While I was back in Seattle, I watched the t.v. show America's Got Talent, a live talent competition to find the next headline act. There were many acts that I enjoyed, but one that seemed permanently engrained in my mind, not because it was particularly good, (because it wasn't) but because it was catchy. You probably don't care at all about this information, but it is essential in fully appreciating the story that follows. The following video is the act that will forever live in my mind. I suggest starting at 0:45, as the beginning is not relevant to the story.
Do you now have the song's chorus stuck in your head yet? Good. If not, repeat the video until you can't escape the sound of the bearded children singing "That's probably a bad idea". Throughout the following story, there will be several instances where this phrase will come into play. I encourage you to repeat it with me in the style of the bearded children each time that it appears.
A few months ago while I was searching the internet, most likely for something completely unrelated, I found a photo of a castle. I happen to have a special fondness for castles, especially those with round towers, and when I first saw the picture of the Castillo de Butrón, I knew I had to visit it. As I began to look into how to get there, I realized that it was going to be more difficult than I had originally anticipated, because there was no transportation directly to the castle.
After
The adventure began mid-morning, which was significantly later than I had hoped because I had overslept my alarm by about two hours. After an interesting train ride that left me slightly uncomfortable, I took a 40 minute ride on the metro to where I needed to catch the bus. Upon exiting the metro, I promptly turned and walked in the opposite direction of the bus stop (I never said I had a good sense of direction), and arrived at what I thought was the correct stop. Without any signs stating which buses used that stop, I was unsure that I was in the right place. As the bus only came once an hour and there were about 10 minutes until the next departure, I began to get nervous and did what any reasonable person would do at this point, I went to the tourist office where I was told that the correct stop was just on the other side of the metro station. Perfect. I crossed the bridge over the tracks and made it with plenty of time to spare.
Two and a half hours after leaving my house, I stepped off the bus onto the side of the highway and began walking up the road to my right. The fields and spacing of the houses looked like what I had seen on Google Maps, so I was fairly certain that I was headed in the right direction. I had been walking for about five minutes when I noticed some cows in a field. I have always liked taking pictures of the local wildlife, so these cows were no exception. As soon as I got close enough to get a decent picture, the cows sensed that I was there and stopped eating to stare at me. I'm used to being stared at, as tall blonde Americans aren't exactly commonplace here, but being stared at by these cows was more unnerving than being stared at by almost any person. Maybe it was their size, or the fact that the only thing keeping them from me was a small rope that they could probably step over if they wanted to, but I felt very out of place and thought of my excursion, "That's probably a bad idea". As am standing in the middle of the road like a typical tourist taking pictures of cows and contemplating running in the opposite direction, two joggers passed me and the cows didn't even flinch. Not one bit. Apparently these were intelligent cows that could tell difference between someone who belonged in the area and a tourist.
Since I had already disturbed the cows' late morning snack, I decided there was no harm in continuing my journey. I continued up the road, remembering to keep to the right every time it split. A bit farther down the road, I spied some grapevines. As I am from the city, I had never seen real grapevines before, so of course I stopped to take a picture. In the middle of my picture taking, I managed to alarm a small dog tied to a house next to the road. Upon seeing me, the dog decided that it was necessary to sound the alarm to every other dog within hearing distance. Now there were at least six (yes, I counted) dogs barking, their noise echoing throughout the entire valley. I quickened my pace up the road for fear that one of the dogs would escape and chase me down, all the while thinking to myself, "That's probably a bad idea". The paved road ended an a well-worn path began. Thinking that the map wouldn't show such great detail, I continued up the path where I entered into the cover of the trees. At this point, the path split into three, all going in more or less the same direction. I know what you're thinking; me walking into the woods by myself with my sense of direction, "That's probably a bad idea". I had the same thought, but out of sheer determination and curiosity, I continued down the leftmost path. That is, until, just a few feet down the path, I ran into my arch nemesis. Literally.
At the top of the list of things that will hinder my accomplishing any task are spiders. I detest and fear them. I have been known to take the entire contents of my bed to another room in the house to sleep because I saw a spider in my bedroom and it hid before I could get someone to kill it for me. As I passed along a fence I felt a sticky thread of the web of doom on my arm. Thinking I had just grazed it with my arm I pulled it off and took another step. When I looked down, I realized that I didn't just graze it with my arm, I had walked through the entire giant spider web and the majority of it was stuck to my pants just above my knee, dead fly and all. At this point, I started panicking, wondering where the actual spider could be. I promptly began a rendition of the I-just-walked-into-a-spider-web-get-it-off-me dance. You know the one. The one that looks like a high speed version of the Hokey-Pokey on drugs. Yes, that one. Noticing that the dead fly was still attached to my knee, I tried to lift it off with a pencil from my bag. I got rid of the fly, and should probably get rid of the pencil as well, as it is still covered with the web of doom. I took the spider web as a sign that going down that path was "probably a bad idea" and decided to turn around, hoping the spider wasn't following.
I could have continued down one of the other paths (that's probably a bad idea), but afraid of running into more of my eight-legged "friends", I went back the way I came, knowing that I could take the highway if I still wanted to go to the castle. I walked quickly past the barking dogs and back towards the field with the cows. As I approached, the cows began to moo loudly, which worried me. After I had passed them, the farmer let his dogs out and they began to follow me down the road. I did not want to add dogs to the list of animals that were potentially following me so I walked faster and didn't look back. When I arrived at the bus stop, I debated walking alongside the highway, but as the clouds had darkened significantly and I wasn't carrying a jacket, I decided to wait for the next bus back to town. While waiting, a man driving a car entered the highway from the side street next to the bus stop and offered me a ride. I graciously turned him down, remembering all of the advice I had heard as a child and thinking, "That's probably a bad idea".
When I got back home, I looked at the map to see if the path would have taken me in the right direction, and as it turns out, it wouldn't have. I should have continued down a road that looked like a private driveway, instead of taking the road that passed the barking dogs. The next time I attempt this excursion, and there will be a next time, I will walk along the highway because, although there is greater danger from the passing vehicles, there should be no spider webs to stand in my way.
