Startup Fiance

After an excruciatingly long day at work, I went for a fitness walk with a friend at Miramar Lake. I was pretty excited to start our new workout regime, and this was going to be our first experience at Miramar Lake. We arrived at approximately 5:25 pm to find it was just as it had been described – the location was easy to find, there was ample parking, we had a great view of Scripps Ranch and its million + dollar homes, and there was a nicely paved track around the entire lake. Armed with my water bottle and car keys, we started the trek around the lake, both of us armed with enough conversation to span a 100 mile hike, which, little did we know, would turn out to be a very good thing.

One side of the lake is surrounded by fencing, which we soon found out was because it is used as a reservoir for the neighboring communities. We started our walking adventure on this side of the lake, and while the water views were sparse, it provided an amazing viewpoint of the valley below. Within the first 15 minutes of our walk we covered almost 2 miles, and apparently were a bit too busy patting ourselves on the back for a job well done to notice the length of trail that lay ahead or ominous mile markers with pretty high numbers on the reverse side.

At first we found it amusing that the trail seemed to be an optical illusion; the winding nature made it seem as though you would be a lot farther along then was actually physically possible. We also were joking about the number and appearance of the many port-a-potties along the way, but I now realize that they must have been put there for novices like ourselves that mistakenly thought they would be able to hold a call of nature until the main restrooms at the park entrance. It was at about mile three, when we saw the vomit-worthy cockroach meandering along the path, when we really started to feel the burn and the sun started to set.

It was also at this time when the freaks started to come out. I am not sure if we just started to notice them more because of our fear of getting locked in the park in the darkness, but regardless, some very strange characters were making their way around the watery landscape during the final 2 miles of our fateful trip. There was the bleach blond metal head riding around on a kid’s size bike checking us out every chance he got, the dad-like older man with shorts up his butt crack and lanky legs all over the place for all to see, also breaking his neck to check out the two night-blind walkers, and the numerous couples walking hand-in-hand towards us, away from the park entrance, most likely looking for a secluded area to hope they did get locked within the reservoir walls.

We eventually made it through the maze of brush and portable toilets before the moon reached its half way point in the sky, and I think it took us about an hour and a half to walk over 5 miles (not too bad for the first session). Somehow neither one of us fell into the orange, toxic runoff water (pretty sure the fancy people’s sewage somehow drains into the lake) or was eaten by an alligator. We knew the workout was a success when we tried to drive home and our legs were burning, throbbing, and not functioning – but do not tell that to the other freeway drivers. Pretty sure that next time we will do a little more reading before venturing off to an unknown recreation space an hour before sunset.