cunundrum at the log slide

Tortellini with pesto, feta, olives, tomatoes; broccoli with lemon; water

I'm at the amusement park/terrarium/zoo place (I've dreamed of this place before). I get on the log ride, but it's very different than when I rode it as a kid. I expect a very Uncle Cliffs rollercoaster experience, but the new park has changed it into a long cruise of a ride. We proceed low along the side of a very dry canyon, the ride track fenced in with chain link fence on both sides. When I was a kid, it was cool to take off articles of clothing and leave them, to be retrieved when you passed by again. I relive this and take off my Lonsdale and my Sambas, and drop them in a neat pile along the side. I realize only too late that the ride won't pass here again, and I'm fucked.

Once the ride is over, back at the octagonal room with the reptile tanks in the rooms, I try to decide what to do. I'd better just walk back up there and get my shit, cuz the park is closing soon. My friends and I try to get back there, but it's much much further than I thought. We're moving through this uppity neighborhood, and my instinct is to just go back in the yards and try to get up to where the track passes, but I also know that the place I dropped my jacket and shoes wasn't by these houses, so I hold off, trying to stay out of trouble. We do finally find a sort of concrete paved gully to get back up the side of the canyon, but we have to be careful, and I'm starting to lose my certainty about where I left the stuff to begin with.

I think we go back and actually get on the ride again, since it will take me inevitably to the place in any event. But now the fences to the sides of the track hold back angry dogs, big Rottweilers, and I'm less certain than ever. I think I try to explain my situation to a young woman who works there, telling her about the old days and how it was, but she seems unconvinced and I'm not certain if I can get my stuff back.