Territory Map in anticlimatic

I am reenacting my twelve year old life, it seems.

Not deliberately, just…incidentally perhaps. I wonder if it’s an indication that I have approximately 12 years to live, during which I am fated to regress ever backwards until I die in a diaper. It certainly seems plausible.

For the moment, however, I’m enjoying the 12 year old life. Fantasizing about sex I never have. Not worrying a whole lot about life or responsibilities. And cycling around at night to feel the wind on my face in the gentle and private cloak of nightfall. At first I had a specific loop I would do, but since then I have expanded the areas I’ll explore.

Initially I would leave my house and head out of my small residential neighborhood into the warehouse district- past old supply depots and warehouses that sit at odd angles due to having been constructed around rail tracks long removed. Some tracks remain, and I cross them shortly after the curved bridge over the Bear River, just before the Charity District. I call it the Red Light district, as there is a halfway house there- two, actually, one for men and one for women- and the ladies always has a large group of recently released women smoking on the porch and reacclimating themselves to seeing dweebs riding by on bicycles. Occasionally they wave. From there, it’s another older residential neighborhood with lots of old trees and gables and overgrown grass and the like. Then a small corner of businesses somewhat isolated in the middle of the residentials on the south side of town. It houses a liquor and general goods store, a resale shop, and a couple other storefronts that recycle every couple years. The liquor store and the resale store have been there as long as I can remember, however. Beyond that is my favorite street in town. Full of life. Working class neighborhood, somewhat packed to the gills. Men work on cars and motorcycles in their driveways and say hello. Women plant pots and boxes of herbs and flowers in the narrow spaces between their apartments and the sidewalk. Beyond that and it’s a long downhill chute out of town, across the river yet again, and then down a perfectly black paved path that follows the river all the way back to my house. The last stretch is a bit frightening, as it involves a lot of speed and an extreme lack of light- and on one occasion I found myself bearing down on a skunk that was just trying to get away- but it is a nice conclusion to the route.

That was my primary loop for quite a while, and is still my only decent reliable loop shaped loop- but as in all things, it can grow old, and I have been exploring other areas of town when the whim catches me.

Westward from my house, across the Great Highway (something I will only attempt well after dark when the streets have quieted), there is a large flat plane with a number of attractions including a cemetery and a fairground. North is the fairy kingdom of windy streets and old gingerbread cottages that some rich folks inhabit in the summer. East is downtown, which I have also loved exploring at night. There are more residentials beyond them, but the extreme hills there make it difficult to explore.

I might drive to the next town over, with my bike in the back of the truck, if I run out of territory here.