So, I usually begin my morning with a nice cup or three of coffee. I'm a purist so I have a 32 oz french press and religiously clean, grind, and press! Last week I finally got tired of becoming ever fatter and decided to start running. I'm a fairly busy guy so early mornning was my only available time. My alarm now goes off at 5am. From 5 to 5:30 I get my running clothes on and make and drink coffee!! Then I go for a two to four mile jog. When I step out my front door the stars are out, there are very few cars on the road, and the coffee usually doesn't kick in until I'm a mile into my run. I have noticed that the first mile of my run is always the most eventful. I don't know if its still early or if I'm still dreaming or what. Anyway, here is what happened this morning:
I got out onto the road and had run about a half mile when I say this guy walking down the middle of the street. He was walking away from me and was singing his own theme music and frantically punching or kicking the air to his own beat. A car drove past and honked at him to get out of the way. He moved to the sidewalk on the other side of the road. Once he got to the sidewalk a dog started barking at him. He (from now on I'll just refer to him as the crackhead) turned to face the dog and beat boxed a few punch and kick moves.
While this was all happening I was still mostly asleep. I just kept jogging and didn't really even break pace. It was just like I was watching TV or something.
The crackhead finished bustin' his moves and then kept walking down the street. Somehow the dog got loose and the crackhead starting running for his life! The crackhead's eyes were bugging out of his head and screaming a weird silent-raspy scream.
I, the sleepy jogger, kept pace. This was by far the most entertaining thing I'd ever seen running. The crackhead ran towards a tree and I thought he was going to try and climb it. For some reason he decided that would be a bad idea and started frantically looking around for another escape route. I too was curious about where he was going to find shelter. I kept up my pace, and looked around for another tree or truck or something.
This is when the crackhead spotted me. He had just taken off his hat and thrown it at the dog (as a distraction I'd assume....at the time it reminded me of those fighter jet movies when they deploy the metal thingies to confuse the heat sinking missiles). He looked right at me and then started to cross the street. He took off his jacket and tossed it at the dog as well. The dog wasn't really falling for the decoys. His sights were set on the crackhead.
I noticed that the crackhead wasn't actually heading for me. He was heading to the 6 foot chain link fence I was running along. I saw that the spiky tops to the chain link were still poking up. I thought to myself, "Ouch! Thats gonna hurt!" As I kept my pace, I noticed that one of his shoes had come off while sprinting across the road; the dog just jumped over it.
The crackhead made it to the sidewalk and superman jumped up to the top of the fence. Well, he made it about half way over. His bottom half hit the top of the fence and he executed a graceless front flip and landed on his head. I had a pretty good view of the whole thing as it happened about 10 feet in front of me.
I looked over to see what the dog was going to do (now that his potential crackhead meal had escaped). The dog seriously looked amazed at how strong he must be to scare the crackhead that much. Really! Its hard to describe a dog looking surprised. The dog stopped running on the sidewalk (he did not attempt the jump). I kept my pace (which led straight to the dog). The dog apparently had not seen me until now. When he heard my foot steps he jumped and kind of backed up off the sidewalk. I jogged by.
After I passed the dog kept barking at the crackhead through the fence.
Once I'd been running another 5 or 10 minutes I realized what I'd just witnessed. And laughed.
