Went on a couple of hikes yesterday. The temperature was in the 80s and the humidity was slightly lower than normal. The first hike was with a group from Big College town - a group that I never been with before, mostly in their 50s. A website for a bookstore in Big College Town indicates that there are about 13 professional novelists in town, and by coincidence two of them were on the hike. They both wrote children's books. One of the two had a book that had sold over half a million copies, and she was a bit more talkative. She said that even though she had written twenty books, writing was extremely difficult for her, and that she wrote very slowly. She said persistance was her best trait. I gave her my schtick about the book from the court house I reviewed a few weeks ago, but it didn't strike her funny bone.

The trail was nothing special, but we got slightly lost at one point, and the conversation turned to which of us seven hikers would we have to eat first. They decided that since I was the youngest and had a bit of meat on me, they would cook me first. It's nice to know that I have some at potential value to someone.

Since the day was so beautiful, I went on a second hike, or I should say that I had planned on going on the second hike beforehand and added the first hike. The second one was to the hills to the east side of the city I work in. There was a festival going on in a park near the river where they were lunching giant balloons (the type with passengers), and we hiked up a steep slope to get a good view. It was a serious cardio workout.

A bit of voyeuristic indulugence on the second hike was watching the slowly unfolding relationship between Kevin and Bev. Kevin is swarthy and very overweight. Underneath his fat though he is very physically fit. He is also a very likeable person with natural leadership qualities. From what I understand he had a disability that kept him from being physically active for about two decades, and since he got back on his feet he's been making up for lost time, outdoors doing something every day. Bev is a drop dead gorgeous woman in her mid 40s. She is one of those people that doesn't have to work at it. She just has muscle tone in the right places and curves to go with it. She and Kevin have been slowly gravitating towards each other over the past year. It's one of those close friendships that you can see has the potential to develop into something more. They are always sitting next to each other and talking. I'm pretty sure the relationship is still platonic, but honestly I think it is just a matter of time. I'm sort of jealous, but my interest in Bev is purely physical, probably the same as about every unattached male that sees Bev, while she and Kevin seem to connect on a personal level that I don't think I would, so more power to them.