Playing Chicken in the Snow!

Thanks for HBirthday wishes to all!!

Just another funny (in retrospect) episode to share with my continuously growing audience.  As everyone already knows, and as the name above suggests, I run pretty early in the day, like say, at 5 AM, when the darkness of the night still rules.  And another variable to consider is that I am basically blind, for all intents and purposes, which typically does not bother me, as I really don’t care to see anything!

Well, all that certainly changed during my last early run.  Add snow into the mix, and you have a recipe for catastrophe!!  As you probably know, the proper thing to do is to run (or walk) facing the traffic, if you are so insane as to run on the road.  This way you can see cars coming towards you and do something about it, like perhaps move out of the way.  But hey, that would be too easy, come on!

So here I am, running down the road, relaxed and listening to the sounds of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica (the greatest running music of all times, in my humble opinion), when I see a pair of headlights coming my way.  I always assume the driver can’t see me, since nothing in my current clothing line has any shiny, flashy or reflective surfaces…. so, just like the instructions read, I start to move out of the way, to my left and off the road.  Except that now there is a wall of freshly piled up snow, and I am not going anywhere… Hmm, not good!

Stubborn as a ram, I am still running, but at the same time, I am nervously considering my options in case the collision occurs.  I am thinking, my chances with the car are not good, so what do I do – I start jumping up the snow wall, without breaking my stride, with each step trying to jump higher and higher.  I am pretty sure the driver got fairly nervous as well by this point, seeing a night creature running toward him in the middle of the night, periodically euphorically jumping up and not slowing down a bit!

Just as I made a decision to abandon the plan and simply dive over the wall and into the dirty snow, the driver of the car finally blinked first (!) and swerved off to the opposite lane, while screaming so loudly that I could hear it through the glass!  I am pretty sure he was just wishing me a good morning, or something of that nature, although I couldn’t be sure.  As for me, I just bounced off the wall one last time and continued on my way, hoping that no other driver would be up so early in the day….

I guess I should be smarter than that, and anticipate little situations like this when on open roads.  But then again, if I were smart or rational, I wouldn’t be out there at 5 AM in the first place.