No longer lost, again

Following on yesterday's cow-petting success, when I woke up today, I decided that this was the day I was going to make it to the elusive river that somehow evaded me last Thursday. My saga began with Shamus reminding me of the correct direction and Lilliput telling me that if I see a Dairy Queen on the way then I'm going the right way and if I cross a river, then I've missed it. In this way it really was like a mystical quest, because there were challenges and obstacles along the way, like not forgoing my river trip for a delicious Blizzard. But I made it, reaffirming my recent blog theme of "If at first you don't succeed, try again". Apparently it works both with scary cows and missing rivers. I suspect that you don't believe that I made it, based on my track record, but here is evidence.
Note the water, and the bike helmet, and the horrible helmet hair. That's right, I did not fake this. I actually found a river.

Once I got there, it wasn't quite what I built it up to me. Don't get me wrong, I mean, the river was nice, but I was somehow expecting more at this point, like mystical fairy ferry boats to take me to the land of gumdrops and infinite bubble wrap on the other side. There were few of these, so, I just biked along, singing "Just around the river bend" and smiling at strangers who did not seem to have the same trouble I do finding rivers. Then I remembered that my brother had told me there was a Heron preserve down the river path, and I had a new goal: to see the Heron preserve. I biked and I biked, and just when I thought all was lost I saw it. And it said no bikes allowed. So, I decided to just keep going, and realized with excitement that there was a Heron trail, which only seemed to discourage motorized vehicles. So, I started along it and quickly found this:
Disappointing. Except, now I have a new dream, and that is to complete the Heron Loop Trail before I die. I didn't say it was a good dream, just a new one.

Eventually, I reached what seemed like the end of my riverside bike trail and decided to head back. I decided to take a slightly different path, which I expected would keep me near the riverbed. Instead I ended up here:
I hope that having seen this, you have the proper respect for the fact that I found water at all, given my "special" sense of direction. You can't see it in this picture, unless you are superman, but there is a person in the gravel pit to the right. He seemed to be dancing, or exercising. Either way, I couldn't figure out why one would specifically come to a gravel pit on a random path to do either. But then I thought, maybe, just maybe, he'd been path dancing and then suddenly realized he really needed to gravel pit dance. I wanted to make friends at this point, but I think my multiple attempts to get a picture of him dancing didn't win his affection, so I just kept biking.

As I biked, I got introspective (or delirious, it's sometimes hard to tell when one's had too much sun and not enough food/water) and thought about how the best part of being someone who has the ability to get lost even on linear trails is that I know I've always found my way home eventually. This might not seem like a positive part of getting lost easily as much as a neutral thing, but it's actually good because it works well as a metaphor for life. And everyone knows that metaphors rarely lie. I mean, with the obvious exceptions, like when they trick you into thinking you're on fire while dancing or that various household appliances can purr and therefore may actually be cats. I think I was getting to a deep thought about life, but now I'm just feeling betrayed by all the horrible lying metaphors that have hurt me over the years. You'll have to wait for another post to hear my thoughts on river finding as metaphor.