After the student organization happy hour and the Arlington campus welcome barbecue yesterday evening, I decided to go running with one of my classmates. I’d been drinking and eating heavily for the previous three hours (it was FREE FOOD, which to a law school student is the equivalent of hearing “YOU’VE JUST WON THE LOTTERY. TWICE.”), so running seemed like a natural conclusion. We embarked from Arlington at around 8pm.
The first part of the run went quite well, especially if you consider the fact that I was surrounded by my very own atmosphere of alcoholic air. We ran past Arlington Cemetery and the Potomac River, and stopped to visit FDR’s memorial, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial. My energy was waning as we strolled through Foggy Bottom a few hours later, but when my friend suggested taking the Metro back to Arlington, I staunchly refused. In my warped mind, that constituted some sort of cheating – you can’t embark on a run and then get a ride home. That’s just wrong!
I overruled his objections that the remainder of the trip would be a few more miles uphill, and led him away from the Metro. Away from sanity. Away from the rationale choice.
We started running again, and ran through Georgetown and across the Key Bridge. And then I died. The remainder of the trip was a walking trip, a walking trip where I just kept moaning about how damn far it was. My friend pointed out that perhaps the Metro might have actually been a good idea, and I was forced to concede. By the end of the adventure three and a half hours later, as my legs and feet were burning in angry misery, I finally admitted that I had perhaps been a bit too stubborn, and the next time he suggested something that seemed reasonable and logical, I would listen without question.
That was probably a lie.