Home Stretch

When you've been running for a few miles, and all you can smell is the exhaust and the dirt and the sweat on your face, a breath of grass-scented sprinkler mist is like being smashed in the face with your favorite flavor of ice cream. Heaven. And if heaven is, in fact, your favorite flavor of ice cream, I mean to ask you what angels taste like. And if anyone could avoid getting tired of the taste of milk and honey after, oh, say, twelve or thirteen spoonfuls. I don't like milk and honey on a good day. An eternity of it seems excessive. If there is a heaven for me, and it is food-based, I will have prime rib for every meal. And if there is an ironic hell in which I am forced to eat prime rib at every meal, thereby destroying the joy I once got from it, I say bring it on. The devil himself has no idea how much prime rib it would take to make me tire of it.

I went running today on the stretch of Olympic that I always used to take. A five-mile round trip I measured with my car and confirmed with the assistance of Mapquest. It's been a long time since I've taken that route. I stopped running out of doors when it got too hot in mid-2003. I went and got myself a gym membership and never made enough use of it. It's just so much easier to throw on your shoes and support clothing and stumble out the door. I hate having to remember to get parking validation when I'm on the treadmill.

It was beginning to sprinkle when I was at my halfway mark, but I never got caught in any sort of downpour. Except for the risk to my iPod, I wouldn't have minded. A run in the rain sounds lovely. But a run past an array of sprinklers, showering a patch of green green grass, was sweet to say the least. If it had been hotter out, I might have stood there and let the shower get me. But it would only have refreshed me up to my knees. If it had been hotter, I would have wanted to run through a fountain in a city square. And not in that whimsical way the cast of Friends did. Just in an illegal and carefree way that leads to no actual municipal consequences. A good percentage of the joy in anything is not getting caught.