Thanks to all who gave me a great birthday; it was wonderful to see and hear from everyone.

Yesterday my Friend and I went for a hike at Eno River. She recently finished her 1st year of law school, which required taking big tests called finals. Tests are questions you ask people to make sure they’re listening.
Where did I go yesterday?
That was a test.
Finals can be very stressful, but fortunately for both of us, I wasn’t very tense during this period, so I acted as a sort of stress sieve. Being a stress sieve is easy. It involves listening, drinking beer sometimes, watching the History Channel, and smooching. These are all things I like, and were made better because I like my friend more than I like most other people. But now that finals are over, we’ve been seeing more of the outside, which we both like. That’s what I’m going to talk about now.
My favorite entrance to the park is off Pleasant Green Rd*, and earns this fine distinction due to its moderately variable terrain, opportunities for swimming, and wildlife that’s new and exciting to a Midwestern ex-pat.
As we began our hike, the weather was looking a little ominous, but the Piedmont has been in a drought, so I was excited for Thirsty Earth. First we took a side trail, purposely ignoring an imposing saw-horse imploring travelers to stay left. As it turned out, the horse for saws knew what it was talking about, for down the path were two large snakes; one had its butt hanging out between the bark and meat of a downed tree, and the other one was a wise-ass, hiding in the leaves. My Friend grabbed my shoulder, and I thought she was pulling me back to safety, but she was actually using me as a human shield. I was OK with that.
Barely surviving our brush with the underworld, we backtracked to the official trail, which led to a small suspension bridge slung over a tributary. Or perhaps it’s the Eno itself. Eno is a rather humble river. It’s also the name of a bakery in Stillwater, MN. By the time we reached the bridge, it had begun to rain a little harder, so one of us put on a rain coat that made them look short and funny. The other one was wearing a pair of my Friend’s small running shorts. That second person was me. I don’t think much of gender roles, though I’m happy for the parts I have.
As it became stormier, electrons in the sky got really psyched to get from the sky to the ground, and the suspension bridge looked like a fairly good route, so we refrained from offering them a byway. After all the electrons fell in other places, we tried to crash the bridge by jumping on it and swaying it. There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where our hero is on a footbridge connecting two sides of an abyssal gorge, and the ropes are being vigorously cut by a mean person. However, the director chose to focus on the alligators chomping in the stream 200ft below, rather than the obviously fatal fall. We thought this was funny, so we mocked George Lucas. Also Jar Jar Binks.
We were planning on continuing our hike into the forest, but a passing couple** warned us that another big storm was coming. Two storms in a row seemed a little strange, but we took their advice and hoofed it back to the nature center, where a pleasant covered porch offered a safe foot-port from which to view the land-tempest.
Somewhere far overhead, little balls of ice were forming and tried to fall. But they kept getting blown upward where they got even bigger. Eventually they were like tiny round glaciers and had to fall either on our porch or on a Russian family in the woods. After the ice-deluge passed, leaving some areas of the ground looking snow-covered, elephant-sized wisps of fog emerged from the forest and slid by at elephant walking pace. The Russian family emerged from the haze, rubbing their heads, in spirits ranging from mischievously pleased to tearful. We helped dry the tearful one’s PDA.

*http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=Pleasant+Green+Rd,+Durham,+NC
** The traditional, sacred definition of “Couple”: A gathering of two people who art near enough to each other to be thought to be in company, and are recognized to be in such company in the eyes of the Almighty, whose Divine Will is in concord with that of the ruling party