"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

Monday, September 08, 2008

Fun Guv wants me to posts about things like......

ok, first a small story, i heard this one a few weeks ago and wish i knew who the original author was but....

....little boy and his grandfather are walking along a beach after a high tide. As they walk, the boy picks up starfishes that the tide had washed up on the beach and flings them back into the surf.

The grandfather asks the boy ",what are you doing?"

"I'm saving the starfishes," he replies.

"but son, there are thousands of starfishes washed up on the beach. You won't be able to save enough to make a difference."

The little boy nodded in agreement and the two continued their little walk.

A few minutes later, they came upon a starfish on the beach. The little boy stopped and thought for a moment. He picked up the starfish and threw it into the surf. He looked at his grandfather and said.

"It made a difference to that one"

No. Let's move on from the story. back to what Fun Guv wants me to post about.

See this story reminds me of a few things, like how we reap what we sow....

Fer'instance....is it irony or poetic justice that a lawmaker should spend years of their life devoted to the notion that abstinence should be the only birth control method taught in school and wind up with a knocked-up teenage daughter???? What difference can another teenage pregnancy make?

and let's get going on "America First". What does this mean???? Apparantly, it doesn't mean buying American things...like maybe cars. As a crazy McCain child, adult not teenage, goes out and buys a Toyota cause well, it's a hybrid. i think some hybrids are made by american car companies. But what difference can one car make????

Anyway....on to the cool thing lately....Thanks Great Lake Running Gal, for the pictures of yours truly finishing up the aptly named "This Sucks" leg of "Dances with Dirt"

Let's give a brief report on the race. i ran three legs of the 100K relay. i was given leg 2....Butt Kicker.....a brutal narrow pathway up and down an impossible number to count hills. Open areas filled with poison ivy and lot's of ducking of tree limbs. Except for the one i didn't duck from, only to wind up with a bruised forehead and scratches on my right eyelid. one trip on a root, with a fun roll, and one run through 5 inch depth mud pit (no problem) on this nasty little 4.5 mile run.



Then came leg 6....i wanted the bog and i got the bog...."This Sucks" 5.7 miles long, with a teasing first 3.5 of nasty hills, from the dry, unshaded tops to the humid, muggy valleys this was a long antipication to....

Bog One....slightly above my knees in depth and about 15 feet across. i took a step and fell face first in. This one was the shallowest but also the thickest to get through. Maybe it felt that way being the first....

then a shuffle through some woods to....

Bog two....slightly above my waist, i little wider and like trying to walk through pudding, only with mosquitoes and nasty stagnant water smells.

Then a quick wander through about 3 inches of mud for a couple hundred yards to, the big one....

Bog three.... This one had a little bit of a back up, as a few people were trying to gingerly enter on my right side. So i went left and took a big leap on the side and ended up....in chest deep bog. Thank gawd my feet hit solid ground as i sank. This was the oddest feeling, it was real thick but a was able to work through the quicksand-esque pit. Amazingly, as it got shallower, like waist deep, the bog was thicker and harder to get through. The dig up the side to get out of the bog was essentially a crawl.

Then, boom out of the crap and on to a nice little unshaded, flat trail, to finish up at a local school. Just enough time to allow the mud to bake in on a sunny day!!!!




It may have been the most fun, i've ever had!!!!! Notice the "white" socks and "white" running shoes. There's even mud in my teeth.

My last leg was Leg 12....Vertigo....dry, weird....but...extremely hilly. Too hilly to run down the steep trails. It was mostly a run up, with a little skip down, while using little trees to help slow me down and balance. This last one was 3.5 miles, and even though it was dry...it was still fun.

So our team finished it 10 hrs and 31 minutes.....We all crossed the line together and recieved some awesome finishing medals....a couple pizzas and a 2 liter of coke.

"Dances with Dirt" is the most fun i have ever had at the running event and no single blog post can do it justice.....

If you ever get a chance to run a portion of this baby....do not hesitate to go.

Thanks for reading.

2 comments:

Nitmos said...

That looks like a hoot! Congratulations.

You wore your Garmin into the mud??

Anonymous said...

Nice post and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you as your information.