Jogging along San Diego Bay: I Want a Yacht

Now that I’ve finally bought a pee funnel, I think my next big purchase should be a yacht. This thought occurred to me while jogging along San Diego Bay. This is not the first time I’ve thought this. I think it every time I take a short sailing trip down the Nile in Cairo as well. I think I deserve a yacht.

Jogging along the Bay, I tried to catch as many yacht names as possible. Those yacht owners really don’t have any imagination at all. Sur la Mer, Days at Sea, Aqua Mara…really?? If I had a yacht I’d name it Shaitan (devil in Arabic), after my sister’s favorite rental horse. It would be a wild and devilish yacht, it would.

I loved jogging along San Diego Bay. The whole lifestyle they have here is just amazing to me. I started out at 6:30am. I was awake at 4 am (jet lag), but decided it would be prudent to wait till the sun came out before I left the hotel. But by the time I started, there were Californian joggers who seemed to have been at it for quite some time already. There was one group of about ten men and women going up and down a long flight of stairs at the San Diego Convention Center. Those stairs would have been just perfect for my Kilimanjaro training. What amazed me more was the ages of some joggers. I saw several older men and women. One looked like she might be around 65 and she was in GREAT shape. Another man who was probably 55 was a LOOKER. He was all-round muscular and showing it by wearing a no-sleeve T-shirt and shorts. Whew! And those gray hairs only added an extra coolness factor to the man.

My hat goes off to the women who had male jogging partners. I have no idea how they keep up with them. I’ve long since realized that what I do isn’t exactly jogging. Every single person I’ve ever seen jogging passes me by quite easily. But I don’t mind. What’s important is the thought. And I THINK I jog.

I even got two “good mornings” from complete strangers while I was jogging. Both were African-American men. The first was an older man who clearly finished his morning jog and was winding down. He seemed genuinely happy to see me. Other joggers didn’t seem to find the fact that I was a fully covered veiled woman jogging along San Diego Bay an oddity at all. Everyone just went about their morning business. I am not used to this. I jogged along the Atlantic Ocean while spending a couple of nights in Galway, Ireland last summer. The Irish looked as if there was an alien in their midst. I was the oddest thing they had ever seen and they couldn’t get over the fact. In France this past summer, I jogged a bit downtown. The French female joggers just seemed angry with me for even thinking that I could occupy the same space as them looking the way I did. All this is much better than any reaction I’d probably get jogging on the open streets of Cairo. I haven’t dared try even. I expect I’d be harassed, yelled at, or get glaring gazes of disgust. Today when I saw the 65-year-old female jogger, I started wondering what it would be like to see a 65-year-0ld female Egyptian jogger on the streets of Cairo in shorts and a T-shirt. Have you seen our 65-year-old women? Have you seen our 30-year-old women for that matter? Not something you’d want to see in a T-shirt and shorts, I promise you. No offense mes comrades. But it’s true for the vast majority.