Nearer my quad to thee

The Resident Fan Boy looked out at the pouring rain this morning and laughed mean-spiritedly.
"It's raining on all those damned runners," he said.

We learned a long time ago to avoid downtown Hades on "Race Weekend". There are several. As Ottawa (and other cities) have moved away from church-going and temple-attendance, the weekends are being taken over by the Tabernacle of the Body, and the fact that other people may actually have places to go to is swept aside along with many transit routes and streets, to accommodate Saturday and Sunday morning jocks so they can get their endorphin fix and systematically destroy their joints. It's not like they are ever going to grow old, after all.

Early in our sojourn in Hades (please, please let it be a sojourn...), we forgot about the Race and attempted to attend the Resident Fan Boy's church downtown. After realizing our mistake and managing to disentangle ourselves from the big bus detour on Mackenzie King Bridge, we tried to cut through Confederation Park on foot, struggling to make our way up Elgin Street through a maze of bodies in shorts and leggings. All doing quadricep stretches without checking behind them. It was like zigzagging amid hundreds of mechanical dipping birds; you never knew when someone's Nike-clad foot would shoot up to a casually reaching back hand. Ouch.

That's right, just keep on with your single-minded pursuit of bodily perfection, folks. Don't mind us.