Monday, October 13, 2008

I Can't Get Lost Even When I Try

On Saturday night, my wife and I met up with two other couples and went to the maize maze. For those of you in Albuquerque, the maze is just past Montano Bridge. We brought three flashlights for the six of us and were prepared to tackle the maze and come out victorious. Before entering the maze, we passed a group of three people who told us, "You're going to get so lost." Off in the distance, we heard screams coming from the maze. This looked promising. I was in a walking mood and was perfectly fine with being lost for a good two or three hours. Also, it wasn't very cold outside and the moon was bright. We could have probably done the maze even without flash lights. We were ready.
There was two different paths you could take. One path was short (about a mile) and the other one was long (2.3 miles). We weren't scared so we decided to take the long one. However, there was a problem. The weather had been really nasty all day, windy and rainy, and we realized this as soon as we stepped inside the maze. The ground was extremely muddy because the corn stalks are so tall that it blocked the sunlight from getting in and drying up the moisture. This was something that none of us were prepared for and we almost immediately resigned ourselves to the fact that our shoes would be really muddy and we couldn't do anything about it.
After about five minutes of walking through the maze, we came to a sign that told us that we had reached the end of the maze. How was that possible? We had only come to about 2 different forks in the road. The sign also posed a question and based on the correct answer, it pointed us on the correct path that led us out of the maze or for the wrong path, it would lead us astray. The question was "Did You Have Fun?" and "Yes" pointed one way and "No" pointed the other. It should also be noted that the correct path was the way we had just come, which all of us decided was a bit strange. Since we had only been there about 5 minutes and having paid the high price of $8 a person for admission, we decided to try to get lost again. We took the wrong path and set out again. We joked that it would be funny if the correct answer to the question was "No" and were actually on the right path instead of the wrong one. A few times, we would see people hiding in the corn waiting to jump out and scare us but we always saw them and pointed our flashlights at them before they could do so.
After about another 5 minutes, we came to the same sign again. Since we had only been there about 10 minutes at this point, we again took the wrong path hoping to get lost again. It was around this time that we contemplated stealing some corn. We decided that it would be really gross to eat and really stupid to keep as a souvenir so none of us did. After about 10 minutes this time, we arrived at a path that led out of the maze. We were frustrated. No matter how many times we tried, we just couldn't get lost in the maze. We went back the way we came and tried for the fourth time to get lost.
After about another 10 minutes, we arrived on the same path that took us out of the maze. We finally decided to give up. We had been there for about 30 minutes and managed to defeat the maze 4 times. We had a map that was given to us at admission, but nobody looked at it except Adam who was determined to find out where we were all the time. I told him that a map was useless if you didn't know where you were. He said he did know where we were, even though he didn't.
I still don't know what happened. My opinion is that the workers of the maze told us to enter where the exit was since we came to that first sign and it pointed us back the way we came. We really never even put much thought into which path we should take. Most of the time, someone would just say, "I feel like going left" or "This way looks promising" or "We went right last time so lets go left now" as if that was a perfectly logical response in that situation. But, all in all, we still had fun and were glad we got to enjoy each others company. I still wish we had had a more frustrating (and therefore more memorable) adventure though. I find that the memories that are best in life are the ones that you laugh at because whatever situation you were in at the time was so horrible. Maybe next time I can have a more negative (so its more positive) experience.

3 comments:

Amber said...

it sounds like fun - I've always wanted to try that - sorry you didn't get really lost - there's always next year though! :)

Nene said...

The problem is that you guys are all too smart. Next time you need to take somebody who is an airhead and just have them lead you.

Stacy said...

I still have a good time! We will have to try it again sometime...and like your mom said, take someone who has no idea what they are doing.