The journey

I step out the front door, bundled up in several layers to try to keep warm. It is very early in the morning, still dark out, and very quiet. It is the kind of quiet you only get very early in the morning, after the late night revelers have finally called it quits, but before the early birds have crawled out of bed. It is an eerie and still quiet, like you are the only person in the city and time has stopped. A palpable solitude. I look all around me. Sure enough, not a single person. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed longer. Doesn't matter - I wasn't able to sleep anyways.

I walk down the street, hang a right, and begin heading north. I'm finally starting to wake up and a hint of excitement begins to build in my chest, but it is just a whisper. After I walk a few blocks, as yet having seen no one, I spot one, then two solitary souls up ahead of me, also sauntering north. As I carry on, one at a time, I begin to see a few more people, and then a couple. There is now a slight spring in my feet, as the grogginess slowly fades away, in part because the cold is seeping through my layering to my body. Despite the dozen or so people I now see spread over the blocks in front of me, it is still very silent.

People continue to slowly materialize out of the dark all around me, and I can just make out a few words exchanged here and there. Then, behind me, I hear a rather boisterous group turn onto the street. They aren't really that noisy, but relative to the silence before, they sound almost as if they are shouting. It's still too early for me to try to make conversation, but I perk up a little more and quicken my pace.

I take a left, walk a few blocks, and then take another right, headed north again. My brain is only starting to function , so I'm just guessing and following others. There still isn't much of a crowd, just small pockets of people, and everyone now is taking lefts and rights almost at random, slowly moving across the grid of the city towards the northwest.

And then I hear a faint noise in the distance, almost like music blaring on outdoor speakers. I walk another block; the music slowly grows louder and now I can see lines of people moving in the same direction, towards a faint light in the distance. As I walk another block, it strikes me how bizarre it all is. Thousands of people now, very orderly streaming in the frigid and black early morning towards distant lights and music. The whole scene is surreal: it's like something out of a sci-fi movie, maybe Close Encounters of the Third Kind or War of the Worlds.

As I get closer to the crowd and then become one amid the current, my energy level and emotions jump start, and the hair on my neck and arms stands on end. I have to mentally check myself to save my physical and emotional energy. But now I am finally there - my journey through the streets of Philadelphia has brought me to the start of a much longer and more intense journey through Philly. Marathon number 2 is about to be underway...