Contra Costa Canal Trail, Contra Costa County

6/25/13

MY LAWLESS CHILDHOOD

My first run-in with the police took place on the CC Canal Trail. At the time (probably 1990ish), the portion of the trail I was on was still unpaved. It was a dirt trail paralleling the creek. My parents purchased their Walnut Creek home in 1989 and on the other side of our fence was the trail so I spent a lot of time on it. My sister and I used to ride our dirt bikes up and down a portion of the dirt trail, even into a part of the creek that had no way around it except through it. One day, WCPD showed up and crushed our fun after receiving a noise complaint. Yeah, guess our 50 cc bikes were too noisy for one of the stuffy neighbors.

It was a couple years later that they paved the trail. And they even added a bridge! The neighborhood kids used to gather and sit under it and hang out by the creekside. There had been a rope swing at this part of the trail but the entire branch of the large tree was cut, after removal of the rope failed time after time. I caught a lot of crawdads in the creek. We used bacon as bait and ate them back at home. Then I decided to keep one as a pet and subsequently stopped eating them. I probably wouldn't eat anything out of the creek now. There are still crawdads in it, and a turtle (not kidding) but the water is clouded and much more shallow.

I remember riding my bike to Sequoia Middle School with my sister. I can even remember when we were allowed to do this together, without mom. The trail ride was so cool! To us, it meant we were grown up. To Mom and Dad it probably meant a safe, direct path to school without a lot of time on the main road.

Some years later, I ran cross-country for Acalanes High and many afternoons in high school I spent running on the Canal Trail for practice. I would run until the trail intersected with Iron Horse and then turn around.

Finally, as an adult, the trail was a direct path from home to the bar. I could walk to Masse's Sports Bar in Walnut Creek in less than 20 minutes and stumble home without doing any driving.

My home now is only half a mile from the trail and I love running it up to the Open Space.  My parents still live in their home on the Canal Trail. I walked there from work yesterday (2.5 miles - 35 minutes) to borrow a car. It was really nice being on that portion of the trail and seeing changes to homes and the landscape. It'd been a few years since I'd walked that far on it. It was a great reminder to how much time I spent on the trail as a child. Glad I don't live all that far from it now!