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Taking a thumble

December 4, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
This was a long and whimsical that I wish I had logged back when people were likely to actually read it, but I just came back from another such run 5 days later so I'll keep this brief. I set off listening to 1950s SciFi radio podcast and trying to make my way across the slopes of Trebavic along a route I'd never before taken. I managed to successfully find and traverse the road bounding the upper edge of Hrid (literally "cliff" but also the name of a neighborhood surrounding said geological feature) and from there took a series of interesting turns up streets that took me to the very top of the next neighborhood over. With some careful darting and weaving, interspersed by climbs up streets steep enough to put San Francisco to shame, I finally emerged on Route 446 (Put Sarajevo-Trebavich) after passing several abandoned houses that looked like they'd sustained a lot of the action in the war ( this was, after all, pretty close to the front lines of the siege ). I made my way down past Happy Land out along the lonely well-lit mountain road that veers off into a small village in the Republika Srpska. I saw on the map there was a little detour I could try that I'd not take before so I went for it and soon found myself running through wheat fields a night in a rural village that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere though it just over the hill from the city. It was pretty alright, but I also knew that if a light came on and someone wanted to know what I was doing their might be trouble -- Americans are not popular in the Serb controlled province. I began to wonder if my Spanish was good enough to pass myself off as Peruvian. Probably depended on whether anyone else spoke Spanish. Just then the road kinda ended in someone's backyard and I had to more or less tip-toe pass their house, where a TV was clearly on, and up their driveway to get back to the paved road. Fortunately, I escaped without them noticing, or waking up any dogs ( which might not go so well if their owners side with them an not the sketch foreigner trespassing on their land at 11pm), and began making my way back through to the Muslim-Croat Federation on my own side of the mountain where Sarajevo lies. I had a series of short stories by Chekov playing on my phone, including one about a Statistician who fears he can't seem to fall in love, which I listened to as a climbed a towaring hill above the city and rejoined the path I'd taken a hour and half before. It was raining by this time and I hadn't taken into account how slippery the streets that were paved with cobblestone could be. I wiped out on a steep downhill and hurt my thumb; not broken, luckily, but badly bruised under the nail. A driver got out of his car and offered to give me his umbrella. Of course, there was no way I would run with an umbrella, I tried to show my appreciation all the same. Normally I just accept unwanted acts of generosity to make the person offering feel good, but not if they're gonna actually be a burden. I got home wet, tired, and cold, but very pleased with myself on account of all my wanderings.