Stand By Me 2: Starring Erin and Rhoda Demchak

When I would come home from college for the summer about ten plus years ago, my mom and I used to love to take walks together after supper. We would talk non-stop about everything while burning off those calories power walking- it was great! We would usually walk near our house in Durham or drive to Lisbon to walk on the bike path until they opened the bike path in Brunswick. How excited were we! On our first  trip to the bike path, we parked off a deserted road in Topsham (as we were instructed by the writeup in the paper) and walked to the entrance. Because it just opened, we weren't exactly sure where to go from where we parked the car to join the bike path, so we asked a random stranger who was getting into her car for directions. She told us to walk up a bit and when we saw a bridge, walk across it until we saw the signs for the path. Easy enough, we thought, as we made our way to the down the street. Except the bridge that we saw was not the bridge that we were instructed to take.

As we looked out into the distance, we saw a huge bridge over the Androscoggin River (that picture doesn't lie) that resembled the railroad tracks on Stand By Me. We looked at each other, looked at the sign that said 'No Trespassing,' looked at each other again puzzled and proceeded to walk across the bridge. I was terrified because we had to step carefully over these rickety pieces of wood with nothing to hold onto as the river rushed beneath us. I tried to hold it together though so my mom wouldn't get scared and thought, if everyone else who went to this bike path took this route, it must be okay. When we got to the other side (what seemed like an hour later) we saw the bike path below us and climbed down a steep hill to join it. A few people who were already on the path looked at us strangely but I thought nothing of it. I am not sure how or when we found out that we literally trespassed and definitely took the wrong bridge (the bridge that lady meant was the overpass equipped with a sidewalk) but I think my mom peed her pants laughing. What the hell were we thinking? And why did we think it was normal to walk across the railroad tracks?

To this day, I have no idea how we made this mistake and I have been to the Brunswick bike path a million times since that day and die laughing every time. I blame my mom...Who Else But Rhoda?