Tina's Walking Journal 🌳🚶🏻♀️🏡
Archive
June & July 2025.
June 12-July 31 2025
Why haven't there been any updates here? Because it's 100°F in the shade and 75-90% relative humidity. If you walk outside in that, you turn into a greasy spot on the pavement. Every second I have to spend in the sun feels like I'm under a broiler, every light breeze feels like a blast-furnace, every trip outside is a new adventure in sweat. I just remembered what I liked about the summer: absolutely nothing.
June 11 2025
Days since military dictatorship: 49 (2 months, 13 days)
Temperature: 75°F
Condition: Clear
Wind: Very light from the south
Listening to: Red-winged blackbirds
It's summer. Enough said.
I'd hoped to get out here earlier, but I got involved in something and ended up leaving for the park at normal time.
Going to walk the opposite direction for a change. Not that this park is getting boring, I quite like it here. I would just like a bit of variety. But, not so much variety that I'm going to go all the way down to the lake again.
One of these days I'll master a feminine walking gait. I think I might be overselling this one right now.
Maybe walking against traffic in the road isn't the best idea, especially as any motorist passing by is going to have the sun in their eyes. Let's stand in the carpark here and have a look at what they're building down at the playground.
It looks like the playground that was here last year has been completely demolished. A similar structure has been built, but further away, about equidistant between the carpark and the road on the opposite side. It looks like swingset armatures have been built, but there are no swings here yet. Nothing else is particularly distinct. If they knew what was good for them, they'd build a restroom too. They could probably reach the plumbing from the last one that used to be here. But no. This city is so pants-shittingly afraid of homeless people being seen that they lock the restrooms that are still here from the inside. You have to clamber up on a ladder then open a hatch in the roof to unlock the bathroom. You know, so no homeless people can jimmy the lock open and, oh, I don't know, wash their hands or get shelter from the sun. But! Just in case they do somehow get in, "Don't worry about it, Mr. Councilman! We shut off the plumbing for 8 months out of the year! Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a bench at the lake that I have to weld a midpoint bar onto."
They don't even let people put hammocks up anymore because "How will our brave men and women in uniform be able to tell who's homeless and who isn't? We wouldn't want to harrass a homeowner or apartment renter, now would we? No hammocks allowed or a $500 fine."
On the bike trail now. I keep thinking about how I need to bring my bike over here and ride it. Can't do it until I get the front wheel fixed. There's a bike that's been tethered to the deck pylon downstairs at home that's had its front wheel removed. That's the nearest thing to bike theft we've ever had around here.
There's a woman walking her dog. Both look middle-aged. The dog looks like he'd prefer to be in front of an air conditioning vent. I don't blame him.
Bah! So many stupid little flying bugs! Except I don't have any bugspray anymore.
With the golf course there, the south wind can come right up and blow my hair around. There's no kind of wind-break until you get to Earliest Dead President street, 2 miles south.
I want to find a stick. A big stick I can use as a walking stick. There don't seem to be any. These are cottonwood trees, about 50 feet high. They make a nice canopy when the sun is high up in the sky, but they're worthless at this time of the morning.
Something in my eye. Eyebrow hair probably. There's a pill bug ambling across the pathway. Little land-dwelling crustacean, how I love you 🩷
Squirrel sitting on the path about 5 yards away, eating something. He doesn't seem to care that I'm standing here. I would imagine it's hard to be afraid of humans and live in a tree in the park. It's enough to make you move away. I wonder what the realty game is like in the squirrel world?
It's heating up really fast. It was still pretty cool when I got here, but now that the sun's up, we're on an upward curve with the temperature.
I just realised I haven't had any water yet today. Better start going back to the car in that case.
The remains of a squirrel that got torn apart by a bird of prey. Tail here, leg and foot there. Probably not an owl, they tend to be asleep while the squirrels are awake. Most likely a peregrine falcon.
I prefer to think of that squirrel going to necessary nutrition for another creature, rather than a Stephen King style expiration under a lawnmower. However, that also is possible. The grass appears to have been mowed recently.
This huge silver pickup truck has been sitting here with its engine running, completely idle, for the entire amount of time I've been out here. Is this man trying to waste his petrol?
Workmen are here now, working on the new playground. From this angle, it looks like it might have certain design elements from a handicapped-accessible playground I remember from Elk Park in the very late '90s. It looked like it had been built in the late '70s or early '80s. Anyway, they tore it down promptly in 2002 to build an extension to the carpark. It wouldn't surprise me at all if plans to move that playground to this park were already in motion and that motion was the same pace as the University of Queensland pitch-drop experiment. It's possible this new playground is that old playground's intended replacement. You know, now that everyone grew up and everything. Still, I'm talking like there aren't still kids in wheelchairs and rollators and stuff who would like to play on a playground. There are, and I'm sure they'll appreciate it when it's done. If it ever gets done.
Sun in my eyes. Can't look up. Anthills, so many of them. So many little ants marching back and forth with granules of dirt to build these things.
Now back in the car. I'm going to undo my shirt buttons, lift up my bra, and have the air conditioning cool my chest down now. Because I can do that now. Even when the sedan could get me here, I couldn't use the air conditioning because it would make the car start juddering and shut off. The SUV though, the air works great. Yes, of course my door is shut, no one can see me in here.
June 9 2025
I took a walk at the park today, but I forgot to write about it.
June 8 2025
Doing another walk journal on my phone. 65°F, insanely humid. No detectible wind, but an extremely slight southwest breeze. 50 days since military dictatorship. Listening to OH, NO! IT'S DEVO (Devo, 1982 Warner). Cloudy.
After 2 days at the parks, I decided just to walk at home for a change. I just don't want to have anything to do with cars or driving for a while.
Nothing really interesting yet, just lots of birds.
This frat house got kicked out of the fraternity the spring before we moved here 1000 years ago. They got re-chartered in 2015. I don't think they bothered to redo the carpark in that amount of time because it's looking like an abandoned stripmall around here. Cracks in the pavement, weeds and grass shooting up out of them, real prestigious all right.
There's a car with a Washington state plate here. It has a couple of manga related stickers on the back passenger side window but i can't tell what they are, it's too faded.
It smells like mould under this tree.
There are signs placed in strategic locations on campus. They have the frame of campaign signs, but the election already happened.
"Your Journey Starts Here", "You Belong Here", "Welcome New [demonym]". Oh. It has to do with the summer quarter starting. Of course they're being welcoming to their new students-- they've already applied and have been accepted. If whoever made these signs had known about the Red Tape Runaround the admissions department gave me when I applied here, they would probably have done nothing but make the signs with a slightly guilty conscience.
I'm still kind of a wreck from yesterday, I don't want to go into that too much.
June 7 2025
Days since military dictatorship: 49 (2 months, 9 days)
Temperature: 65°F
Condition: Overcast
Wind: Very light from the west
Listening to: FREEDOM OF CHOICE (Devo, 1980 Warner)
The gates at the usual park were closed, so we're down here at the lake instead! I won't even try to guess when I was down here last. It had to have been pre-COVID.
I really hadn't intended to come down here at all. I'm dressed for the other park. I sure am glad I decided not to wear my pink trackpants today. Apart from being so far away from home that I'm out of my comfort zone, this area is composed near-completely of reasonably well-off conservatives. As opposed to the impoverished conservatives who live around my normal park. The problem is this park is more popular.
The birds are different down here. It must have something to do with the cool breeze that comes over the lake, or the berries that grow on the trees around here.
It smells different down here. It smells more like grass and less like lavender. There's no nearby milling plant to make the air smell like proofing yeast. The trees are mainly coniferous, so it smells ever so slightly of pine. Not enough to hit you in the face but just enough to make you go "Hmm, something smells familiar around here."
It felt really weird coming so far south in a car. I'd been wary of even driving myself to my own doctor's appointments south of Alphabetical Highway. But here, we're so far south, we ran out of letters and authors and Union generals. The road this park is accessed from is the only one named after a Confederate general in this entire state. Unless there's some mayor from antiquity with the same name, which is a distinct possibility.
That jogger had a crucifix screenprinted on his shirt. I'm reasonably sure he wasn't paying attention to my lesbian lanyard.
I remember this path up the hill here from 2016. Pokémon Go launch day. I walked up this hill in spite of the spiders, chiggers, and ticks to catch an Onix. They were having major server issues that day, but I managed to make a day of it. I had so very much hoped that Pokémon Go would change society. People would walk around with their backpacks full of supplies, having a great adventure catching Pokémon, taking their 3DSes with them, Streetpassing with people, taking a break at the fast-food place's dining room to have a snack and play the trading card game, not care about individual differences and only see other Pokémon trainers, giving each other found trinkets in exchange for winning against them, that sort of thing. Maybe that happened somewhere else. But not here.
Anyway, they've evened the path out a bit and widened it, so you don't have to trudge through tall grass quite as much.
There's a man in a canoe out there fishing. There's another man walking with his dog. This is truly the stuff that Americana paintings are made of.
I think I've worked out how to walk like a girl now. I suddenly remembered my mum's old friend from the late '90s, and she had a particular way of walking that I found annoying at the time, but as I think about it, I've seen other women of her build walk exactly this way. Walking more with the hips than the thighs. Men walk with their thighs, lifting them to lift their legs and take a step; but women seem to move their legs by oscillating their hips. Let's try it.
Oh shit, gamers, I think I've got it! Swivelling your hips back and forth causes your middle to turn as well, which lets you walk without bouncing too much. Just walking down the corridor at home and watching myself in the mirror I wouldn't have figure this out.
Since we're so far away from home and I'm in no danger of doxxing myself by posting these, I'm going to post these. Click on them to enlarge them.
June 5 2025
Days since military dictatorship: 47 (2 months, 1 week)
Temperature: 59°F
Condition: Cloudy
Wind: Nearly undetectable from some variable direction
Listening to: birds, oh so many birds
At the park again. It's a little surreal being back here after so long. It's been at least a year and a half since I've been here this early in the morning. I used to do it regularly until the sedan started making a new squealing noise. Apparently, carmakers do that intentionally so people can recognise when to replace the brake pads. Tell it to someone who can actually afford that.
I listened to Kraftwerk on the way here in the in-built CD player. It seems K fucktupled the bass multiplier without telling me and "Pocket Calculator" almost blew out the speakers. None of the buttons seem to take me anywhere to fix that.
Maintenance truck over at the building in the middle of the softball fields. It turns on and leaves when I turn my car off.
Only a couple of other cars here. It's interesting how Americans have to drive to take a walk. I guess I could have stayed at home and walked around the university again, but having a functional car again has made me a bit restless. I can go to parks again. Any park, anywhere. If I had the $45 they want for admission, I could even go to the state park in [REDACTED]. Walking there wouldn't be very interesting, though. It's a long, exposed bike trail that only goes by a couple stands of trees. Plus, it's summer. Everyone and their aunt is going to be there.
The outbound bus is waiting at the "Walmart stop" for a timepoint. I say "Walmart stop" because it's not actually on the Walmart property, it's at the base of the hill on the far end of the carpark. Anyone who takes this bus to Walmart has to walk up a steep hill for about 200 yards, and that's even before we consider walking around inside the store. There used to be a bus line that would go right up to the entrance, at least until late capitalism decided that disabled people can all fuck themselves.
I'm not feeling very good today. Physically, I'm fine. It has to do with the entry i made in my hidden diary page last night. R assured me it's not my fault, but I've been disappointed in the same way she was and I know how much it hurt to have what seemed like absolute perfection get yanked away again and you're right back where you started from. In R's case, that's quite literally nowhere at all. I'm out of ideas. I have no more advice to give. I'm worried.
I still don't know what this weird assemblage of bars is here for. They destroyed a flower garden to build this thing but it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. It's supposed to facilitate fitness stretching for people who jog and cycle, but I've only occasionally seen anyone interact with it. I can think of 23 things that would have been better to put there. "Useless assemblage of bars" isn't even on that list.
Once upon a time in 2018, I thought I would hike down the entire length of this rail-trail to watch the sun rise at the other end. I flaked out and only went as far as the overpass bridge about 500 yards from where I parked. I was so afraid of people lurking in the shadows along the side of the trail, just waiting for someone to walk by so they could jump out and cudgel them over the head that I just couldn't make myself do it. It's been a long fight, but I think I've finally gotten over my "imminent physical harm" paranoia. I'm not about to welcome it back just because I'm trans now.
My sock is falling down. Check that. My sock has fallen down. There's nowhere outside of the tall grass where I can lean to pull it back up either.
Passing a Benedictine monk on my drive around the park. Is that some kind of omen?
June 2 2025
Days since military dictatorship: 44 (2 months, 4 days)
Temperature: 64°F
Condition: Clear
Wind: Light from the south
Listening to: "Beat It" (Michael Jackson, from THRILLER, 1982 Epic)
I only felt the walk at the park in my feet, whereas I feel walks around the neighbourhood in my thighs. I said that. It's because the park is flat, except for one single solitary hill. The neighbourhood terrain undulates quite a lot.
The past couple times I've walked, I've made verbal journal entries at the same time, but today, it's time for the '80s again. Why not? We're in a similar economic crunch, similar gay and trans panic, and we have a similar dictatorial ruler as they had in the '80s. Reagan at least had the semblance of a politician.
I'm really falling behind on my walks. It's only going to get worse as we go into the summer. Low temps in the high 70s F, high temps in the 90s, humid enough to feel like you're walking through a wall of water. I've got to get used to it. And, like— I'll come back home pouring sweat regardless of the temperature. We proved that during the winter. I went out when it was 12F and came back sweating.
Something in my shoe. No, wait, something in my sock. This is fine, having to sit on the cement base of a carpark lamp and taking my shoe and my sock off.
I don't imagine this spike pole next to the berm is actually going to keep any unauthorised person out of the athletic field. I can imagine a particular sort of person, a cis male probably, seeing something like that and thinking "challenge accepted". If it weren't for this spike pole, you could use the berm as a balance beam and just jump down into the athletic field. This pole was probably put here hastily to prevent it, but in my experience, there is no obstruction that can't be circumvented with a little bit of work.
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