My legs have applied to move to another province.
My car has a flat tire, and while I wait for the new tire to get to the dealer, I’m walking. The most common walk on Friday and Saturday was from my apartment to the CFIS studio at Quebec and Third, which is a pretty decent hike.
I walked VERY early both Friday and Saturday mornings and I noticed a few things I hadn’t noticed on other walks. When I was walking home on Friday morning, I passed the ‘Welcome to Downtown’ sign where Fifth Avenue becomes Fourth Avenue.
As I walked by it, I was momentarily startled by a movement in the grass behind the sign. As I glanced over, I saw a deer stand up from where it had been resting on the grass. No fear, it just stood there for a few seconds kind of looking at me.
I moved a few steps further away and walked by it, at which point it started to walk over to the little garden area there. I’m assuming it figured, “Hey I’m up, so I might as well get some breakfast”.
That put a bit of a bounce in my step most of the rest of the way home, until my legs realized (again) that Fifth Avenue from the Bypass to Tabor has a lot of uphill portions.
So by the time I got home, my legs were protesting mightily, especially when they remembered we still had to climb a couple of flights of stairs to get to the apartment.
But we made it, and stayed pretty close to home the rest of the day.
Unfortunately (for my legs), I had to go back in on Saturday, so when I woke up about 1:30 a.m., I decided I may as well get it over with.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t have to worry about someone else being in the studio when I got there, right?
Walking down Fifth Avenue, I saw a few people running on the other side of the street. I figured they might be a walking club out for a VERY early-morning session.
Then I saw a couple more people behind them, and then a few more, and then a few more.
That was when I remembered a story I had done up for the Morning Citizen on CFIS Friday morning about a Remembrance Day event organized by Derk Grooten, running 11 kilometres and starting at 2 a.m. our time to mark the hour when the armistice went into effect in France in 1918.
I didn’t think it would be a good idea to holler across Fifth Avenue at 2:30 a.m. to see if they were involved in the event, but I didn’t have to. A couple of people were coming up my side of the street, so I asked them if they were part of the 11k run.
They said they were, then one of them laughed and said, “It’s more of an 11k Get There than it is a run.”
Even after I get my car back on the road, I’ll probably walk in every once in a while, just to get a different perspective on things.