Backtrack

Of course there are worse things than backtracking along a route you’ve travelled earlier— global climate change, child abuse, country rock, getting hit by a bus—and since, as the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, famously reminds us, you can never step into the same river twice, therefore, there really is no backtracking, (it’s always forward-tracking even if you’re revisiting the same path); it really is silly to complain about instances of the dreaded “out and back” that legendary Point83 wayfarer, the sorely-missed Joeball, himself, usually made it a point to eschew; moreover, when the route is plotted out, more or less, by another legendary wayfarer, you probably should just embrace the direction whatever it is without being grumpy, even in jest.

However.

You can’t deny that once you’ve ridden by or past somewhere that it’s even more delightful to find a different way onward, especially if the way there affords you a spectacular view of the handiwork of the simulation designers, who, once again, here in final throes of summer, are pulling out all the stops to make things so very pleasing to the eye, that you can’t help thinking they’ve gone a bit overboard once more with the lavender mountain, the perfect crescent moon, and all ferry boats on the water just for show.

A perfectly-timed timed flat gives you something to do while drinking beer and chatting at the well-lighted park structure beneath the technological marvel that spans our fair city’s industrial artery and since the time spent and intoxicants ingested mean that your mind is no longer in the same place as it was an hour or so earlier, the way back is no longer the way there after all.

Which just goes to show that no matter how many times you do the same thing, it’s never the same.  Like those indigenous faces projected on the city park leaves, a slight breath of wind, a single fallen leaf, and it’s all brand new.