Lost in the shady grove

In the end, it was all because of Santhosh.

It was supposed to be a quality workout along the Powerline. Joe said "Run easy", up the Hill of Death and then we'll run the Powerline hard; 4 lengths. He then showed us a short-cut to get up the Hill of Death instead of going all the way to Sculpture Falls and come back. When I say showed, he told us where to cross the creek, and told us to follow the trail to run up the Hill of Death. Once we all gathered together, we crossed the creek, and at the very first fork in the road, we promptly did not care to realise it was a fork, left the good path, and comfortably ventured into uncharted territory. A few winding hills, add to it a couple of instinctively-wrong turns, and couple of clearings with multiple roads later, we were decidedly lost. Gaurav became Colombus, and Santhosh alternated between his evil laugh and the famed imitation of the grey wolf.

A lot of consternation and conversation later, including some merry moments (I climbed a tree to see if I could spot the direction of the Powerlines, and could only see the setting sun), we emerged at the other end of the Powerline having covered an easy extra 3 miles than what we had intended to cover. Later turned out, we had amidst all our following the not-taken-road, we had atleast covered the Shady Loop if not more, in making our way to the Moon Shadow. (Moon Shadow, incidentally is the top of the Powerline, so spake Joe's map.) The rest was tame, we did 3 lengths of the Powerline instead of 4, and came down the well trodden path back to Hill of Life and to a smiling Joe, who promptly said, "No matter how hard you try to mark any trail, you can never make them idiot-proof".

If you are wondering how it was all Santhosh's fault, it must have been, there is no other explanation.