My Day as a Fugitive

WARNING: The following story recounts some very foolish actions. It may worry mothers...
So I needed to get to the bike shop, which is at 61st & Blackstone. I live at 59th and Blackstone, so I figured, yay, straight-shot. But no, there's a building in the way which re-routes you a block out of the way. Well, that's not that bad, really, except I was really curious to see if I could find a shortcut (I'm not sure if this was in the interest of efficiency or because I wanted to vary things a bit by not retracing the exact path I had taken to drop my bike off for repairs the day before...) So I decided to be adventurous and work my way around the side of the building where there is no sidewalk. Can I squeeze by it? Well, not officially, because the property butts up against the railroad tracks. Oh, alright then... I'm used to walking along the railroad tracks back home, so I scramble up the part of the nice stone boundary that has landslided and work my way up the steep incline of gravel. Nearing the top, I see the gleaming rails of the 3 or 4 heavily frequented tracks--Metra, the commuter rail, Amtrak, and the South Shore line to Indiana all pass by here on a given day. OK, so I'll stay off them at all costs and keep a lookout for loud rumblings in either direction. Eventually the incline is a bit too steep and I decide to carefully tiptoe along on the outer wooden trim of the rails, keeping very alert for said rumblings... Reaching the latitude of the bike store, I mush my way down the slope and find: hmm...a barbed wire fence keeping me from my destination. Well, let's see here. I could give up and turn back after all that fuss on the railroad tracks, OR I could use some more ingenuity from my youthful days in Globeville (plus the bold rebelliousness I have never seen much use for...) and find a place where the fence is loose enough to pull it out and crawl under it. Hmm...not here...not there....Here! I push my purse and sweater through ahead of me and set them on the stone ledge and voila! Through I go! Not bad! Now, perched atop the stone ledge with about a five-foot drop to the ground, which is littered with random piles of construction materials that don't seem to have an immediate purpose: scraps from roofing maybe, a few large concrete bricks...I seem to be in the back yard of a company who definitely wants to keep people OUT: facing me at a short distance across this rectangular concrete expanse is yet another barbed wire fence. Crap. I consider my options: Crawl back now? At this point I can see the sign on the bike store. So close! But I'm not sure that I'm trapped. Just out of sight there seems a slight possibility that there is a gate, accessible by a person, like myself, inside this little yard. Somewhere during these deliberations a man opens a door across the street (on the other side of the outermost barbed wire fence) and I duck (which is more aptly described as, I lay my body against the concrete wall I was already sitting on). If it hadn't occurred to me earlier that this is a perfect setting for some cheasy old action movie about a fugitive, the thought crossed my mind around this time, along with the sudden rush of fear-related adrenaline when I thought, "My phone isn't on silent...if it rings it will give me away!" Now the thing to remember in all this is that I had no intention of breaking and entering...and I didn't think I had any inert drive to push the limit, so my mood through all of this was more passive than you might imagine...like a curious dog who goes sniffing where its nose suggests there will be something interesting. So with a reasonable sense of fear from the guy who just exited the building and seems to have gotten in a car, but also thinking, hey, it'd be nice to have someone to shout to if I jump down, find myself caged, and have no other way out, I take a few moments of weighing how likely it is I will break my leg in jumping off the ledge I've been sitting on, the first fence to my back, and decide if I swing myself sideways, clutch on with my arms until my feet are closer to the ground, and then let go, there's not much risk. Bingo! Good plan. A quick jaunt over and--yup. The gate is locked. Huh. Any rational person could have told you to expect that. What well-run company would take the trouble to install a barbed wire fence along the street AND one along the railroad tracks where NO NORMAL PERSON WALKS and then leave a huge gate swinging open? Still, I couldn't overcome the hope that I had found a...well I can't very well call it a "short cut"... but an alternative route to the bike store. Hokay. So. Umm....what now? Can I get back the way I came? First problem to tackle: climbing up that five-foot conrete wall. Aha! Think like Mario...or...one of those video game characters that jumps on stuff...use the miscellaneous piles of stuff to leverage your way up! Oh, but I have to be sure to get up near a spot where the fence has enough give for me to get back under unpoked by the bent prongs at the end of the chainlink...(I can't just hoist myself up and ooch my way along the wall because there are huge bushy plants sticky out of the fence from the railroad side, obstructing any lateral progress I might try to make...) OK, found a pile, got a grip, up, excellent. Under. Phew. Up the slope. Whee. Hmm, that looks an awful lot like a train. No problem, just a little butt-sliding down the hill, a casual sit to wait as it passes...do-dee-do. Bye, Mr. Train! Back up to level footing at train level, quickly, quickly...(though carefully, of course ;-) Yay there's the landslidey pile I came from--the end of that dreaded fence!! Back on grass!! I'm alive!!!
Hmm...stick to streets from now on...a biker wouldn't do such dreadfully silly things anyway...(she certainly wouldn't be able to fit her bike under any fences!)

The moral I've chosen to take from all this (one could make a case for many): The pursuit of adventure may be disguised as the pursuit of efficiency, but in the end it's all just vain pursuit.