Round Trip

If you read yesterday's blog, disregard the last sentence. I did NOT go to the gym.  I don't know what it was, but I felt so lethargic and uninspired, and I think I dreaded pulling a blog out of this foggy brain more than I did the actual walk.  So I did what I usually do when I feel like that:  decided to turn the next day's walk into a 10-miler. 

I was already planning to walk the five miles to Mi Madres for breakfast with Brian, just under five miles away, and we had planned for her to drop me at my house on the way back. As luck would have it, I have a home visit in Cedar Park tonight, and didn't have to come in til 10:30 today, so the decision was an easy one. 

I love my super-early morning destination walks. I left the house at 5:25; it was dark, there was almost no traffic, and almost no one out at that hour.  It felt like the world was mine.  I never listen to music that early, but find myself singing to myself, in my head, for most of the way. 

After breakfast, I walked outside and the world had changed.  It wasn't until then that it occurred to me that this was my first ten-mile, round-trip walk on a weekday. The sun was up.  Cars were whizzing by.  Garbage trucks were noisily unloading dumpsters, with the men shouting instructions to each other. People strode by, in a hurry, with coffee cups in hand.  I felt like I was in New York. I had taken my customary two Aleves before the walk, and took another two upon my arrival home, and, sitting here at my desk some five hours later, I feel fine. 

I think it's time for a quick mullet update.  For the last six weeks or so, I have taken to wearing an old-school plastic headband, because the front part of the mullet has reached that uncomfortable stage where it's too short to pull behind my ears and too long to be absorbed by the longer hair around it.  Most horrifying of all, it seems weightless and devoid of any texture.  After my walk today I washed it and carefully blew out and flat-ironed my whole head of hair, with reasonably good results -- except for the frontal mullet.  The picture below is not retouched or staged in any way.  My mullet is a miracle of frizz and air, impervious to products, and is actually the end result of both a blow dryer and a flat iron. It's back to the headband for another few weeks.