I feel like such a bad ass right now

With the way the local news media folks are wringing their hands and speaking in dangerous but giddy tones, it can only mean one thing: the French Toast Alert level is elevated or higher. This time for Hurricane Irene.

At 6 am, I got up to pill the cat and there was nothing. The sun was peeking through, it was a bit windy and nothing. OK, so I turn on the news and I'm seeing images from yesterday, cut to news people telling everyone to stay home, images of an empty Times Square, more news people standing in storm winds and such on Long Island, back to the studio for more predictions of gloom and doom before the news people outside in Boston and on the Cape trying to pretend it's much worse than what's outside my window.

Seriously folks?

Through all the weather model maps showing tracking no one tells me what I need to know right now. So I tweet to @DavidWade: Where's the storm now? Can I get a 2 mile run in?

Nothing. Radio silence baby.

So I make the call as I recall a line from Zaphod Beeblebrox: "I get weirder things than you in my breakfast cereal."

I suit up and the rain comes. Seriously folks?! After hemming and hawing for a moment, after all, it's only a 21 minute walk/run scheduled today, I decide to go for it. I felt bad ass out there in my safety yellow BAA jacket and iphone enclosed in a baggie. It was rainy and windy with no one on the road. None of the usual Sunday morning runners, no traffic, nothing. Just me trotting along Green Day's "21st Century Breakdown" getting wet. I hit a head wind as I came around the back of the high school by the football field but for the most part, it was a rainy day run like most rainy day runs.

Except I feel bad ass because I can now officially say, "I ran through the leading edge of Hurricane Irene."

Now, when I'm hiding under the bed when the worst of the winds and rains come through at noon time with no baseball to distract, I may not feel so bold and brave. But at 7:30 am on a Sunday morning, I feel like bring it on baby!

I did 1.5 miles of (w5+r3)2+w5 in the leading edge of a hurricane and lived to tell the tale.