Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I finally got some decent sleep last night.  I went to bed early.  At 11:30pm I was awakened to the sound of my daughters laughing.  I thought, "oh no, I hope I can get back to sleep."  Luckily I fell asleep again not long after that.  I woke up at 5am and started running at 6:24am.  It was still quite dark.  Yesterday when I checked the temperature on my phone, it said 38º.  Today, 53°.  As I made my way to Adobe I could see someone running west on Adobe.  I knew I had no chance of catching them.  When I turned the corner at Adobe I could see the figure still running up ahead, crossing over the Floodway.  And I saw another figure.  One of them looked like they turned north to run on the west side of the Floodway.  It was real dark, and hard to tell even though the street light was on.  The other one stayed there.  The closer I got the more visible he became.  He was just standing in the road.  Not in the driving lane, but right next to the stripe.  I thought that was queer.  But he was looking at his phone.  I wondered if he was timing someone.  The other person?  But they came from the other direction.  I think.  Who knows?  It was too dark.  So I just went north on the east side of the Floodway as usual.  After about a minute I could see the glow of the guy's cell phone.  Ah, he was just catching his breath.  Probably doing half mile intervals.  He passed me up pretty quickly, and I tried to keep an eye on him.  But even though I left an hour later than yesterday, it was much darker than yesterday.  No stars.  Was there a haze blocking them?  Was it so close to sunrise that the suns rays were blocking them?  I don't know, but I had to concentrate hard on the trail to make sure I didn't run into a tree or something.  Every now and again I would look across the Floodway to see how far ahead of me he was.  Then about half way to Brown someone shined a flashlight at me.  I don't know if they were shining it at me or down in the Floodway, truth be told.  But I thought it was the half mile interval guy.  So he's only doing quarter mile intervals?  But I then I saw the soft glow of his cell phone way up ahead.  So maybe this was the original guy (or gal) that turned north.  So many mysteries in the dark.  When I got to Brown, he was no where to be found.  I'm guessing he continued north. 

Now that I was on the RWCD road, I could see much better.  The RWCD road is nice and straight as opposed to the winding trail on the other side of the Floodway.  Also, there's no trees blocking what little light is given off by the street lights and neighborhood lights.  Speaking of street lights, have you ever been walking down the sidewalk at night and you get close to a street light and it turns off?  Do they have motion sensors?  Shouldn't they turn on rather than off?  You would think as a civil engineer, I would know the answer to that.  Anyway, after I crossed Adobe I could hear the refuse man in the rich part of the ward.  So there's a neighborhood just to the west of the Canal.  That's the rich part.  The neighborhood south of them, south of the green belt, where Maggie lives, is the poor part.  Sorry Maggie.  My neighborhood is the in-betweens.  Anyway, the refuse man.  I say refuse because I don't know if it was the recycling man or the green waste man.  Although, I think they are one in the same right now.  Once the pandemic and lockdown started, they same truck was picking up both.  I don't know if they've gone back to separate or not yet.  Also, I shouldn't say man, because there was a lady driver a while back.  She was nice.  I didn't think my recycling was out to the street yet.  Or my green waste, but what are the chances anything is in the green waste barrel?  I hoped I would make it back to my house in time to take them out.  I did make it back in plenty of time.  Also, the green barrel was full.  Someone chopped up our Christmas tree and filled the barrel up.  But I'm guessing it's going to take 4 or 5 barrels to get rid of all of it.