity in which it's currently operating. See, since it parallels route 66, I'd rather see it used as a traffic control device. Police could man massive turrets which would line the tops of the Metro cars from where they would periodically launch strategic missile strikes on unsuspecting stupid drivers below (where the strategy would be to KILL EVERYONE). So, you overprivileged, snobby, rich club-going teens and twenty-somethings in your MR2s and your C320s, get off your cell-phones, off the road, donate your car to me, and terminate yourselves before you cause another obnoxious collision. Anyhow, off to the store I go, to buy up all the Advil and turkey sandwiches I can find.