Carving the Swale

I squeezed through the loose garden gate and hit the sidewalk at full tilt, heading straight for the park. Down near the lower lawn sat a dry concrete stormwater ditch—a wide, curved U-bend sloping right toward the grass. Pure banked turn. I dropped straight into the trough. My sneaker soles bit into the textured cement as momentum pinned me high up the curved wall. A cluster of crisp maple leaves got sucked into my slipstream, swirling up in a tight vortex behind my heels. Right at the apex, I gave a sharp kick off the lip, caught clean air, and stuck a two-foot landing out on the turf.