Run

My alarm rang at 6:10 this morning. I scratched my ass and rolled off my bed. After my teeth were brushed, my backpack stuffed with shorts, a towel, and spare underwear, my feet took me to the On Nut BTS stop. The BTS stop is about five blocks from my house. Looking out my patio window I was eye level with the train. My pass still had a few hundred baht on it so I swiped it and got on board the train. The On Nut stop is the last terminal on the line, until the expansion to the western airport is finished at least. The train was pretty crowded this morning. The BTS goes east on the sukumvit where many of the universities, schools, and foreign invested companies are. I got off two stops later at Ekkami and walk past Wat That Thorn, a school/temple and Sukumvit Hospital.

Lately the other fighters haven't been getting up as early as my arrival at 6:50 so I climbed over the fence and read until someone comes out. Issei came out a few minutes after I got in and so I went to bathroom to change. We stretched for a while and then began our slow but long morning jog. We ran down the sukumwit to soi 69 1/2 where we went left. We passed by a store that sells refridgerators, dvd players, and tvs. It was closed at 7 in the morning but the blonde haired street bum was in his usual spot across the street. The street takes a right and we follow it then take the next left down a major thorough fare whose name I don't know. Doing the run every day familiarizes me with the area, but distinct locations seem skewed. There are the two flower shops, the seven eleven where we take a left at in the afternoon, the gas station I go to when I have to take a morning shit, the metal working shop, the motor taxi drivers by the chickens, the mosque etc. We go towards the end of the road and by a bridge take a left. We walk a little bit past the morning commuters, school children, and food stall vendors. We go down some side streets and then run back up towards the sukumwit.

The passage south to the sukumwit has been a construction site, literally. The sidewalks are all tore up and bricks, broken pavement, and other implements litter the pathway. My second day of running with the Ingram kids had me fall and skin my knee. At first I thought it was embarassing but in retrospect running through Bangkok requires a good deal of concentration. The construction is usually done by a crew of four or five people each with one sorry looking tool. One guy will be holding a shovel, another a busted pick axe, the third a trowel. Most of the guys are young thai guys who dressed in jeans, converse, and sporting a piercing or two look like american hipsters.

We round back to Sukumwit and walk back to Ingrams from the Ekkami terminal. Everyday Issei, Akida, and the thai guys will wai the buddhist statue at Wat That Thorn. I don't, I'm not buddhist.

Things are a little better. My arm is okay. I'm doing what I want. Its just hard out here.