summer adventures 1.

Vaguely felt rain drops drift across my face and into my eyes as I stare up the steep and foreboding path. A precipitous ledge bounds the path to my right and a rather uninviting and roughly sloping wooded plane that gives way to another precipitous ledge after about 30 yards lies to the left. I'm crouched under a small poplar, trying to protect my ipod from the rain and to decide the best course of action. My sister's purple mountain bike is a few feet away and my socks are now soaked, causing an wretchedly unpleasant squash each time I readjust my footing. I resolve to shove my ipod into my pocket and swing my leg over the high frame of the purple mountain bike and gut it out. It had begun to drizzle lightly as I started my ascent of this narrow rocky path that runs around the back of our property, up between two massive mine pits, one half full of water and the other dry and empty. About halfway up the path, nearly a half-mile from relative safety and the wide gravel roads that lead to my house, the rain decides to come down properly. Huge droplets hurtle down onto my shoulders and head in rapid succession. It feels like putting my upper body under a high-pressure shower head and I'm soaked under a minute later. My primary concern is my ipod, which seemed like a reasonable thing to bring on a short mountain biking excursion on a brilliantly warm and sunny day. But of course this life cannot (nor do I wish it to) be as simple as a short bike ride on a sunny day and so, after a brief respite under a pitifully stunted poplar, I pushed on, up the muddy and boulder-strewn ramp dripping with cooling rain and breathing heavily.