Neighborhood walkers explain Tuesday's results

Good decisions require good judgment  

Today's run (street): 3.2 miles

Happy Veteran's Day.  This is a holiday that actually means something and I always take the time to appreciate the men and women who have served our country. I'm disappointed that our country will soon be led by a man who has neither served nor sacrificed, but thinks it's okay to insult Gold Star families and expresses disrespect for war heroes, "because they got captured."

As I ran through my neighborhood this morning, I thought about Tuesday's election result and the fact that close to half of American voters voluntarily chose a woman-hating racist over his far more qualified opponent. That had made no sense to me until I rounded a corner and saw two people walking abreast on the right side of the street.

It clearly didn't occur to this pair that they had better, smarter and safer choices, such as the sidewalk. If they absolutely had to walk on the street, they had the option of staying on the left side where they could see oncoming cars rather than trust the drivers behind them. I'd never understood why people will make such clearly bad decisions until I saw the election results on Wednesday morning. I finally understand that many people just aren't smart enough to anticipate the consequence of their actions.

Do I think people who voted in the president-elect are stupid? How about people who walk on the right side of the road and trust that distracted drivers aren't going to run them down? That's not for me to say. But I will suggest that both are examples of bad judgment, something usually correlated to low intelligence.

Running election scenarios on the treadmill

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

This is a running blog and not a platform for my views on politics. However, today's treadmill run had me thinking about the scenarios that would play out based on the results. In an effort to get going on my run as quickly as possible, I resisted the temptation to flip on the TV or look at my smartphone to see the election outcome. So at 3:45 AM I was distracting myself from my run, wondering whether we'd have a new president or a shift in the control of Congress or the Senate.

I finished my run by 4:10 and a few minutes later I had my answers. I'll admit that I was pleased with the results, and especially happy that both Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their respective races. That's not a partisan view, plenty of my Republican friends feel the same way as me. 

My positive perspective from the election and a pretty good treadmill run was dashed when I reached my local train station. I discovered that the train that I'd planned to make was canceled due to equipment problems. That meant a half hour's wait in the cold, followed by a train packed like sardines. 

It's day nine and still no power to my home, long lines at gas stations and the LIRR running on a "modified" schedule. But in the long run, everything will return to normal. Although for the LIRR, normal is never all that great.