|
Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. Survivor is for sissies after a jog through wild York! By J. G. Fabiano
We just survived the longest winter in the history of me. Looking out my window I am finally not blinded by a scene of nothing but white and when I step outside my front door there are no more sub-zero winds to take my breath away. This can mean only one thing: It is time for the first jog of the season. This is a bit of a tradition in my house. As soon as I find the energy to move my ever-expanding butt off the couch I look for my jogging clothes and Christmas sneakers that my wife bought me because she knew that this day would eventually come. Before I venture outside, I always view my image in the full-length mirror on the back of our bedroom door. This year I took one look at myself and laughed because I looked like an oversized elf in my green "Maine" sweatshirt and red jogging pants. My wife won't admit it but I swear she buys me that particular color of jogging pants to get back at me for all the aggravation I have caused her during our long winter hibernation. Once I recover from the shock of seeing how far my body has degraded over the past few months I put on the new sneakers my wife bought me. Because these are modern sneakers, lacing them requires a tool kit and a manual in five different languages and, when I finally straighten up from putting them on, I am already breathing heavy. Undaunted, I stride manfully out the front door, stroll down to the end of the drive and give my wife a devil-may-care wave before I go through a few warm-ups. My wife doesn't wave back. I know she is wondering if I will survive my first outing or if this will be the year she has to call an ambulance. As I loosen up I notice that the air is warm and filled with the smells of early spring. The sound of birds singing fills my ears and I get my first true feeling of spring. That is until I leave the protection of my driveway. The neighborhood dogs have their own communication system that tells them exactly where and when I start my jog. Within seconds small yapping dogs nipping at my new red jogging pants like bulls attacking a matador's red cape swarm me. Because they are small I can out run them fairly easily only to run into a second swarm of dogs on the next block. I think these dogs have been trained to throw themselves under my feet and then feign injury so their owners can sue me, so I spend most of this block dodging, weaving, skipping and dancing trying not to hurt either them or myself. Finally I outmaneuver them but only after they have coated my new sneakers and the bottom half of my jogging pants with dog drool. As always it's the little dogs that are the most troublesome. A few years ago I thought I had outrun the pack of nuisance hounds when I felt an odd drag on my left shin and saw a bulge under my pants. Because I could feel something warm and wet running down my leg, I thought that I might have injured myself but it was only some miniature mongrel had got itself trapped inside my jogging pants. This year I was determined nothing was going to distract me on my maiden run of the 2003 spring season and it didn't. Until after I turned onto York Street and noticed another hazard that I would have to overcome this year. Just like the number of dogs in my neighborhood seems to multiply each year so do the number of SUV's seem to have multiplied on our roads and I know that one of the pleasures of owning a large SUV is so the drivers can harass poor saps like me. Almost without exception they barrel directly at me as if engaged in some kind of chicken run that I can't possibly win and seems intended to leave me draped across their hood like deer-kill. If there is a tree nearby I will dodge behind it for cover, thinking if they haven't seen me from their perch, 20 feet above the road, they might at least notice the tree. Not that this is any guarantee, as I know from reading The York Independent police log and the number of SUV drivers who can't seem to avoid trees. Sometimes they will see me at the last second and veer away, only to hit a huge pothole filled with water. This, of course, sends up a huge tidal wave, which I then have to outrun. This is where I should learn from my past jogging survival experiences. If I would only stop, I figure the wave would pass over my head and splash harmlessly onto the ground but I never have the nerve to put my theory to the test and, instead, I try to outrun it and thus eventually run right into it like I was running through a tropical waterfall. Except this isn't a tropical waterfall, it is cold and dirty and full of salt, dirt, cigarette butts, chewing gum and all the other stuff my friends in the canine world have deposited at the side of the road. Inevitably the SUV driver continues on his or her way cackling into their cell phone about the jogger they just took out. Wet, and dirty, my new jogging pants stained and torn I continue my jog. My next obstacle is the booby trap that lurks beneath the crust of salt and sand that has been deposited on our roads during the winter months. This mixture must be less dense than water because it has the tendency to float on top of the water that fills the many potholes in the road but is perfectly camouflaged to look like solid ground. I was actually doing pretty well until I ran into what looked like a dry rut at the side of the road and my foot went through the scum on the surface and plunged in right up to the knee. Thrown off balance I found myself in an uncontrolled forward stagger that threatened to throw me full length into the mud hole and I knew the only way to save myself was to leap upward as high and as far as I could. I bounded out of the long, muck filled rut like a gazelle on the African Savannah, only not quite so graceful, and ran the entire length of the rut in a series of long, loping, slow motion strides that threw up great gouts of filthy water around me. At that moment a van went by with the faces of half a dozen kids pressed against the windows, watching me in absolute amazement. Not wanting to alarm them I gave them a jaunty wave to show them I had everything under control. At that moment the rut ended, my feet hit solid earth hard, my knees buckled and I went into a rapid Groucho walk before regaining my normal stride and continuing as though nothing unusual had happened. At this point, I have to say, my legs were starting to tire and I was feeling a bit worse the wear. I wiped the coat of mud off my watch and saw that I'd been out for all of 19 minutes. I was determined to do my full 45 minutes and so I jogged on through my full circuit, my legs and knees getting wobblier with every step. At last I found myself back on my street and jogged the last few yards to my driveway looking like a Neanderthal man newly emerged from the nearest tar-pit, my friendly reception committee of neighborhood dogs yapping at my heels. My wife waited for me by the garage door with an old towel in hand that would be dropped straight into the washing machine along with everything I was wearing. Except my once new sneakers, which would take their place at the head of a line of graying, curling retired sneakers just outside the door to the garage. Then I limped to the shower where I steamed and scoured every inch of my aching body with anti-bacterial soap so that I wouldn't come down with bubonic plague after my jog through York's wild kingdom - and I'm not talking about the amusement park! I settled myself tenderly onto the soft cushions of the couch, turned on the TV, clicked through the program guide and reached for a bag of chips. Survivor was on later, I noticed. I gave a contemptuous little grunt. Surviving the Amazon was a piece of cake, I thought, let's see them stick with me for a jog around York!
The End
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
