For now, this quiet pre-dawn drive takes me the back way down silent side streets. Occasionally I will pass a jogger wearing bright colors or a walker with a headlamp, athletes trying as diligently to avoid being hit as I am trying to avoid hitting them. Once in a great while I might even see an early morning dog walker (sometimes still in his or her pajamas), but, generally speaking, my morning commute is tame and serene.
Until today.
This particular back road runs parallel to the two main highways: routes 28 and 125. It's a peaceful alternative to the traffic crawl on one highway and the break-neck drag races on the other. As I near my turn, a road so deep in the woods that it was blocked one recent morning by an errant fallen tree, I am surprised by the sight of a woman running full tilt through the darkness.
She is not dressed in jogging attire nor is she rushing to keep up with a dog. Nope, she is racing around the snow-banked lane in a mid-length puffy coat, complete with fur-lined hood. Under one arm is her pocketbook; under her other arm is a yoga mat.
As I prepare to turn down the same small street as is she, a pack of women similarly dressed comes careening out of the darkness and races down the road after her. Twelve or so women, all dressed in street clothes, all wearing puffy winter coats, all carrying bags and yoga mats, running as fast as they can, like their yoga pants are on fire.
This is the strange part.
I stop mid-turn, completely flabbergasted. These women are all wearing dark clothing and dark coats, and they're running to somewhere. Stranger, though, is the realization that this means they are also running FROM somewhere. Where did they come from? I mean, I can surmise that they're running to someone's house for a private yoga class. This is that type of a hoity-toity town. But ... a dozen of them? With the same coats? Flying along at the ass-crack of dawn?
I start wondering if maybe they're escaping from some maniac. Should I stop my car and inquire after their safety? I don't know -- seems like if they're dressed in puffy coats, there couldn't have been such a dire emergency that they'd take the time to dress or grab yoga mats. It can't be a PTO event or a mothers' breakfast. It's too early for the first buses to have even come by yet. How do I know? I know because I take this route as a way to avoid school bus traffic.
Slowly the car and I both recover, pass the gaggle of women (who appear cheerful), and continue on the way to work, the car on autopilot and me shaking my head and quietly whispering, "What. The. Fuck. What the serious fuck did I just see?"
In the few years that I have driven to work this way, I have never seen anything like the gauntlet-running housewives. But, if there's anyone out there in the vicinity of Holt and Prospect Roads who would like to explain this to me, I'm not going to lie to you: I'm curious as all hell to know the reason for the spectacle that I witnessed.
Unless, of course, they were running to meet Rosemary's baby. In that case, forget I asked. Forget I even wrote about it. Forget it all. So help me, if Minnie Castevet comes knocking on my door, I'll hunt you all down faster than those women in the puffy coats and wrap your bodies in yoga mats (which is quite possibly what those women were doing in the first place...).
