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Violating a Sacred Tradition

October 30, 2018 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Myles and I became the first (former) members of the GDS boys team to visit THE SECRET PARK, a girls team tradition dating back to before when I was a student (i.e. the dawn of time). Previous boys team members and male coaches who have attempted to find this park have been offered up as a sacrifice to the track deities, so Myles and I were particularly lucky to have survived, especially given all the mean and horrible things we heard the girls say about each other behind their backs (especially Abby Murphy, what a meanie) which I dare not repeat for fear of some vicious assassin like Mia Young or Camilla Salwin stabbing me to death in my sleep. For those of you gentlemen wondering where it is, you simply have to follow the Geico Loop backward, but deliberately make the wrong turn everyone always makes before the stoplight at that big intersection with all the cars, take your third left toward the No Exit loop, but not actually on the No Exit loop but rather the street next to it, and then head up the hill like you're taking the backway to St. Albans except you go the other way as if you're about to do the 39th street loop extension that we do when Anthony is trying to add mileage, and when you come to big downhill where we sometimes used to have snowball fights during runs back in 2010 (ask Linni and Elise if you don't know where this is), turn toward the super-secret Safeway (not to be confused with the Safeway next to school that was torn down), and eventually you'll come to the door of this house where Anthony's cousin's high school girlfriend's babysitter used to live, knock three times on the fence, an old woman will come out and escort you into the backyard where you'll see a big brown dog which will bark twice which means the coast is clear and then look where it's tail is pointing, follow that tail to the trail which will lead past Sarah Spergel's parents' house (or maybe it's Eve Stevenson's...I'm not sure), and then if you roll under the chain link fence, and start digging under the Northwest corner of the old boundary stone on delineating the historical border between Bethesda and Alexandria, you'll find a key that will open a magical telephone booth from which you proceed to dial 177 (don't ask me why) and a voice at the other end will answer and tell you the park is located at the corner of J Street and Ohio Avenue, NE. It's wrong, by the way, but it says it with such conviction you almost wish it were true.