After a brief (or non-brief – you be the judge) hiatus, I’m back, baby!

I will have a follow-up post on what transpired during my hiatus.[1] Full disclosure: the hiatus was purely voluntary, and nothing bad prompted it – I was just tired of doing this and needed a break. To quote myself, these posts started to feel like “they’re just another box to check” (see this post).

As is becoming familiar, today’s post was prompted by a run. But first, some setup.

Setup

I visited my grandparents today (and I visited my other grandparents yesterday). They’re all doing well, which is exciting! Yesterday was the first time in more than a year that I had visited those grandparents un-masked – we’re all fully-vaxxed.

Yesterday I ate a lot. I typically eat a lot, but sometimes I feel like I’m not getting enough to eat when I’m doing a lot of running. I think I had an approximately 2500–3000 calorie lunch, which is crazy for nearly anyone, myself included. I’m pretty sure I still felt full this morning.

I typically eat a lot, but sometimes I feel like I’m not getting enough to eat when I’m doing a lot of running. I think I had an approximately 2500–3000 calorie lunch…

The visit at my grandparents’ yesterday was a lot of fun. We got to talk and visit, and I also saw some of my cousins, and my aunts & uncles. (Again, all vaxxed, so fear minimally, dear reader.)

We drove back yesterday, too, and then I ran. Yesterday’s run was uneventful, albeit slow since I was faster the previous day.

Then today we visited my other grandparents (just my family this time). Again, I was presented with the opportunity to eat a lot, so I seized it. This was probably the longest visit we’ve had with them in more than a year, and definitely the first time we’ve had anything substantial to eat with them in more than a year. Since I went off to school in January 2020, I probably hadn’t done anything like this with them since at least then, so even longer than just since March 2020.

Since I went off to school in January 2020, I probably hadn’t done anything like this with them since at least then…

I didn’t realize the visit would be so long, and I really wanted to run today, so the fact that I wanted to run kind of cut the visit short-ish. I think things were winding down anyway, and I didn’t get much pushback, so I think it was OK.

Running

We got home kinda late; this is probably the darkest run I’ve done in several years (though I sometimes run in the early morning, and I remember one September night in 2016-ish when it got really dark and I ran really fast). It was a beatiful day for a run – there’s been a ridiculous amount of rain, but the sky was beginning to clear when I started running.

The first mile-plus passed uneventfully: I, y’know, saw people, and it was light, and cars were acting like cars. Then, things got eerie.

I, y’know, saw people, and it was light, and cars were acting like cars.

I didn’t notice at first, but after the last person I saw in that first mile-plus, I saw no people. I did see cars, but the cars were somehow acting like NPCs (non-player characters) – just cruising around, headlights on, not beeping, not swerving. Only later did I realize, too, that I don’t remember seeing any people in the cars. This is not to say that people were not in the cars; in all probability, people were in the cars, since people are basically always in driving cars, and the probability of nobody being in any of the driving cars I saw would be very low probability, to say the least. Rather, I just have no proof that people were in the cars.

About two miles into this potentially people-less existence, I realized that this was unusual. Between the wet, the peopleless-ness, the lack of traffic (and the lack of wildness in the traffic), I heard little aside from my own step-steps and the ksshhh of passing cars.

Then, I started to pay more attention. No cars got close enough for me to look inside and see whether people were, in fact there. Adding to the eeriness, I was able to see my breath. Being a cool night, this was not too shocking, but being a humid, late May night, this felt off.

After several miles, I turned into what’s usually a more populated neighborhood. Were lights on? Yes. Were people there, though? Based on inference, probably, but based on proof, I had none. I saw no people, I saw no shadows of people in windows, I heard no voices of people.

The experience probably hit “peak-eerie” as I approached a traffic light. By now, I had spent more than 30 minutes floating through what felt like a non-populated landscape of some half-finished video game. Between the lack of a non-diffuse light source (the sun had set, and the sky’s gray was only providing some minimal, shadowless light), the absence of people, and the too-regular behavior of cars, imagining I was exploring some nearly-finished gamescape that was only waiting for some finishing touches and for some slow-poke dev to add characters didn’t take much pretending. Initially, I thought the twin red lights were the taillights of a car, just sitting there.

… imagining I was exploring some nearly-finished gamescape that was only waiting for some finishing touches and for some slow-poke dev to add characters didn’t take much pretending.

Wow, I thought, these game designers really didn’t even take the time to animate that car.

Eventually I realized/recalled that this was a traffic light. This realization reduced the eeriness of there being some idling car just sitting there, but it kind of enhanced the eeriness of there having been literally no evidence of human life, save myself, for a little while. (After I had turned off a major road, by this point I hadn’t even seen cars, peopled or not, for several minutes.)

I looked to the left: no cars. I looked to the right: no cars. (Normally, this intersection has cars). I continued on. As I crossed, I looked side to side, just in case some car happened to trundle along. For whatever reason, I found myself enthralled by the glint of the green light on the pavement and through the still-misty air. Since I was running, I continued on (the experience with the rainbow shows that, historically, continuing running takes significant precedence over investigating something cool).

But I did take the time to look back once more. I noticed now that the red, too, was reflecting off the road, pooling with the green (theoretically making yellow at this intersection, though I didn’t notice), and glowing through the mist. The stillness, the quiet, and the alone-ness of it all – despite the fact that I was in a well-populated neighborhood – make this, for me, my lasting impression of the run.

Then, people. A pair of adults playing some yard-game outside, a car, and a man in a garage. All felt somewhat NPC-ish, but the eeriness, at least, was now broken. I returned home, less shaken since I had definitively returned from some oddly and surprisingly people-less world, but still imprinted by the unexpected aloneness that I had found (without looking for it) on tonight’s run.

I returned home, less shaken since I had definitively returned from some oddly and surprisingly people-less world, but still imprinted by the unexpected aloneness that I had found…

Wrapping things up

Anyway, I don’t see any metaphor or deeper meaning to this, but it made for an unusual and unexpected end to the day – it was all a little fun but a little eerie, and when the uncanny silence and aloneness of everything really set in at the traffic light, that was interesting!

[1] This post actually ended up covering a lot of what went down, so I am probably not going to make a follow-up post. We’ll see, though – I’m unpredictable that way ;).