September 22 2007, 11:02 PM Lessons Of An Ambulatory Life

On weekends, I don't have much care for clocks. I managed to set up the house such that it has only a few of them, and those that do exist are hard to read, easy to ignore, or are only correct twice a day. Those last ones keep that secret close, and the moments they mark mean little more than to point out when I should have bought more batteries. What clocks I do have around here are mostly meant for generating unholy squall in the mornings to rouse me: I do not use them othertimes. Occasionally, this gets me in trouble.

I am sometimes an idiot. Somewhere at the beginning of last week I left the map light on in my car, leading to the discovery near the end of the week that the battery was dead, dead. In the normal course of things, this is not a big deal. Although the topologies around here are not strictly kind to such stunts, I can walk to pretty much everything I need. The problem this morning, then, was that I found myself with an appointment both 2 miles and 30 minutes away. Tricky.

If I had taken a flatter route, it would have been longer. The route I ended up taking was really not flat at all. I made it in 40 minutes.

I'm a little proud of that, given the kind of shape I was in five years ago. Still: oof.

Tomorrow, I will get a jump, then drive a long time, listening to the game and taking in roads that I do not yet know. And I should probably fix the clocks.