Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

This morning I was up before the asscrack of dawn (as I always am), gulped down my black coffee with the ice cube (as I always do), and grabbed the dog’s leash (as I always have). The run is more than my routine....it is my ritual. On this last day of May I believe there may have been one single day I did not do this, and that was only because I had awoken at a friend’s home with a 90-minute drive to get to work by 7am.

It was a perfect exercise morning- really a perfect anything morning- 57 degrees, crisp, clear, and windless...the ideal running environment for both man and beast. We began the shuffle out of the house at “wake up” pace but within a mile had settled into our comfortable trot. Predawn color filled the sky.

Even in rural America, the telltale markings were everywhere. It was Sunday morning on one of the first warm weekends of the summer season, after all. Empty bottles in ditches. The crushed cardboard of spent 12-packs. A shattered “forty.” As pristine as the Valley landscape was, hints of the previous evening’s alcoholic revelry were all about. Some were more than just hints; we passed one abandoned car, cozied up to a telephone pole; and two miles beyond, strewn across the road lay the shattered wooden remnants of what the previous day had been a lovely decorative mailbox post.

Were these the leftovers of last night’s “good times”?  Where were the perpetrators now? Sleeping off a hangover? In the ER? In jail? The morgue? No telling. Well, maybe there was some telling.

We ran on by. My canine running companion didn’t give a shit (except for one fresh roadkill rabbit). As we passed these residuals of Saturday night , I couldn’t help but smile to myself. For me, last evening was spent with a nice new friend- smart, funny,  and easy on the eyes. We dined at a lovely outdoor venue, then relaxed on her back porch, laughing, swapping stories, and learning more about each other. We drank flavored sparkling waters. I was home by 10:30, and asleep by eleven.

And I woke up this morning, clear-headed for the thousandth time,  to embrace my morning ritual.



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