Alert and Predictable

Noticed on my walk this morning: signs reading "Be Alert and Predictable!" Not your typical path-sign wording, but understandable given the busyness of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, where bicycles whiz by at 30 miles an hour. 

An unsuspecting pedestrian who strays from her lane might be mowed down by one of these speeding cyclists, so better to walk steady and stay to the right. 

The signs had me thinking, though, about predictability and alertness and how those two don't always go hand-in-hand. An alert human may in fact be less predictable, more prone to straying off the beaten path and into a tangle of undergrowth, lured there by the song of a bird or an angle of light.