A hazy shade of single track

I was out the door and on the road by 5:30am, and as the 4-Runner’s tires rhythmically hummed down the highway I tried in vane to shake the cobwebs from the night before and wondered what was driving my inability to wake up for the morning commute downtown.

Just as I hit the interchange from I-64 to I-95 the unmistakable thumping of Peter Criss’drum beats began resonating in the speakers and the volume knob immediately got dumped to the right.

“I love it loud” by KISS and with it came a flood of imaginary coolness that I couldn’t possibly ever hope to achieve, yet while in the throngs of the moment, I was indeed transformed into one cool mofo.



I parked inside of the depressingly drab gray deck at work and its empty walls echoed as I rolled down the ramp to the street below.

After a few blocks of asphalt and concrete I was coasting down hill on 2nd Street to pick up the trails off of Tredegar, and as I lined up to slip down the grass hill a female runner who was moving in the opposite direction muttered what I believe was the phrase “Hoo-hah” as we passed.

It was then that the morning haze gave way to a much larger intramural group of exercise enthusiast as they “Hoo-hah’ed” along the way.

I managed to slide by the masses and across the Belle Isle foot bridge so that I could pick up Buttermilk trail and do a loop back to North bank.

The bike squeezed down the narrow path adjacent to the CSX fence and I came in contact with a young guy at the base of the concrete stairwell who was clearly out of sorts as he stared blankly at the graffiti laden walls of the stairs.

“Zombies” I thought, as I continued down the gravel road.

I drifted deeper down Buttermilk as the canopy of trees filtered slivers of morning light onto the trail casting strange obscure shadows on the roots and rocks.

Any hopes I had of making the loop clean dissolved as I made repeated errors on sections that I simply refused to commit to.

The trails at JRPS are something to see if you have never bothered to wander downtown around the river, and the trail crews have done and continue to do some amazing things with the trail system.




North bank dumped me out under the Lee Bridge and I made the climb back to work amongst the droves of people slowly meandering along the way in traffic