Mark My Words: A Slippery Venture

Traveling can be a painful adventure. Sometimes that pain is in my rear, when there are rock-hard airplane cushions in coach. But sometimes that pain is in every part of my body, when I allow a 40-year-old to pat me down—often with a strange grace—as I nudge through security.

If I could travel, I would—to see new places, experience new things and meet new women, who hopefully want to ease that pain of travel, or at least frisk me.

You can travel near and travel far. Peru has the Andes, Brazil has the Amazon, and Los Altos has murky creeks. But a murky creek is no adventure—it is seemingly endless, like a plane flight where all you have to entertain yourself is yourself. And trying to find the end of a creek is hopeless, as hopeless as trying to take the SAT in blood.

But because I would never do it, I had to do it anyway. Two weeks ago, I grabbed a friend and tried to follow a creek until it ended.

We didn’t strap on hiking boots or read up on Native American hunting practices. We just found a creek, climbed through some brush and began our travels.

So there I was, my slip-on Vans fondued in creek mud, grasping to every branch I could so I wouldn’t fall into the frightening three-inch deep stream. After we rounded the first turn, we found ourselves in a precarious position: there was no more room to walk along our side of the creek.

We could swim, but we weren’t tadpole size. We could test our luck and cross through the middle over to the other side, but we had always lost that bet in Oregon Trail. So we found ourselves perched on an island of rocks, petrified in fear of a stream that was shorter than a Big Gulp.

I didn’t expect to find anything noteworthy (babes don’t hang out in creeks), but I was wrong. We found strange fruit: a green berry shaped like a cherry, which my friend said tasted like a mini-apple (or maybe just an unripe cherry). We found strange creatures: godly insects that could walk on water. I was tempted to renounce my faith, kill an insect and use it as a medallion.

My friend and I sat there, our mission a total failure. We heard the current of the creek singing from a new mouth we could not find. And it was then that we realized it.

You don’t have to get frisked or fly for hours watching crappy movies to find a new experience. Though we may get bored of our current settings, adventure is all around us. Los Altos is not a theme park, but, even if you don’t find the end of the creek, it can take you on a wild ride.

Okay, so meeting new women would have been nice, and while my friend and I had to settle for new bugs and fruit (close enough, am I right?), we found an adventure nonetheless. There was terror, and there was triumph, as eventually our shoes dried out.

So girls, if you want an adventure next time, just ask me. I don’t promise romance, but I do know that your clothes will get wet.