That Was A Great Route…Except It Sucked
“That was a great route…except it sucked.”
Those were the wise words of Balco as he left the parking lot this morning. An OG route that I had spent a lot of time on to meticulously make EXACTLY 6.2 miles ended up being for naught since some [checks notes] most [checks notes again] freaking ALL of downtown seemed to be under construction.
Everything started out perfect. Then my alarm went off at 4:44 and I dragged (drug?) myself out of bed. Whamo commented that Siri told him the “chance of rain at 5am is 0%” (false – he told us this during an “Evian Mist” as ‘Bout Time aptly named it). We were not deterred. I remembered running a similar route a while back and thought how nice it was to start slowly by going up Northwest, so I mapped our route the same way.
However, we missed the turn on Glenn (I blame Palin…just because) and ended up exploring a neighborhood I never knew was there. Back on track (and doing almost an extra mile later), we headed towards downtown. Thanks to Burns, who looked at the route and told me of construction, we were able to take a detour since part of Patterson was closed. The Fastholes soon caught up to us and we meandered our way through downtown until we came to a section that was closed due to construction. We thought it was only a short block, so we made our way through the fence and into the work zone.
Well…things didn’t go as planned. We came to the other side of the fence, only to find it was locked. Mongoose almost attempted a 10-foot jump over what I could only call a crevasse, but the rest of the Fastholes used their better judgment and pulled him to safety. We tried one, two, three exit points until we finally found our way out, upon which we were “greeted” by a construction worker who told us (in a not-polite tone) that we cannot be in a construction site (can I blame Palin for this, too?).
After all the chaos, we ended up cutting our route short on Sunset yet STILL ran more than the 6.2 allotted mileage. Hopefully the Tractors had better luck than we did (and if so, that’s due solely to Burlap, who noticed yet ANOTHER section of my route was under construction and we made the edits beforehand). My fault! Feelings were not held back during the COT, like when I said my age and everyone replied “hate” (I’m 40) or Balco’s comment (see above).
Still, there were positives. I stayed with Juice Box and Woodpecker and thoroughly enjoyed my conversation and 2ndF time with those men. I had surgery ~3 weeks ago and have been on the mend, so this was my first time out in a while and I missed this group (especially JB’s guiding green blinking light).
No announcements. Prayer requests for Schlitz and $5 who both welcomed their first child into the world recently. It’s a beautiful honor to be a parent and there’s nothing like it. Congrats boys! Juice Box’s wife is having shoulder surgery next week, so we prayed for her as well.
Honor to lead as always.
(and next time I’m going up Runnymeade)