After months of meeting for early morning runs, Andrea and I had our first run in a steady downpour this morning. That’s impressive – that we’ve gone for weekly runs in the Seattle area without truly getting wet until today. We did five miles and found ourselves, at one point, on a scenic one-way street that had houses on one side and the woods of Cougar Mountain on the other. Andrea noted, “Oh! This is the road that they were referring to in the Newcastle News a couple of weeks ago. You know, that black bear and mountain lion sightings have taken place here recently.” Doh. We were trying to remember the “what-to-do-in-the-event-of” tips that had been provided in the article.

“Let’s see,” I said, “so, you make noise for a bear right? I know you’re supposed to make eye contact with one of them – maybe the lion – but not the other (maybe it’s anti-social or something). Uh…I guess we need to carry the survival handbook and say, ‘Please hold, dangerous predator, while I check to see what I’m supposed to do in this situation.’”

I then proceeded to tell Andrea the plan that I had come up with on one run. I was running in the woods by myself on the trails of Cougar Mountain (a foolish endeavor that I will never again do). I realized that it was pretty dumb to be running in the woods, alone, without any sort of protection or precautionary measures. So, thanks to the help of my Runner’s High (it does exist), I came up with an ingenious plan. (For some reason everything that I think about when running just seems SO amazing, inspired and original to me…at the time). Should I be faced by a predator – be it man or beast – I would distract him first off by throwing my one car key at him. (Which of course, was secured and tied to my shoe lace….the removal of this key would only take a moment; I was sure). Then, while mammal is distracted by my brilliant key move, I would remove my sport’s bra (uh-huh) and fashion a sling shot (right), find some large and very sharp rocks and attack the attacker. Yes, this – thanks to running endorphins – really did seem like a marvelous idea. For some reason, Andrea didn’t feel that reassured with my plan for protecting us. What’s with her? I totally have it all figured out.

When I walked in the door (sopping wet) at 7:30, the Martin boys were all up having breakfast. Matthew immediately told me about the “skooky” (spooky) ghost, skeleton stegosaurus that started counting and Matthew didn’t want to hide in the box, so the skooky, ghost, skeleton stegosaurus sat on his back. Woah. If that doesn’t have all the ingredients for a bad dream, I don’t know what does! Thankfully, Matthew concluded by saying that the stegosaurus tickled him and gave him a kiss. It would appear that things ended on a positive note for Matthew and the skooky stegosaurus. Phew!