Truesday: Trails Of Hope
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
It’d been quite some time since I’d hit the trails. All the dirt, the people in plastic shorts, and the forlorn looks on sweat-banded faces. I’ve been avoiding. Too busy to bother joining their ranks. Too much on my plate, figuratively speaking.
No, wait… literally speaking. Yes, that plate is literal.
By account of my own recollection of history, I like to plump up for the holiday season. You know, gain some weight to scare the doctor. To preserve heat I build a thick roll of fat about my face and neck like a meat scarf. Gotta keep those jowls warm enough to handle all that Christmas cheer.
And by “cheer”, I mean abhorrent drinking behavior.
So usually the holidays run something like this:
The weather turns a little more chilly, which gets me frisky. My friskiness leads me to think that my liver’s not perpetually on crutches and that it’s totally acceptable for me to go lounge at any ol’ bar somewhere on a random Wednesday and get absolutely whiskey soaked by warm candle light. Then go eat something large, fatty, and fried. Like a whole pig, wrapped in mesh-weave of crispy bacon. After all the poison and that cornucopia of death, I usually stagger back out into the cold night air, lost and confused, with all my booze-soaked blood rushing to my stomach to get that mess processed and OUT. Then I walk home. Sometimes for miles. Sometimes it takes hours. It’s a beautiful thing, the cold and my friskiness. Predictable, yet beautifully so.
The kind of drunken wandering that produces Missed Connections that read like
Dude, you so drunkedup! - m4idiot________________________________________
Reply to: youzadoosh@clownpenis.fart [?]
Date: 2008-10-15, 1:46PM CST
You were wandering the parking lot of Taco Cabana off South Lamar, like a dumbass, with breakfast taco shit all spilled on your crotch. My bro Chuck and I went over and asked if we could borrow a hundred dollars and you said some stupid shit about being a moon rover with an attitude problem or something stupid-assed. So Chuck took a dump in a take-out bag and we threw it at your drunk face after we peeled out in a sweet-ass Honda Civic with low-pros and a dragger muffler you bitch-ass! LMFAOMF YEAH! We are so righteous and you suck, shithead! After this posts, I will be thinking of how awesome we are compared to you while I beat off in my roommate’s shower!
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But all that walking and public ridicule takes a toll on my intended fat-building. An unwelcomed toll, to be sure. But it’s just as uncontrollable as the friskiness, really. In fact, it’s probably related as all my impulsive behaviors (swearing at inanimate objects, bearding, karate kicks when I dance, high-fives to the overly-aged, last-call shots of Maker’s) all appear to be kin. Maybe I’m an impulse machine. An id robot.
So, with the listless wandering as a given, why not try and harness that energy, yeah? I mean, it’s just a matter of time before I wind up one of those dudes you hear about on the news who got totally shit-canned, wandered off into some urban forest, and was found a week later emaciated in a tiger trap or some weird shit. Instead of that, why not try and find some sort of legit way to express that subconscious desire to travel multiple pointless miles by foot whilst being ridiculed by anonymous passersby? Perhaps I could find a place where people just zone the fuck out for miles, all by their lonesome, completely “feelin’ it” or whatever it is that inebriated people’s brains are actually busy with when they pointlessly travel miles and miles by foot. Where would that be?
Hm.
I knew this house painter here in Austin who was a regular runner. He seemed like the laziest pothead you’d ever have the misfortune of depending on, but aside from his far-too-laid-back demeanor, dude was on point with his work. A truly detail-obsessed painter. But what was most odd was that he really, really, really loved to get high and then go run the trails around Town of Bird Lady's Lake.
Whah whah?
If I were to try that, it would take some serious pre-planning on my part. Like, put all the required equipment on FIRST. Shoes, headband, iPod full of inspirational running jams like JJ Fad, early Bowie, or anything by R. Kelly. Then I’d have to write down in the most explicit terms possible, my intention to actually GO running. Ginormous reminders. On a large poster board taped to the front of any nearby television. And I’d need to have a running buddy to remind me of the plan, repeatedly. And they’d have to drive me there. And do all the running for both of us because my body sincerely believes that upon consumption of relaxation agents, this agent should be thoroughly relaxed. Not running. From anything. Including a burning building.
But this dude would actually smoke out, then run 8 miles… in the heat no less… and I used to think what a waste of good bud. As if he was such a sucker. Like running whilst high was pointless and, depending on your level of activism toward such things, abusive toward the weed. But now that I think about it, maybe he was on to something.
Of course, even though he could handle his high, dude couldn’t schedule for shit. Took a month to get one house painted.
