Funny things happen when I run.

If there's one thing that I enjoy about all of this running I've been doing lately, it's the opportunity to observe all the quirky things that people do.

For instance, today I went to a nearby neighborhood park and ran the adjacent trail and ran into a myriad of folks.

Aha! A picture of part of the trail that I ran today!

The first person I ran into was a man and his dog.  It was one of those situations where I was trying to calculate when it would be appropriate to make eye contact and move along.  Living in the south, and especially Texas, people do not simply ignore each other.  I was taught at a young age that you always smile and wave at people when they cross your path, even if you don't know them.  It's a shining example of southern hospitality.  I can always tell if someone is from up north or a big city because they tend to be the ones who give me a "WTF, do I know you?" look.

But I digress.  I found the situation a bit funny because as I  could see that the man was trying to calculate the exact same thing.  I could see it on his face, as I'm sure he could see it in mine, but luckily as we got closer (thanks to the velocity of my running) he smiled quickly, said hello, and I did the same.

For some reason, the fact that I was running made it less awkward.

Then a few minutes following that I saw a man and a woman walking.  The man was kind of puny looking, and definitely a backwoods Texan native (anyone that sports a confederate flag shirt automatically is) and the woman was taller than him, and about 5 times my size.  It was a bit comical because as the man saw me approach he immediately ducked behind the woman and walked behind her, a good 50 feet before I actually passed them.  As per usual, I smiled and waved because I was too out of breath to give a proper hello, and went on my merry way.  The woman warmly returned my greeting while the man just looked at me sheepishly.

When I was sure they were out of earshot I had a good chuckle at the silliness of the situation.  You could obviously tell who wore the pants in that relationship.

I passed a handful of snooty "power walking" ladies that looked at me with unwarranted disdain, but whatever.  They were just jealous of my defined calf muscles.

Little encounters like these make running all the more fun.  I enjoy people watching, and now that running doesn't make me want to hack up a lung or fall over from exhaustion, I can do it more often.