I heart my iPod
This morning, on mile 3 of a 7 mile run, I was listening to a podcast of This American Life, slogging along at my slow but steady pace, looking pretty much and assuming I was feeling pretty much like the other gazillion people doing their Saturday morning runs on the Town Lake trail.
Ira Glass was getting a little boring and I was getting a little tired, so I switched over to song shuffle and the first song that came on was Prince "Delirious". Suddenly, in a flash, in a millisecond, it was 1984 and I was AWOL from the Navy, driving through Arizona in my 1970 VW Bug, totally tweaked on crystal meth, smoking cigarettes like a mad woman, listening to this song on my in-dash cassette player. Looking at myself in the rear view mirror, with my early 80's mullet and my John Lennon sunglasses.
I don't think we said tweaked then, though. What did we call it? Fucked up? Wired? Wired, I think is what we called it after the snorting of the methamphetamine. That was before the magazine.
It made me laugh, I almost had to stop running for a minute. You'd of never been able to convince me then, that 20 years later, I'd running 7 miles, in kissie little running shorts, made of high-tech fitness material, at 8 am on a Saturday morning. "Nope, not gonna happen", my 20 year old self probably would have said, while I packed a package of Camel non-filters on the back of my hand.
I have to admit, I got lost for a minute in the nostalgia of my misspent youth, sounds kind of romantic, all fucked up, on the lamb, all alone, driving across the country...
But really, that life made for good stories, but this life makes for a good life.
Oh, and FYI if you are going to do some lines of crystal meth to help you along your way across the country, be sure you remember to stop for a soda or something before you hit the Mohave Desert. Otherwise, It's a really freaking long way until you can get something to drink. Oh, and if you think maybe firing up a joint might take the edge off a little and make you forget how thirsty you are...not so much. It just makes it seem ever that much longer...