Bend It Like Back, Man

Sloth was the theme on Saturday, which turned out to be love/hate relationship. I badly needed the rest, but for someone who's used to being physically active, it was anathema to the system.

Sunday I made up for it with about 4 miles of walking spread out over an afternoon. It felt good, even if the surroundings (suburban mall central) weren't the most scintillating.

Close to the end of the day, I ended up walking out of the parking lot next to the COPIA Gardens. On a late Sunday, the parking lot was pretty much empty. Every parking space row was bracketed by concrete islands containing trellises with grapes of unknown variety in full bloom .

Nearing the street where my car was parked, I spotted a soccer ball in the grass next to the sidewalk. It seemed an odd place for someone to leave such a thing, not that it was in the best of shape (it could have used a few good thrusts of the air pump) nor the most expensive in its category (the typical black multi-sided shapes were painted as opposed to embossed onto the surface.)

I'm a crappy soccer player. Most any single-digit-aged kid in your typical soccer league could whip my ass dribbling the ball down the field.

But hey, I had an empty parking lot, a slightly flattened soccer ball, and only a few immovable islands and grapevines to give me any resistance. Who couldn't resist dribbling the ball around the lot for a revolution or two?

At the end, I was reminded that I'm still in recovery. My back area where the extraction had taken place 10 days prior was feeling just a little bit sore. I was breathing a little bit hard. But I was feeling quite a bit alive.

I put the ball back where I found it behind that clump of grass. I figured someone else needed to be lucky enough to find one of the best and most simple of treasures.