(PICTURE: The master at work.)
For the last few miles of the hike, we trekked along a well defined dirt road. There was only way to go on the road which resulted in our group being spread out. I would guess that those in the front were maybe five minutes ahead of the people in the back. At some point I suggested that we should stop and wait for everyone to catch up. Frankly, I wasn't trying to be a good leader but was just trying to give my feet a rest since I was hiking in old shoes and my dogs were barking*.
Slowly but surely everyone gathered on the road and took a breather. We did a quick head count and realized that one person was missing -- Sebastian. Nobody seemed to know where Sebastian was and the last report was that he had hung back to take some photos. Naturally, Sebastian's mom Urszula started to worry that her son was missing in the middle of nowhere. Everyone started to assure her that Sebastian would be fine and that he was probably just a couple of more minutes behind. Well, everyone except my cousin Justin who roughly said this with all sincerity: "I don't know. It's possible that he might have fallen off the cliff. I mean, I can see it happening if he was taking a picture and didn't see the edge." After a few people gave him looks, Justin tried to ease Urszula's fears by adding, "I'm not saying he died but he probably just fell really far and got hurt. I could see that happening to me." Most of us found this absolutely hilarious because Justin was really just verbally fleshing out all the possibilities. However, we suppressed our laughter because hearing Justin say this nearly sent Urszula into a panic attack.
Luckily before Urszula started screaming and sprint back down the road, Sebastian came strolling down the path. Yeah, he was just taking pictures.
* Anthony and Mark taught Huyen this idiom while were were hiking. At some point she came up to me and said, "My dogs barked!"
