I can’t believe I’m writing about this. I told Urbain this story and he insisted I put it in the blog.

The other day I was out on my semi-daily run. It had been a long day at the school, building a second floor in one of the rooms for an office, and it was dark when we rolled back to the farm, but I still felt the urge to expend some energy. So, I suited up in my spandex cow-print skiing suit I use for running in chilly weather (didn’t return it to my high school ski team…), put some layers over it so I didn’t look like a complete jackass, and set off along the backroads of Lo (they’re all backroads). I knew something was up as soon as I left, though… I knew I shouldn’t have eaten all those peanuts at the school…

Well, it was going smooth enough, I had made it about halfway through the 14 km loop, my headlamp bobbing and spraying light ahead of me so I could see where I was. I knew something was up, though, as soon as those first rumblings deep within started. It was mild at first, but then came the crippling ones. You know, the kind that stop you dead in your tracks, make you clutch onto a handrail and raise your eyebrows for that “Oh, shit” look…

I had just turned off from a main road, passed a barking backyard dog, when the point of no return hit. There was no way I was making it home before something terrible happened. I scrambled into a narrow strip of trees and brush by the (luckily) quiet road, tore through brambles and thorns, and pinballed off trees to reach seclusion. Struggling with the damn cow suit was an epic battle; I couldn’t just ‘drop trou’ and let loose. No no no, I had to remove all those layers, zip down the middle of my torso, peel my arms out of the sleeves, and get free. Five layers in all. Well, with a fraction of a second to spare the duty was done. I was a free man. No sign of a struggle, no incriminating evidence. I had succeeded in the most harrowing of situations, against all odds, and at the same time revived a lost art once intimately entwined in human behavior. It was an epic forest-shit.

This has nothing to do with the story, but this is my (Phil’s) barnyard drumset