The Longest Left

We spent the 4th with Patrick's mom in Augusta, GA. Those of you in the know know that this was a difficult weekend for me, as are ALL weekends we spend in Augusta. So, needing a breath of fresh air Friday night, I decided to go for a walk. Now, I wasn't in my walking clothes, much less my walking shoes, but I really needed to go for a walk. I wasn't going to be gone long....just around her apartment complex.
I had just started walking when I heard Pete behind me, yelling for me to wait up. A bit perturbed at having to stop my walk, I was quickly mollified by the fact that he wanted to walk with me (Now's the time to stop and say, "Wow, it must've really been bad if Pete wanted to walk with you!").
So off we go, walking to one end of the complex, turn around and walk to the other end and around to the other side. In a wooded area at the end of the parking lot, I heard rushing water. Imagining a pretty stream running through there, I said, "Pete, wait...come look!" and I started making my way towards the sound. Pete, on the other hand, decided to walk further on and said, "Mom, look at this!" Walking over to where he was, I saw that he had happened upon a trail marked, "Stop. Maintenance Personnel Only Beyond This Point." Needing no further invitation, we promptly followed the trail to see where it would lead. It was nothing exciting, just another complex much like the one we had just left. So we walked around that complex and came to a road. Left? Right? By this time, we were both pretty turned around. Stopping to assess the situation, I asked Pete what he wanted to do. The choices running through my head were either turn around and try to find our way back, or take a right. In my mind, taking a right should've put us on the main road we're familiar with and back to Granny's in good time. Pete had other, more convincing, plans.
Now let me stop here and say that I have no idea what possessed me to trust Pete on this one. In my experience it has never been a good ending when we follow his ideas. But I suppose it's possible that I was so distracted by the stress back at Granny's that I was deranged enough to think this time would be different.
So Pete's plan was to go left. Left? Are you sure? "Trust me, Mom. I know where we are. We'll take a left here, then another left, another left, then we'll be back at Granny's." So left we go....then another left, another left, a right, another left, another left, another left, a right, and two more lefts.
It was wet out because it'd been raining, and many of the roads we travelled had no shoulder, which meant we were walking in muddy grass, and sometimes just plain mud. In fact, one such 6 lane road was undergoing road construction, and we ended up walking in single file, literally one foot in front of the other, hugging the barriers and praying we didn't fall backwards into traffic! Horns blaring as if to say, "You idiots, you're gonna get yourself killed out here!" Um yeah....I think I'd already figured that out, thanks. But walking it that way was better than Pete's idea of using the barriers as as a balance beam and trying to walk ON them! By this time I had at least regained SOME of my sanity back enough to know that THAT was not a great idea!
We finally made it back to Granny's an hour and 10 minutes, and 4 miles later. Our shoes were soaked and muddy, we had blisters on our feet, but we were laughing when we walked through the door! What a great walk that was!!!