Spring has sprung; I’m healthy again; my Rykas are broken in; I finally bought myself a knee brace. Training is now officially in full swing.

[Now would be a good time to go make a tax-deductible donation, but only if you 1) have boobs, 2) like boobs, or 3) love someone who has boobs.]

One of the things I hadn’t really thought through, when I signed up for this, was how much TIME it takes to train for an endurance event. It’s one thing to say “I’m going to exercise every day.” It’s quite another to undertake a regimen where, ideally, every workout is several hours long. I have no idea how people who work normal schedules could possible manage training.

The other thing I hadn’t realized was how much of my town I’d be seeing.

This last round of the creeping crud (otherwise known as A Very Special Respiratory Gift From the Children Who Attend Public Germ Incubators) kept me from walking over the weekend. By Sunday, I was starting to feel better. Huzzah!

Monday, I walked five miles (easing myself back into things) on my own. I mostly did loops in my immediate neighborhood, so other than noticing a couple of houses which had been freshly painted, and briefly loathing the neighbors whose yards were better tended than my own, I didn’t see anything that really caught my interest.

Wednesday, my walk buddy and I walked about seven miles. We passed some women we knew from a nearby neighborhood, over in this direction, and that prompted us to head over to their neighborhood. It was a chilly morning and we spent much of our walk time discussing how much we wished we’d worn gloves. We also played the “guess how much this house that’s for sale is listed at” game.

Today, we walked eleven miles. We took a new route–just to keep things interesting–and I saw parts of my town that I’ve never been to in all the time I’ve lived here. As much as I may make fun of it, this is a pretty nice little area. Spring is, of course, the perfect time to wax idyllic about all of the adorable capes and majestic colonials nestled amongst budding trees and riotous forsythia. In fact, we were having such a good time getting lost in one area, when we emerged back onto the main road I suggested we head to Filthy Rich Lane, where we knew there would be plenty of mansions to ogle.

As we worked our way up the loooong drive leading to that development, we passed the time chatting about how there’s really no violent crime around here. Our cops mostly stay busy arresting stupid rich people on DUIs. Why–we joked–even our drug dealers tend to be rich kids much more likely to brandish the keys to Daddy’s Benz than a gun. You won’t find any sneakers tangled in the power lines around here!

One of the hazards of walking in a rich pseudo-country area is road apples (link included for you city folks). There are quite a few stables around and folks will go riding on the back roads and–as the saying goes–shit happens. So there we were, walking up into Rich People Mecca, and we came upon a pile of manure in the road.

This was no ordinary pile of manure, though. It was marked. Much as the astronauts proudly claimed the moon for their respective countries, someone had come along and stuck a miniature orange flag (like the ones you sometimes see marking the perimeter of an invisible fence, or to show that a lawn has been recently sprayed) in the highest point of this pile of dung. Yes. Look, there’s a big mound of excrement in the middle of the road. Should we clean it up? No, don’t be silly. Let’s just put a flag in it.

Maybe it was because we’d already been out walking for a couple of hours, but this struck the two of us as quite possibly the most hilarious thing we’d ever seen. A car came down the road and carefully went around the flagged mound. We continued on, giggling and snorting, convinced that we’d cracked the crime code of our snobby town. Want drugs? Look for the marked manure.

See, I knew this whole walking thing was going to open my eyes to a whole new world. Little did I know just how… ummm… diverse my experiences would be. I mean, REALLY, what could I possibly see on the 3-Day that’s going to top THAT?