I've been blind before. Eye surgery has put my eyes out of commission for days at a time before, but I was younger then, always staying in the house, under the watchful eyes of parents. This time was more terrifying in some ways, and less so in others; while I had no parents to watch me, I was in the watchful hands of two of my closest friends (who I might add are college boys, and allow you to extrapolate what you will from that), and while I was ranging over a few square miles of space, I was within a town I thought I knew as well as my bedroom.

I started out in the park next to the backwoods. Tirius had just hiked here blind from my house (00:45), and Fettucini had gone to the 7-11 on the corner and back to my place (00:30), both snapping photos all the while. It was my time to be the fearless leader, to take this task on like any veteran player should and hit it full-force and for as long as possible.

Starting out slowly, we walked down the concrete path through the tamer bit of the backwoods, and entered a semi-gated community that I'd never been in before. Leave it to Tirius to find a place I didn't know. We walked about, passing parties and people walking dogs, cars jetting past all the while. At one point we passed a couple of guys on a porch, the smell of cigar smoke hanging heavy in the air (something robust), talking in gravely voices about something that sounded nefarious from the snatches of conversation I could hear. I'm not Ben Afleck though, so I wasn't about to go pretend to be Daredevil or anything.

We continued on until we apparently hit a gate of some sort. Tirius hadn't realized it was locked. His suggestion was that we scale it. My suggestion was that he kiss my blind ass.

Backtracking into the woods, hearing things rustle about, smelling the oak trees and mist all around us, we attempted to decide our next route. After getting us completely lost, Tirius again came up with a brilliant idea: let's cross the stream, because he thought he knew the way back that way.

I grabbed Fettucini's shoulder, and we set off, finally making it back to the playground, across a bit of runoff, and back onto the bridge. Thank goodness, something familiar.

We walked along, passing behind, then next to Walmart. As they started steering me away, concerned that I wouldn't want to encounter a public place, I told them that if I was doing this I was going to do it right.

We wandered about the store, things beeping all around, smells permeating the air, carts squeaking, food being around, cute girls that the others speculated on while I was merely interested in the smells and sounds around me. As a point of prodigiousness, we crossed through the baking isle, where I remembered I needed flour for Space Bakery. Tirius snapped up a bag and felt uncertain as to whether it was what I needed, so I felt it, and figured out that it was in fact the correct size.

Going up to check out was interesting, the lady running the register seemed exceedingly confused, but Fettucini, in classic style, managed to explain the oddity away as a sociology experiment. Trying to pay was indeed interesting, me having to use my dusty 10-key skills from high school keyboarding classes to punch in my pin whilst blind.

Part way through the sallying forth back to my house, cars trying to kill us all the while, the camera decided that it couldn't take me being blind any longer and died of it's own accord.

Pulling the blind-goggles off was an experience unto itself. Sight returned. Vividness was all around me. Everything had color, detail, and reality. May need to do it again some time. No pictures probably, but definitely experiencing blindness.