the Way of the Turtle

1.5 Mile Walk at Buckingham Pond
Monday, October 3, 2011

By the time I got out of work it was getting too late to head out for a bike ride - I haven't been able to find the handlebar mount for my better light, so I'd rather not do an extended ride in the dark yet. Instead I drove over the Buckingham Pond to do a couple of loops around the park.

There was quite the mob of ducks by the parking lot... guess that's really not surprising, given how many ducklings I saw there this past summer. Spent a bit taking some pictures and then headed off around the pond. The section that runs right along the water clearly took some damage during the storms, and the city seems to have done a fairly slapdash job fixing it, so it's now a wide, ugly stretch of path. Other than that the park seems to have come through unscathed - not too surprising, considering that I never lost power during the storms. They must have a really effective drain system in place, because even with all the rain we've had over the last couple of weeks the water level was normal.

As I was finishing my first loop I stopped to take pictures of the ducks again and was surprised when a group of them started waddling off toward the parking lot... then another group followed... and another... I finally noticed Icould hear whistling, and saw someone crossing the road into the parking lot with a bag in one hand and a big group of duckie moochers heading toward him. Apparently he feeds them often enough that they recognize his whistle and go looking for a handout.

A couple of runners passed me as I was walking, including one fellow who was pushing a baby jogger - seemed a bit inconsiderate to be using one of those on the relatively narrow footpath, but maybe that's just me. I've thought about running laps there but in the end the lack of distance does me in, since I'd have to run around the pond eight times just to get six miles, and I suspect I'd quickly be bored out of my skull... don't know how track runners do it.

JMH