Trail Rat Meets The Sandman
~Reed “Trail Rat” Nelson~
MARCH 2005
One of the first questions I asked myself after arriving in Virginia Beach is “where do I run?” The second question, for the record, was “where are the hills?” Trail withdrawal was eminent. It was mid-January and winter was in full “bloom.” Most of this Trail Rat’s training occurs on a “dreadmill” in the winter, staring blankly at a display with basic information. Unfortunately, wrist GPS gadgets won’t work on a dreadmill, so calculations are performed in one’s mind. This is particularly frustrating to rats, as our brains are quite small and thus limited in capacity for such calculations. And rats sometimes digress, so this one will move on.
There were a few other rats at work, but none with the real lustful sort of enthusiasm that this rat has. And nothing like other rats such as Larry K, or George P, or Kathy M, or Ed C, or Heidi GM, or… drat! Rats do digress! Anyway, this rat was on his own to figure out the best place to get a trail fix. Rats at the Tidewater Striders running club sent me to First Landing State Park. But rats get disappointed when you have to pay to enter a park to park. Rats may digress, but parking at a park is just plain redundant! So this rat bought a book at a bike shop [gasp] about mountain biking in Virginia. The book cost 18 rat dollars and the park tips contained therein saved 4 rat dollars per trip to the park. This rat was happy!
So, I put a rat rack on top of my sled and loaded the mountain bike. I had to be true to the purpose of the book for the first trip to the park. I rode the General McGuire trail out and back for 12 miles. Not a lot of distance, but rat riding in mixed dirt and sand can be a challenge that is not well measured by distance alone. It is not the length of the trail, but the firmness of the surface [innuendo intended]. This rat decided that the GMT was going to be a fine running trail! Plus, there were many capillary trails leading outward from the main trail. Rats love to explore!
One more bike ride and a rat run was finally in order. I parked at the bike shop [gasp again] and jogged the paved mile to the park trailhead. Through the mixed forest I ran, with pine trees providing green in the winter I was not used to seeing. Past the parking lot I ran, thinking of the money I saved and the extra two miles I would run by parking outside the park [redundancy intended]. Onto a capillary trail [The Bald Cypress Trail] I swerved. I was soon in heaven. 1.75 miles worth of trail took rats over little mounds [hills around here] and around swampland dotted with amazing bald cypress trees. The trees belched the breath of time itself, standing firm beneath an overcoat of Spanish moss. Oh my… I was not in Missouri! Only 6 miles of running provided me with 6 hours of smiling. Rats look mean when they smile, so I had to contain my joy.
I saw many other rats while at First Landing. There where scout rats, couple rats, and rats with strollers in the woods. There were biker rats and runner rats, and even a military rat or two keeping in tune for deployment. But, there were no familiar rats to me, so my joy was justly tempered to a mild euphoria. Rats are social, and even with small brains, we remember things for a long time. Running with familiar rats is one of those lingering memories. So new trails will be found and reported, just to share with my old rat friends, and bring back some great memories that no rat could ever forget.
