My neighborhood

I run around my home a lot, and I see a lot of familiar faces around this place, and very few of them are running. There is one other runner, an old guy, who wears a whole brightly colored workout outfit. I see him on days when I don't get up very early, and have to run in the sun. He's practically the only one in Pasadena, except when you run around the parks at Crenshaw Park, or at Strawberry Park, there are lots of runners there.

One person I see a lot is another old guy that walks with some kind of a walker/wheelchair thing, and he goes up to the corner store, and walks all the way back to his complex with just a couple of beers. I guess he gets tired, and stops and sits in the chair thing, and sometimes drinks his beer then. One time, another guy was trying to help him, and was pushing him along in his chair, going backwards, and they hit a small crack in the sidewalk and the guy spilled over backwards. I stopped my car, and got out to help, and as we were lifting him up, he was yelling, "chair now! chair now!" and nobody that was helping him had any idea what "chair now" meant. This guy walks back and forth to the store, at least 3 times a day, and only seems to get two tallboys at a time. By the time he gets home, it's almost time to go back to the store.

There is another guy, a young guy, that's probably about 20 or 25. He sometimes runs around here, but I hesitate to call him a runner. I don't think he trains for anything, and actually, I think he has some other issues. He always runs a bit, and stops and turns around, and runs again, and stops and looks at every car that drives by. The first time I saw him, I saw a group of other youngsters playing, and I thought he was being chased or something. Now I see him frequently, with the same paranoid look, but nobody else is playing in his game. I even see him at crazy hours, running at 3 or 4 in the morning, or in the middle of the day, always running like he's being chased.

Then, there's a red haired guy, who I think is homeless. Several times, I've run towards him, as he was talking to himself, and when he'd see me, he'd say, "Oh, you caught me talking to myself." And sometimes he says something about how he doesn't usually do that.

One time, there was a guy with a leg in a cast, who was just sitting outside in a wheelchair by the side of the road, with a whole case of beer, and several empty cans strewn about. I was walking my dog at the time, and we stopped and chatted a bit, and he seemed friendly enough, and we shook hands. I got the feeling he wanted to shake my hand just to see if I was too good to shake his hand. The red haired homeless guy does that too. At the end of our walk, I saw this guy out of his wheelchair sitting on the ground, just looking around. I had no idea what he was doing, until he spun around and got on his knees and peed in the bushes.

These are the people I don't really know. Lots of people in my complex know me through my dog. Everybody loves him, and always ask how he's doing, if he's not with me. He's fine, by the way.

Anyway, who's in your neighborhood?

Listening to: The Rolling Stones - I Am Waiting (Well, it happens all the time; It's censored from our minds )

5 miles yesterday, 5 today.

Keith out.