All who wander are not lost

I frittered away a couple of hours yesterday by, of all things, getting lost on my bicycle! You'd think that after all these years in Arlington, and decades in the Boston area, that would be impossible. But in fact I found a whole new area where I could pedal around for a dozen miles without finding anything familiar.

(I wasn't worried, because at any time I could have taken out my iPhone and called up a map showing where I was. But I sort of enjoyed the feeling of nosing around in new territory. It was cold and grey but not raining.)

I was out in Belmont, as it turns out. Eventually I came upon a citizen standing out painting his mailbox, and I asked him how to get to Arlington. He gave me a series of directions that might ultimately have led me to Connecticut, but along the way I came across a pristine new bike path blocked off by a length of yellow emergency tape – "UNDER CONSTRUCTION DO NOT ENTER" -- so of course I went down it, following my fading sense of direction, and wound up following some kids' trail through the woods, which miraculously came out at the Alewife T station, a mile from our house. Coming home that new route took me fourteen miles, rather than six, but it was good exercise.

Joe