Catching Creepers

Give me back my night!

I've been meaning to blog about this but haven't gotten to it yet. The entire female portion of the Fort Collins running, cycling and active community has been terrorized for the past couple of months by this creep who assaulted 7 different women this fall. The Sheriff's department just yesterday announced they have made an arrest.

I hope they've got the right guy, that's not a guarantee, given the past local history of wrongful imprisonment. But if this is the guy, and I hope so, many people would like to see him strung up by his balls. Lately a lot of active women in town have been imprisoned indoors thanks to this asshole.

I love to run at night, and I usually don't let fear stop me, but for some reason this time it did. I've been having a hard time motivating myself and I really did want to run at night over the past few weeks, and even though the incidents were far from where I live and run, I just didn't feel okay about it.

It was a gut feeling. And I still don't feel too safe, I don't know why, because I always worry about copycat creepers, there have been some Peeping Toms in our neighborhood, and with another house nearby that seems to have some drug activity going on, I haven't been feeling too good about being out there by myself. The price of growth. Fort Collins is becoming more like a city.

There are enough creepers everywhere, even in daylight. I don't put up with street harassment, as I've written about in the past. The older I get, the less tolerant I get, I am of the mindset that I've endured this crap my entire life and I'm tired of it and you would think that people would have evolved by now. But it goes on. Now I just call their employer. And if I end up having to converse with them, I ask them what they would do if some asshole talked to their mother or sister or daughter or wife like that. And I can say it in two languages.

It was refreshing, though disturbing and chilling to see that one video that circulated recently on social media, the one on street harassment throughout an entire day on city streets. No, they haven't evolved.

Just this past week I encountered creepy roofers. Twice. One group of them on a church roof, and another in the neighborhood where I run regularly. The Mormon Church is having their giant roof replaced and you would think with all those kids around there on their missions, the one with their name tags designating them as "Elder" or "Sister", the church would be more careful about allowing them to be up there on the roof leering at the women. But then women haven't exactly been a priority there unless they're making babies.

Yesterday I finally got a spark of motivation, a wild hair or something, but I got out for 90 minutes of running. It was only because I had to take my car in to get the brakes worked on, so I ran home from the car dealer and then ran back to pick it up later. And both ways I have to go by the Mormon church and through this one neighborhood. I was running down one of the streets and there were a bunch of guys on the roof of this one house, and they abruptly stopped what they were doing and looked down at me. Stopped what they were doing, stood there staring, and one called out, "Hi."

Dumb creeps, on a roof. Sorry dude but I'm not rescuing you if you fall. Oops, my trauma nurse certification expired. Don't know what to do. Oops sorry forgot my phone, can't call 911. Too bad you'll have to bleed to death from your crushed skull. But that's okay, shouldn't affect your brain. Their company's liability insurer could hit the jackpot there.

I decided that if when I ran back they said anything else, I'd be giving their boss a call. But they were too wrapped up in their work when I ran back, so I spared them my wrath. Shouldn't have, but did anyway.

While I was at the car dealership dropping off my vehicle I ran into one of the doctors I used to work closely with at the hospital. We talked for a while, he couldn't believe it's been a year since I left. I think the last time I saw him was right around the time I left the hospital. He told me he's over it, ready to get out and move on, health care is so screwed up. Physicians are so frustrated. It's sad, all the focus on big data and the factory model of health care is ruining it for everyone who went into it because they wanted to give good patient care.

Lately things have been interesting with business matters, I'm moving forward on a project I am pushing in various directions at once. I'm learning so much about different aspects of business and marketing, and I have two attorneys now. I'm collecting them. So far I have a contract attorney and a patent/trademark attorney.

Soon I'll have more attorneys than toenails.

All the toenails that were going to fall off after my last race have now come off. I have seven toenails left, giving some the benefit of the doubt. Actually two of them don't really count as toenails, they are more like little cuticles, so that's five toenails.

And I narrowly avoided a panic attack at the grocery store today. I got all the stuff for my Thanksgiving fruit salad, braving Whole Foods and the parking lot from hell, and got out of there before insanity took hold. I will not be entering a grocery store again until Friday, when everyone is busy lining up and assaulting each other outside the big box stores.

Black Friday is a great day for running. Can't wait.