跑跑步
So ... I jsut finished a run that was 2 hours and 24 minutes and 47 seconds long.
Why, Pico, why, you might ask?
Well, I'm wondering that myself. I don't know. I've been doing one of these crazy-long runs every week for roughly the last three weeks. And I do mean crazy-long - hundred or more minutes each.
I don't know why. All's I know is that it feels good and isn't self-destructive, so why not?
It's leading me to see parts of Harbin I never got to see before. Further long, down the flood canal - if you go along Hexing Street, there's a point when buildings sort of taper off to only the most necessary or newest, and walking along there is a little more like Stateside than like being here - buildings are farther apart, cleaner, no vendors, people drive everywhere. When you're going that same way along the flood canal, though - goddamn! what a difference! It's a strip in the city that lends itself to parkland, and so you've got real, little community-style-parks alternating along its length with strips of plain green land planted over with cegetables and sunflowers. People are everywhere, as this is the only part of the city that's really, truly green - you've got people doing martial arts and the zombie dance and walking dogs and kids and goats (saw my first Urban Goatherd today, yes indeed). I saw a dad trying to thwap dragonflies out of the sky with his child's shirt roll in his hand. I saw beehives upon which people were sitting and playing cards. I saw a man making up his own martial arts as he went along. I saw old couples and young couples, and a little pudgy kid whose shirt was purple and said KILL YOUR TELEVISION and a couple coming crawling out of the bushes and looking at me sheepishly (okay, guys, no need to be embarrassed, not much elsewhere you're going to get privacy around here).
I went through the planted-up portion before the botanical gardens, then along the path beside them. I followed the flood canal along, and it's full and smelly and green with rainwater and sewer overflow. Everything is muddy, and the bricks sometimes sort of taper off into mud, except where they lead into a lovely, well-kept path that turns into a park, which continues until it suddenly runs into a 10-foot square of construction and turns back into whatever paths people walk to go around that. After that, there were still willows along the waterside, but it was new ground. Stuff had only been constructed out here about five, no more than ten years ago, and the buildings are tall and shining and their paint is uncracked and they look half-inhabited. The path out there is brick, with new toothpick-trees (poplars) planted along the one side, between path and convenience gardens; on the other side, the flood canal no longer has stone tiling, but is earth-bottomed, and on the other side of that, a few spare buildings, and vacant lots grown entirely over in weeds, and trees.
I stopped and turned when bridge construction stopped the path - a blue-painted corrugated steel fence right across the brickwork, and behind it a bunch of women construction workers (?) doing their thing. Behind them, further along down the stream, a train bridge crossed over the flood canal, and a single blue engine trucked veeery slooowly over the bridge, letting everyone know HELLO HI I'M HERE I'M A TRAIN, ie, honking as though it was extremely necessary to. Swallows over the water, and reeds either side, and, down the middle, a spit of land with submerged-trunked, empty-branched trees. The rain, finished an hour ago, left the sky all cumulus and sun.
My run back was another 1 hour and 10 minutes. I usually take longer on the way back, so I must've had a really slow starting speed (well, yes). I usually bring pocket change with me on these runs, and good thing - I could pick up a thing of water around the 100-minute mark at a convenience store. I finished most of it right there, n then got me back to the path and kept running.
Right now my knees hate me, but, passive-aggresive little knee-pals* as they are, they'll get over it soon enough. So: now I think I'm off to café for a bit, then back in the PM to Skype with historicula yeah yeah yeah!
*this will be funny only to those who knew in capslock_atla what kneepals are, so I'll explain: they're Zhao's knees, who are his pals. I take credit for that meme, short as it was, because of a funny i fdrew but appears no longer to be on my computer.
Why, Pico, why, you might ask?
Well, I'm wondering that myself. I don't know. I've been doing one of these crazy-long runs every week for roughly the last three weeks. And I do mean crazy-long - hundred or more minutes each.
I don't know why. All's I know is that it feels good and isn't self-destructive, so why not?
It's leading me to see parts of Harbin I never got to see before. Further long, down the flood canal - if you go along Hexing Street, there's a point when buildings sort of taper off to only the most necessary or newest, and walking along there is a little more like Stateside than like being here - buildings are farther apart, cleaner, no vendors, people drive everywhere. When you're going that same way along the flood canal, though - goddamn! what a difference! It's a strip in the city that lends itself to parkland, and so you've got real, little community-style-parks alternating along its length with strips of plain green land planted over with cegetables and sunflowers. People are everywhere, as this is the only part of the city that's really, truly green - you've got people doing martial arts and the zombie dance and walking dogs and kids and goats (saw my first Urban Goatherd today, yes indeed). I saw a dad trying to thwap dragonflies out of the sky with his child's shirt roll in his hand. I saw beehives upon which people were sitting and playing cards. I saw a man making up his own martial arts as he went along. I saw old couples and young couples, and a little pudgy kid whose shirt was purple and said KILL YOUR TELEVISION and a couple coming crawling out of the bushes and looking at me sheepishly (okay, guys, no need to be embarrassed, not much elsewhere you're going to get privacy around here).
I went through the planted-up portion before the botanical gardens, then along the path beside them. I followed the flood canal along, and it's full and smelly and green with rainwater and sewer overflow. Everything is muddy, and the bricks sometimes sort of taper off into mud, except where they lead into a lovely, well-kept path that turns into a park, which continues until it suddenly runs into a 10-foot square of construction and turns back into whatever paths people walk to go around that. After that, there were still willows along the waterside, but it was new ground. Stuff had only been constructed out here about five, no more than ten years ago, and the buildings are tall and shining and their paint is uncracked and they look half-inhabited. The path out there is brick, with new toothpick-trees (poplars) planted along the one side, between path and convenience gardens; on the other side, the flood canal no longer has stone tiling, but is earth-bottomed, and on the other side of that, a few spare buildings, and vacant lots grown entirely over in weeds, and trees.
I stopped and turned when bridge construction stopped the path - a blue-painted corrugated steel fence right across the brickwork, and behind it a bunch of women construction workers (?) doing their thing. Behind them, further along down the stream, a train bridge crossed over the flood canal, and a single blue engine trucked veeery slooowly over the bridge, letting everyone know HELLO HI I'M HERE I'M A TRAIN, ie, honking as though it was extremely necessary to. Swallows over the water, and reeds either side, and, down the middle, a spit of land with submerged-trunked, empty-branched trees. The rain, finished an hour ago, left the sky all cumulus and sun.
My run back was another 1 hour and 10 minutes. I usually take longer on the way back, so I must've had a really slow starting speed (well, yes). I usually bring pocket change with me on these runs, and good thing - I could pick up a thing of water around the 100-minute mark at a convenience store. I finished most of it right there, n then got me back to the path and kept running.
Right now my knees hate me, but, passive-aggresive little knee-pals* as they are, they'll get over it soon enough. So: now I think I'm off to café for a bit, then back in the PM to Skype with historicula yeah yeah yeah!
*this will be funny only to those who knew in capslock_atla what kneepals are, so I'll explain: they're Zhao's knees, who are his pals. I take credit for that meme, short as it was, because of a funny i fdrew but appears no longer to be on my computer.