I like the sidewalk. Despite the fact that it's kicked my ass a few times (a few weeks ago I tripped over an elevated portion and fell face first at full speed. my shoes, shirt, hands, elbow, and ipod all took considerable damage), I still prefer to run on it as opposed to the street. Sometimes, though, that's just not possible. A lot of people, specifically those on Willowwood, park their cars in their driveway, which blocks out a section of the sidewalk. Coupled with minicreek in the grass areas, running on the sidewalk through that area is borderline impossible. But since it's hard to get hit by a car in broad daylight, I have no problem with the street either - especially when it's the path of least resistance.
Today I was running and my ipod played "God" and "Mouths of Babes" (from the Smashing Pumpkins' Zero ep) in sequential order. This is worth noting because my ipod was set to "shuffle," yet still played the pair of songs according to their respective track listing. I have 2672 songs on my ipod. I only got a B in statistics, but common sense tells me the odds of that happening should fit somewhere between "glitch in the matrix" and "horrible omen." Turned out to be the latter.
So a couple minutes later I switched over to the street in accordance with the situation described in the first paragraph. Not ten seconds later a white minivan pulls along side me and matches my pace. I look over to see the window roll down and reveal a poofy haired woman in her early fifties. Her mouth seemed to be moving, but I decided whatever she was saying must not be important, so I wore my best fuck you expression and sped up, ignoring her.
This sidestalk continued down the entire length of the street. I don't know what the normal human being style attitude is after running for three miles (especially on my 'fast day'), but at that point I'm not really in the most pleasant of moods. It's hot, the sweat on my face was leaking into and burning my eyes, my shorts smelled like yetti, and the air did not seem to contain the correct amount of oxygen necessary to support human life. Factor that into the current activities of this fucking woman and you have the recipe for an all out disaster.
Surrender appeared to be my only option. I came to a stop, pulled the headphone jack out of my ipod, and issued quite possibly the most indignant WHAT of all time. Here is the response I received:
umm, why are you running on the street when there's a sidewalk provided....? spoken with a look that suggested I was five years old.
At this point it became clear that murder was the only solution, however, getting away with that in broad day light is about as easy as knocking out Mike Tyson in his titular Punch Out. Possible, but not without the years of practice I did not have. Instead I opted for a collage of profanity, capping everything off with a polite suggestion that she kill herself as soon as possible. For my grand finale I opened her passenger door and, as she tried to exit her vehicle, left and resumed my run. At the time my goal was to just open it because then she would have to get out and close it, which, while not atoning for her idiocy, would have been pretty funny. Seeing her take off on foot and hide behind a house was even better.
I guess it's just the misanthropist in me.
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