September 29, 2016

This morning I ran … poorly… through Central Park. One wouldn’t think it possible to get lost in a loop through a park in the middle of the city… but I’m no ordinary man. I do the inconceivable and the unbelievable six ways before breakfast.

There was a handy map online of the park and I thought I knew what I was doing. Ever since upgrading to iOS 10, my phone has been a battery draining disaster — whatever is going on behind the scenes and under the hood and in the code, it’s sucking my battery power dry at an alarming rate and has rendered my rear camera a black screen of non-functioning.

I say all this because I left my phone in the hotel and went running blind. Sure, sure — I had my Garmin and recalled the full outerloop of the CP run was supposedly 6.1 miles. But that didn’t really help as I had a hard time determining if I was on the loop or just moving about on an access through road.

There were oodles of interesting spurs, presumably to such notable sights as the Grand Lawn or Belvedere Castle (for the die hard fans of Mr Belvedere, we knew to be on the lookout for Brock-Tune Castle).

In the end, I got to roughly 6 miles on my GPS watch and thought I should make a beeline toward an exit. I was somewhere around 69th street and needed to be at W 58th. I hoped I was at W 69th as I ran lower and lower…

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I was relieved to see the Trump Tower, the inspiration for Clamp Tower in Gremlins 2. Last night en route to and from our PJ Clarke’s burgers at Lincoln Center we passed this dark den of Trumpitude. So I knew I was on the right path back to the hotel. Make American Map Skills Great Again!

Returning to the room, my ankle was bothering me a bit… it dawned on me that I had once again gone counterclockwise as I had been doing on the Disney Magic cruise ship the past 11 days so I was STILL turning left. One of these days I really need to turn right to try and balance out the wear and tear on my shoes, my feet and ankles, and my psyche.

Perhaps on Saturday during the St George Marathon.