College Joke and a running tale...

Here's a joke that I heard in college (though it is humorous, I should note that this is not CollegeHumor.com - my lawyers told me to say that):

A physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician are sitting outside and see two people enter a house.  A little while later, three people come out.  
The physicist says "Eh, the initial measurement was off."
The Biologist says "My God!  They must be reproducing!"
The Mathematician says "Well, if one more person goes in, then there won't be anyone in the house."

I told you that story to tell you this story.

So, I've been doing a bit of running over the last month or so.  In my mind, I had two options:  1 - Get up crazy early so that I can be back and showered by the time the youngin wakes up so that I help with the morning duties.  OR 2 - Wait until the youngin goes to sleep, and then go out.  The problem is the latter option is that by the time we get the youngin to sleep, I am pretty much wiped out.  So, I'd never actually go running.  Given this choice, there wasn't a choice.  I've been getting up at 5 and out the door by 5:10.  Eesh.

So, needless to say, there's not a lot of people on the streets.  When I first started, I generally only passed one old guy and maybe another guy with a dog.  I don't think that the former was actually exercising.  I think that he had a bad case of insomnia and just didn't have anything else to do.  :-)

Anyway, about a week in, I was running along thinking "Man, I wish that there were other people running.  It would be nice to see some faces every morning."  Then I happened to look down and see a coiled snake that had apparently just noticed me as well.  Well, needless to say I jumped into the air with a "Gah!!" and kept going.  Literally like 30 seconds later, I was passed by two somewhat amused ladies.  (I didn't hear them coming up from behind since I was wearing earphones.  Oh, Maynard - you inspire me!)  I always do find a way to make a good first impression.   Over the next week I saw the ladies pretty much every time that I was out.

Then, about two weeks later, I had noticed that there was another lady.  I thought "OK, good.  That'll be some smiling(ish) faces that I can see every day."  Then, I went on about a week hiatus.

Yesterday, I came back from hiatus (ouch - remind me not to take breaks in the future), but no ladies.  O well.  And today, I got all the way out to my far point, no sign of the ladies.  Then, when I turned around, I saw them bearing down the hill at me.  Ever see "The Warriors"?  Cuz it felt like that.  There were freaking 5 of them in the group now.  As the biologist in the above joke said "My God!  They must be reproducing!"

So, now if I can use my Mathematics degree, I can extrapolate that the ladies running group membership is growing on an exponential curve.  By the end of the year, their population will hit well over 1,000.  Then, we are all doomed.

(PS - Yes, I did think of the old joke about the ladies' running group.  No, I didn't think that it was appropriate to include it in the blog.)