Last night, there was a roach in the bedroom. This is not because our building is infested with them, or because we don’t keep a clean house. We’re ahead on both counts. It’s because every once in a while when it’s this hot and humid out, and the AC is busted, and the super’s been in the vents, you get a random visitor like this. They are the lone alpha roach that comes out on a hot night in the city. We’ve seen two in two years. Objectively, we have more of a dog problem in the building than a roach problem.
I killed it by getting it backed up into a corner, blocking off one escape route with the light from a SureFire E2D Flashlight and letting it run for it into my waiting shoe. Easy.
The problem is that roaches aren’t entirely isolated events. They don’t just go away. I listened to two lawyers last week from the nice part of the Upper East Side in the 70s discuss their problems. One had a wife that was despondent over their visitors. The other was giving out lots of helpful advice, most of which seemed to boil down to convincing the wife that all was well despite the problem.
But all will not be well because there is always the chance of another one. One that I don’t catch and kill in secret. The one that has us looking into how good the public schools are above the Arctic Circle.
I had Music for the Knee Plays on tape on high school. It’s what got me into the Dirty Dozen Brass Band since he credited them for inspiring the album. It’s recently been reissued. There’s something satisfying about the whole thing.
I’m supposed to start 10 days of rest for the bad right knee. I did one last race before the break, the NYRR 50th Anniversary Run. It was a really fun race for a couple of very different reasons.
To begin with, it was a 5:30 AM start. From about 4:50-5:30, it poured. It didn’t rain, it didn’t shower, the very heavens opened up and water poured out of the deep onto the earth washing away all before it. I was hoping it would get declared a fun run so I could run straight home and dry off. Then, right at the start, it let up and made for a normal run in light rain.
Apparently, 5000 people registered for the race and it was full. About 2000 people showed up. That made for a nice, light crowd in the park. There’s a weird comedy to that many people early in Central Park. You know that there’s some dude who just loves the serenity of a run at dawn who gets down to the East Drive and suddenly 2000 people come running down the rec lane at him.
The start was almost exactly as the morning light broke and that was perfect to capture the kinetics of running in a crowd. Very cool.
The knee mostly held up. It didn’t fill up with fluid. Now for a rest.
