Putting my Boots Back On

This indian summer is intoxicating.

It made me forsake my beloved Grace Street for a walk around Belle Isle.

It was a thoroughly unoriginal idea, judging by all the people already there.

My first laugh came courtesy of the couple in front of me as we came off the pedestrian bridge.

"We didn't die. The bridge didn't collapse," the smiling man said reassuringly to his clearly anxious partner.

"We don't know that!" she shrieked. "We still have to get back across it. We'll be safe when we're in the car again!"

Poor thing.

As I headed around the island, I stopped to walk down to the rocks to feel the water temperature.

Cold with a capital "C."

Once I got away from the water, I rounded a bend to find a guy with a camera and a girl pulling up her flounced skirt to put her boots back on.

"There's your movie star turn for the day," he told her as she finished putting herself back together.

When I finished my my first two-mile lap around the island, I took a minute to go check out the new (to me anyway) bike skills area, nicely planted with blooming rosebushes at the entrance.

Lots of people were over there testing the laws of gravity and their bodies' abilities to withstand punishment.

It was on my second trek around the island that a guy on a mountain bike passed me wearing the shirt of the day.

"The liver is evil and must be punished."

No matter what he's guilty of, at least he was out riding by early afternoon, so I prefer not to judge.

After such a fine walk to start the afternoon, I had no intention of spending the rest of it inside.

Instead, I swung by Cameron's for a dozen crabs.

I'd have gotten them from my boys down on Leigh Street except they didn't have the stand set up today.

With the sports and business sections of the Sunday Washington Post, a mallet and beverages, I set out in search of a scenic place worthy of a mid-day crab feast in November.

Osborn Landing Park in the east end won out.

Under a big tree near the water's edge, I set up my crab feast on a picnic table behind the dock.

A couple walked toward the dock, hand in hand, fishing poles in their other hands.

Laughter announced a canopied pontoon boat as it lazed slowly by.

With power boats passing by endlessly, some polite enough to slow down so as not to create a wake and others going so fast the front of the boat was pointing skyward, I worked my way through my bag o' crustaceans.

They weren't big, but most were meaty and as an excellent picker (did I mention my hands were once used in a crab-picking video?) who got the whole dozen for herself, they sure tasted good to me.

I will say it was the first time I found myself spitting shell fragments into a carpet of fallen leaves.

Don't get me wrong. I know there's something weird about that.

But, man, eating crabs waterside on a 75-degree November day is a singular pleasure.

Aren't things like that the random pleasures of the living in the south?

Alrighty then. There's my cheerleader turn for the day.