The run started off well enough, an easy and very slow lope for half a mile to the Titanic statue down on the latest new DC waterfront, stopping to smell the flowers just starting to emerge from their winter sleep along the way. Necessary stops on my part to quell the frantic thoughts racing through my overcharged body that oh yes, on this block I was going to die. Good company promoted good talk so we whiled away the first 12-minute mile confirming with each other how calamitous our lives had become during the past year while we watched and worried about the non-stop, frenetic assaults upon our revered democratic institutions (we're both lawyers and we notice such things) that the unthinking and unseeing right cares, knows or does naught about (except to excoriate the liberal left with dripping, consuming, venomous hatred).
Torn up streets being worked upon by crews caused us to veer down unfamiliar sidewalks and as I was glancing behind me at an idle group of young men we had just passed I tripped over a riven sidewalk panel projecting upwards a good 8 inches due to an underlaying root from an adjacent tree. Fixing the streets? How about fixing the sidewalks, this hazard didn't develop overnight. I went down hard, tossing my water bottle aside in my sudden descent and slamming the action camera in my other hand into the mud of the nearby grassy strip as I landed, sprawling. I have tripped mightily over things three times due to momentary distraction since I acquired and started carrying this small camera in my free hand 5 years ago, and as during the two times I fell before, I was fortunately unhurt other than bloody road rash on my palms, an elbow and a knee. Obviously when I descend suddenly and fast while running, I tend to come down on one side or the other except for my outstretched, bracing hands.
So we walked it in from there after I poured water from my bottle onto my wounds to wash the mud and bits of cement grit from them. Once I rubbed the mud off my Pentax, it operated fine, another testimonial to its claim to be "shock-proof." (The small print in the owner's manual stated this claim was verified by the camera being dropped once from a height of four feet onto a sheet of plywood without being damaged, quite the exhaustive scientific test. But I'll vouch for its ruggedness and longevity.) And as if in payment for my pain, a couple of blocks later we came upon three bills lying in the street, a ten and two singles. Nobody was about except for another group of idle young men a block away in the wrong direction so we collected the money off the street and, with no apparent owner in sight, resolved to give it away to a good cause. Since I had spotted the abandoned or lost currency first and had suffered a fall, my running partner left up to me to choose its use. I said I would donate it to the campaign of the chief democratic opponent (Alison Friedman) of the republican incumbent congresswoman representing Virginia congressional district ten, one over from my district, a political hack (Barbara Comstock) who votes with the faux president 97% of the time but is very exposed in her district which encompasses both the conservative farm country (and vineyards and horse country) far to the west of DC and also the liberal suburbs of McLean and parts of Fairfax county. This was a satisfactory resolution to our acquiring a small sum of money, which clearly wasn't ours, by happenstance with no prospect of finding its owner, and I have already forwarded $12.43 to the democratic candidate, which represents one ten-thousandth of the amount of money the republican has taken in from the NRA. My friend went back to work and I drove home, glad to have finally undertaken a baby step, with the help of my running friend, towards my return to running, the first real (sort of) run I've had since last April.
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