On Saturday morning, we rediscovered our old college schedule of getting up early and hauling ass to class, except this time we went to Elgin for a Sausage Run. I loved the morning drive, creeping out of night across the hills, still blanketed in fog. It’s so breathtaking, this yawn of daybreak. I usually sleep through it, as do my children; we are a family that wakes up twenty minutes before school starts, and somehow this works for us. But to see what I’ve been missing makes me want to curb my nocturnal habits. Passing by our neighbors along the road, little glowing windows inside each shadowed house reminds me of forgotten habits: frosty morning jogs along Balckburn avenue in Providence, cats on the prowl in driveways that I pass, concert flyers waving on telephone poles, and showering before breakfast; the opposite sequence to my current routine, a thousand miles south.
Ford, quietly pouting in the center of the universe, was disappointed that the race didn’t include him. So we pulled back, letting him sprint every now and then through the old town streets and across train tracks. I even gave him my number, and trailed behind him through the finish line. I want to be the family that runs together. It’s a lifelong sport. And my hip was killing me so this made good pretense. He ate it up.
A proper fun run, this race divvied up a kegger at the finish line along with steaming pork sausage (note: the best in Texas) and while I dislike eating pork, I couldn’t resist pints of beer and hot sausage to follow the trail of woodsmoke that carried me from start to finish along the uninspired smalltown route. Even better: a bounce house for the squirts to decompress while we shotgunned refreshments.