Nice, if you're into that kind of thing...

Today I ran along Mystic Valley Parkway and the Mystic Lake. While the name suggest a place with princesses, dragons, faries and warlocks living in peaceful harmony and place where Elvis and a dinosaur can kick back and have a cocktail together, really it's just a lake with a road next to it. While yesterday I ran through my first drinking stomping ground, today I ran along a street that I mostly remember for being where I used to ride in Allie's car back and forth, up and down, up and down in smoking cigarettes and talking.

I took my camera along, and lo and behold, when I was looking for nice shots, I found them everywhere. My town really is pretty in that quaint New England kind of way. The vanity of it all still kind of tickles my gag reflex, though. Crazy I was so focused on the self-conscious landscaping of the town that I never stopped to appreciate it. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a photographer and I had the camera on the "portrait" setting instead of "landscape", so the pictures turned out a little blurry. We'll pretend like that's Dramatic Effect or something.

This is a faux water wheel stuck on the back of a building built circa 1996, but I think the original building that was there vaguely resembled something like this. Now it's a photography museum that no one goes to on a street everyone parks on, but even though it's that cheezy self-conscious kind of nostalgic architecture, it's nice from across the lake.

The duck pond, where I almost fell in yesterday. The water's pretty nasty, you wouldn't want to fall in, but it's nice to look at, I suppose. When I was little we used to make popcorn and come down here to feed the ducks. Ducks don't like popcorn, so I would throw it at their faces and say, "DUCKY, WHY WON'T YOU EAT MY POPCORN?" But then the Canada geese moved in and started pooping all over the place and now there's a $50 fine for feeding the birds.

Running around on dirt with green all around me I realized that it's been forever since I've run on anything that wasn't hard and black or grey. I was really getting to appreciate this.

This one I only took because I needed a breather. Maybe I'll swim here later in the week.

The most polluted river in New England. Every once in awhile it floods and horrible things happen to the buildings around it, but most of the time it's nice if you don't look too closely at the water.
Another excuse for a breather...

In other news, I went down to the basement yesterday to get the bike and bring it to the bike shop to get it fixed up and I realized... IT'S TOO BIG! I'm pretty freakishly small, see. I'm 5'2" with 90% of that being torso. Straddling this frame (probably a 55 or 53) I wouldn't even be able to reach the ground below me. There goes that plan. Anyone got a wicked tiny bike to lend to a wicked tiny girl? I promise I'll take good care of it!