On a rainy, dreary Friday morning, I'm sitting in a quaint coffee shop in Johnson City, TN, waiting on my coffee. Open Door Coffee House. Voted best coffee house in Johnson City five years running. I've been to dive bars but dive coffee houses? Is that even a thing? Either way, good coffee though not great. Very friendly staff. Nice atmosphere. Odd location. Off the main drag on an old side street with businesses that likely have seen better days. Bays Media. A barber shop. You get the idea. 3.7/5.
Why Johnson City? JP has a wood bat baseball tournament in the try-cities region this weekend (Johnson City, Bristol, Kingsport). That's the good news. The bad news? The weather. It rained all last night and this morning, although for now, it's overcast with no rain. The forecast doesn't look good, though, and I've prepaid for the room at the Holiday Inn Express where we're staying.
Even if we don't get any baseball in, I'll get a weekend away with JP. That's something that doesn't come along very often, if ever. I'll take it and enjoy it, for sure. This is the travel baseball life, I guess. Average hotels in distant towns.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was waiting to pick JP up from work at the MBA sports camp, I ran into Dr. Cirillo, a latin teacher and one of the cross country coaches. He recognized me - again, I'm officially JP's dad, which I love - and we chatted briefly. Like all of the teachers and coaches I meet at MBA, he was friendly, respectful, and kind. JP already likes him and the other cross country coaches, too. It's such a blessing to have my son taught, coached, and mentored by men and women he respects and who care about his development.
JP's been running most mornings since summer vacations started. Up on his own and out the door at 6 a.m. Four miles, five miles, all over the neighborhood. As a longtime runner, it's cool to see him expanding his routes just as I've don't over the years. We live in a neighborhood and area of town with many, many places to run - leaving from our house - and I'm happy to see him discovering new routes of his own.
He ran to Rose Park earlier this week, did a track workout, then ran home. He's run by USN and stopped to say hi to a former teacher of his who was working a summer camp there. He's run to Vanderbilt and into the garage, where he paused to watch part of a Vanderbilt baseball game, with others, from a vantage point high up in the garage.
That's one of the cool things about running, to me. It takes you places you never planned on going and, eventually, your running history is a giant patchwork quilt of all of the runs you've been on and all of the places you've seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment