I braved the unknown in the dark to find our meeting place for this mid-week night hike along Lady Bird Lake, starting on the East side. Although the organizer set the rendezvous point at a place that would be closed by the time we got there, in FRONT of that place was an international hostel that was well lit and accessible by GPS. Yet, I parked a block and a half away because I wasn’t sure of where the meeting place was. Fortunately, I saw a group of people standing to the side of the hostel, looking awkward, which emboldened me to ask if they were the meetup hiking group.
We were a small, eclectic group with whom I found common ground. I knew right off the back that one woman was from Egyptian descent. Another woman had just moved from NC, my home state. One guy had both a sales and engineering background; so of course I made my attempt to recruit him and planned to send him the official referral link. One woman and I had the same game plan of strategically parking a block and a half away where there were streetlights and no danger of parking violations.
Our representative dog was an energetic, year-old puppy, Roanoke. As much as I liked the calm look in his eyes, I didn’t want to get pounced upon without warning. People switched out walking him, although they had to brace themselves for the sudden bursts of running and pouncing.
Since we started on the East side, we ended at a prime location on the West side–the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue. One guy had never heard of him. We all encouraged him to look him up on YouTube. We double timed it back to starting point. It’s like we all had the same idea to wrap things up and go back home.