Getting to Know the Area

Today I found a new route for a dog walk, through what turned out to be one of Germantown's perhaps less desirable neighborhoods. The way I found the route was that I went to the web site for Montgomery County Parks, where they have this nifty tool that brings up interactive maps showing all the parks within a specified radius. So I found this park, and then I had lunch and took a look through the local weekly, which had a crime story warning people about strong-arm robberies in the exact neighborhood I intended to walk into. So I ran upstairs to our resident policeman, pleasant enough young feller, and asked him about the reports. He assured me that with the two dogs -- especially Daddy's German shepherd who is demented -- I would have no problems. So off we went. And even though it just looks like suburbia you could tell it was not a thriving area. Weird vibe. I don't think it was just word of the robberies either. But nothing untoward happened except that bopping along the sidewalk with the dogs I spotted, on the ground, under a tree, an enormous black vibrator. One of those lifelike ones with the bulgy veins. Just forgotten there, I dunno, maybe somebody's dog carried it out there, like a plastic bottle or a potato chip bag.

I'm really going to have to start taking my camera along on these expeditions.