Black Friday

30 mins.
4 miles

After a Thanksgiving day filled with food, napping, food, football, food and an early bedtime, Jordan and I awoke before 5am on Black Friday to help fulfill a Christmas wish. You see, my mom is participating in an angel tree at work, and the 8-year-old boy whose name she drew really wanted a bicycle. We found a sweet bike advertised in the Wal-Mart newspaper insert on Thursday, naturally with the catch being that the sale only lasted from 5-11am, and Jordan took the liberty of volunteering both of us to get up before the crack of dawn and procure it ("Come on, it will be fun!").

Now, let me make something very clear: I love to shop. There is no disputing that. However, as much as I love to shop, I hate crowds and bargain-shopping in equal measure. They could've been selling gold-plated crack cocaine for $5 at Wal-Mart on Friday and it wouldn't have enticed me. Therefore, I have never in my life done the whole "Black Friday" deal or ever had any remote desire to do so. At the same time, I knew nothing would really encapsulate the whole "East Texas" experience for Jordan like meeting half of my graduating class and their families at the one and only local shopping establishment at 5am. I was pretty confident this would be a first and last experience for both of us. Anyhow, long story short, we got the bike. But I kid you not, I have never seen anything as frantic and chaotic as that Wal-Mart. We had to park almost a half mile away to get a spot. Seriously. And yes, we did see plenty of people from my high school and yes, Mt. Pleasant's finest were out and about and certainly didn't disappoint my guest.

As you can imagine, after this exhausting endeavor neither of us were too eager to run. Add to that the intermittent cold rain showers that lasted the entire day, and you've got a recipe for lethargy. We were almost going to scrap the run altogether in favor of an extended nap, until around noon when my dad came upstairs and informed us he'd just logged a few miles. Not wanting to be shown up by the geezer (kidding, Dad!) we set out for a 30-minute jaunt. We arrived home just in time for Jordan to eat all of our Thanksgiving leftovers in sandwich form and then settled in to hibernate for the rest of the rainy afternoon.