05.19.2009 - 2:41 p.m.

I take the length of the cul-de-sac as a warm up walk, then break into a jog at the corner. My strides are bounding and coltish at first, and it feels good to move, sun on my skin and breeze in my face. It feels like playing night tag in my yard as a kid, or like college; I want to sprint, I want to reach, I want to chase a frisbee to the goal line.

Of course, it's been about a decade since I've tried to catch one, and I'm not even certain I own one anymore�did I take it out of the Miata's trunk when they totalled it? I am not sure. And it isn't long before the giddy energy is gone; it abandons me long before I get to the corner I'd marked as my first allowable walking break.

Fine. But there is still sun on my skin and breeze on my face, the grackles and robins and mockingbirds are all out in the yards, I greet a neighbor who is warming up his motorcycle in his driveway and another walking his dog, I discover a stretch of sidewalk where some kid apparently once melted some legos with firecrackers�which I think is awesome, probably because I've yet to spawn, myself�and there, it wasn't that hard to get to that corner after all.

I do that four more times, all along a route I paced out with my car's odometer back in December. I can't remember any more if it was two miles, or if it was only two miles if I ran down the long cul-de-sac on the end again, which I didn't today. But whatever the length, it feels good to have done it. I need to remember that.

-stonebridge

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