~10.3 miles @ ~9.4 min/mi
During the pre-dawn drive in my Mom's car to Longhorn Dam in Austin Texas the country-music station plays Chris Young's "Getting' You Home". The song triggers musings on how hard it would be for a computer's natural language system to understand the meaning of the lyric, "When your black dress hits the floor." There's rather a significant amount of context required to parse that! And my processor in turn loops momentarily during today's run around Town Lake. when I espy painted on a trash can the mysterious legend:
| COA PARD |
What language can that be? But after a few seconds I agnize (ha, another archaic-new word! it means "understand") that it's an acronym for "City Of Austin - Parks And Recreation Department".
Temps today are ~30°F warmer than they were on Saturday morning two days ago, when I started at the same time and it was freezing. A truck delivers new porta-johns to the baseball fields on Riverview St near the old power plant. I pause to enjoy one during the first mile. A pod of cheerfully-huge pregnant strollers smile at me halfway around the loop. Soon another great-with-child rolls into view, but on closer inspection there's a moustache above the big belly — this "she" is a "he". Oops!
I pause at Lou Neff Point to find the brick at the entrance to the gazebo with "Keith & Rita Zimmermann" on it, commemorating my brother's and his wife's donation to the park foundation. Burnt orange shorts, the University of Texas signature color, pull me along pleasantly for miles 5-7 until the wearer branches off to climb the stairs of Congress Avenue bridge and cut her run short. Splits by the GPS trackfile: 10:10 ⇒ 9:06 ⇒ 9:08 ⇒ 9:10 ⇒ 9:31 ⇒ 9:34 ⇒ 9:17 ⇒ 9:27 ⇒ 9:16 ⇒ 8:43 plus a short trot across Longhorn Dam back to the car (~0.38 mi @ ~9:31 pace) to get safely beyond the magic 10 mile total for the day.
(cf. 2006-07-08 - Town Lake Loop, 2010-07-16 - Lady Bird Lake Loop, 2009-07-18 - Austin Town Lake Loop, 2010-09-22 - Lady Bird Lake Loop, 2011-05-25 - Lady Bird Lake Loop, 2011-05-29 - Last Lady Bird Lake Loop, 2012-01-14 - Lady Bird Lake Loops, ...) - ^z - 2012-01-29