...are the stats for my run high in Scottsdale's McDowell Mountain Ranch area this morning. I left before 6 a.m. and enjoyed some wonderful views of the city lights while continuing to work off seasonal dietary transgressions past and future. And if I have a sufficient quantity of both time and insanity I might just try to repeat the experience on Christmas morning too!
'Tis the season to chortle at the last minute shoppers. Of course that is a lot more fun if you're not among them. Personally, I haven't gone Christmas shopping since December 23, 1988, when I experienced crowds and lines so severe that I still have post-traumatic stress disorder 22 years later. If I am ever in lines like that again, I had better be at Walt Disney World waiting for Space Mountain - or the Ohana buffet at the Polynesian Resort.
Of course, eating at Ohana would require even more running to make up for it afterwards...but I digress.
While I didn't go Christmas shopping yesterday, I DID go grocery shopping. I do all my shopping at a local center that features a humongous parking lot framed by Sam's Club on one side and WalMart at the other. If there's anything that I can't find at either of these stores, I don't need it. And on this particular trip I didn't expect to need much time as I only had a handful of grocery items on my list.
Actually, I didn't spend much time inside the stores. It was navigating the roiling sea of traffic in that humongous parking lot that was the time-consuming part. The good economic news for this holiday season is that myself notwithstanding, a lot of people are shopping for Christmas. The bad news is that they're all doing it at WalMart and Sam's Club. And a lot of them, like me, are obviously just browsing, because I didn't have any problem with very long lines at the cashier.
But oh those insane parking lot traffic patterns. According to Wikipedia, as of 2000 there were 202, 705 people living here in Scottsdale. Factor in our share of the people who left Michigan according to the 2010 census and my guess is we ought to be up to at least 210,000 by now. Well, yesterday afternoon, 209,999 of them including me were circling the WalMart parking lot (my wife, Lynn, was still at work).
So the moral of the story is stock up on groceries a few days in advance. On December 23, stay home.
Or go running. I had the top of McDowell Mountain Ranch all to myself this morning. Everybody else in town was still stuck at Sam's Club.
I remember when you were in a calorie deficit.
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