And it Begins...

There I was, sitting in the parking lot overlooking the girls' soccer practice. Carefully camouflaged in my Subaru station wagon mom-mobile, nobody would expect me to be a perv just waiting for a chance to help with an errant ball. "Here you are sweety, I believe this belongs to you." Nope, I had my shades on, teenager-attracting Dave Matthews Band on the Hi-Fi and Gatorade in the Nalgene bottle. All I had to do was wait...

The next thing I know, Nancy is knocking on my window. "Oh hey Nancy, I was ... just ... about .... (noting her running gear) to go for a run. You too?" Phew, the short shorts and sneakers helped corroborate my story; now I just had to actually run to remove all suspicion from my story.

Okay, some of that may or may not actually be true, but it's a good way to break into a new blog. The real truth was that Nancy had been crying in her SUV over how nobody would show up to her run. The telltale mascara streaks had dripped onto her thigh-high snakeskin running boots, the trail of sob-snot had reached her lower lip; it was evident that Nancy was upset. She even had Theresa send out the e-mail as if she were the one organizing the run in the hopes that anyone, anyone at all would show up. Being the nice guy that I am and not wanting to have to register as "an offender" in yet another state, I ran with her.

It wasn't long before we came across a dog yapping behind a screen door. This remound (past tense of remind for you illiterate folks) me of a CoolRunning thread I read earlier in the day about what to do in the event of a dog attack. There are different schools of thought on this; I'll offer the ones I have found to be the most effective then I'll continue with the story.

1.) Be the Alpha Male (ladies have to hide behind the men). Stop and look the dog right in the eye, and command him to "STOP!". 95% of the time the dog will respect the fact that you are the alpha and will actually stop.
2.) Bust out your pepper spray. This technique works well but has the one flaw that you must be close enough to the dog to actually hit him in the eyes. At this point his teeth are on either side of your jugular and you've disabled yourself by spraying your own eyes. Remember people, gun control means using both hands (De La Soul reference).
3.) Not be the slowest one. This technique has been called many things over the years but relies on the simple fact that when giving chase, a predator will feast on whichever of the prey it can sink its teeth into first. This is especially effective when being chased by several predators, as they will not respond to "Alpha Male" commands.
Jim.) WWJD? "Oh dear, a canine is chasing us. What would (Bad) Jim do?" Since Bad Jim uses his full mental capacity to talk about himself, change conversations to include topics he knows about, tell stories praising his good qualities and so on, he relies on instinct for every other aspect of trail running. His natural instinct in a dog/bear/wild turkey/cougar attack is to rely on Tactic #3. In the rare event that he might not be able to escape completely unscathed, he will rely on Tactic #Jim, quite simply: push someone down and run. Tactic #Jim can also be modified to include any of an assortment of sayings as you run from the soon-to-be victim: "Peace Bitch", "Oops", and "Don't hate the player, hate the game" all come to mind.

So where was I? Oh yeah, after relaying the entire thread to Nancy who certainly didn't give a rat's ass (thanks for listening though), she started to say "I've never been in that situation..." [insert the loud, deep bark of an untethered man-killer]. Instinctively, I put myself directly into harm's way, preparing to command the dog to stop or at least allow it to gnaw my delicious neck meat while Nancy escaped. Fortunately they had one of those electonic dog fences around the property so the dog stopped well before the first drop of pee hit my sock.

After that, we dodged large trucks heavily laden with logs and road construction machinery. I almost stepped into a snake den hidden by a bale of hay. It turned out that there was no snake den there, but I would have certainly stepped right into it if there had been.

When we returned to the cars, the girls soccer practice was nearly wrapping up. Thanks a lot Nancy, I missed the whole thing. I bragged about my new Nalgene bottle complete with sippy-cup insert. I was so excited about this sippy-cup thing because I usually spill half of my drink all down my face and onto my chiseled abs (which makes the mascara six-pack enhancement lines run). In a quick demonstration of my awesome new toy, I proceded to dump Gatorade all down my face and shirt. It turns out that there is still a limit to how far back you can tip the bottle before it comes out the air-hole side of the sippy-cup thingie. Stupid sippy-cup thingie should have come with a warning. What if I was drinking bleach? I would have ruined my new shirt!

Well, that's all I have to say about that. My ruling is final.

-Judge Sunshiney Ass