THE LAST FIVE ...

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Friday, Apr. 19, 2002 - 2:27 p.m.

Back on the run, finally

Now this is spring.

I slept comfortably last night, enjoying the breezes from the open window now that the temperature has plummetted to a more spring-like mid-70s. It's supposed to be 60s and 50s through the weekend and into next week, which is tolerable. I'm not ready for consecutive weeks of 80-degree heat.

But at 9 a.m. today I couldn't sleep anymore, for whatever reason. I'd watched Survivor and Will & Grace before exercising a little and going to bed at 3 a.m. Today I got up and continued with the Get In Shape plan and did push ups and situps before the front door opened and in walked Lori, my roommate, who was just returning -- at 9:20 a.m. -- from a night on the town. I'd known last night that she was going out with some friends for a few drinks, and she'd told me she expected to be home around midnight. When I walked in a little after 1 a.m., her bedroom door was open and the lights in the apartment were dark. So I figured she stayed at a friend's place. Or a club. Whatever.

So I left on a run and Lori settled in to breakfast. I went downstairs and out onto Hilliard Ave., crossed the street and the parking lot to the walkway along the Hudson River, the New York skyline standing in the haze across the river. It was cool along the water, with a mild breeze making the low-70s temperatures feel even nicer. I jogged south, past the Whole Foods supermarket and a condo complex and down to another waterfront shopping center with a couple of ferries docked and now serving as restaurants and bars. A short way beyond the boat restaurants the walkway ended. It continues like this all along the Bergen/Hudson county shorelines -- a public riverfront walkway broken up by private waterfront landowners who do not want to allow a public thoroughfare past their stores, apartment complexes and plants -- as in the big Hess Oil refinery a little further down the road.

So I turned back and ran to the point where I'd begun, and where I'd left a bottle of water sitting in the shade beneath my car, and drank it as I walked north, the other way, along the walkway, the George Washington Bridge crossing over the Hudson to the Bronx ahead of me. I could see the slow traffic of the upper level, where all the commercial vehicles are required to travel since Sept. 11, and the 18-wheelers were crawling.

As I passed a marina, the workers were moving a sling into position to raise a boat from the water and place on a trailer attached to a truck, both with Pennsylvania plates. I watched as the big contraption moved to the water, lowered the harness into the river, and the boat was moved into position. The harness was raised, lifting the boat out of the water, and then the aparatus moved across the parking lot to the trailer, where the owner guided it into position.

With that, and my water nearly gone, I turned and walked back to the apartment and had some breakfast while straightening up my room and getting ready for work and the weekend.

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