So I am back from Cyprus and Turkey and getting back into the old routines. Of course while I was gone it rained in Durham more than the entire year’s annual rainfall for Cyprus. Anyway, I am minding my own business running on the path on the far side of the Wear river when suddenly— zounds and gad zooks, I had a Sherlockian experience. Think Hound of the Baskersville. I suddenly step into a mud bog…. and looked like this..
I was quite literally up to my thighs in deep, thick pulling mud, sucking me down towards the river. I thought about singing ‘I’m gonna lay down my burden, down by the river side’ but instead James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim came into my brain. I’ve been in mud before, but never like this. The boys in the rowboats on the river waved to me as I sunk slowly in the bog. Pulling with all my strength, I managed to get myself out of the bog, nearly losing a shoe. I rescued everything except one sock. Only problem…. now I look like a giant mudpie and I’m still two miles from John’s college. So I ran back to the college looking like an incomplete mudpack…. producing some smiles along the way. Some day Durham will get a fair shake when it comes to rain. It won’t be anytime soon, at least the many coffee shops in town are praying it won’t be.
As for me….. I have to find a different running route now, and triple wash my running shoes and clothes. I am now having doubts that God made the first man out of mud. It made my skin crawl!
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