This blog blows

Really, you should be reading something else. And I have a suggestion. Check out my friend Carmen Peterson’s blog, She Runs Everywhere. It’s always fun. She spices it up with video a lot more than I do, which was about twice I think. And her videos are hilarious. She just sits and chats with you like a friend. But out of the blue she’ll pop off at one of her children, frequently Little Carmen, for doing something forbidden, like touching the camera. I love it.

Anyway, Carm’s most recent post was her 100^th and she made it special by announcing a give-away. That’s right, folks, here’s a chance to get somethin’ for nothin’. Well, OK, not prezactly nothin’. But it won’t cost you cash. Carm is giving away a paid entry in the Galesburg Half Marathon Express. The race is June 3. It’s a first for the ‘Burg and it’s gonna rock. The brilliant organizers, Dave Dunn and Nick Pigg, have melded three runs in one. You have the option of a half marathon (13.1 miles), 5K (3.1 miles) 1 mile Gator Run (named for Dave’s famous Gator Sauce, which goes great with everything from Fruit Loops to fish).

How do you win a paid entry in the race? Just like stuff. Like Carm’s blog on Facebook. Like the HalfMarathon Express page on FB. Like Go Outside and Play Running Co. on FB. The more you like, the more entries you get in the drawing. What’s not to like?

There’s a great vibe cookin’ behind this promotion. It’s a bit of positive mojo for Galesburg. Much has been said and written about the downside to the ’Burg. A lot of it is true. Some folks are working to change that, too. But people focus too much on the negative and forget about the great things this town has: low cost of living, low crime rate (especially violent crime), some great specialty shops, history (including a native Pulitzer Prize winner and ties to several presidents), friendly people, convenient proximity to larger metropolitan areas for even the excitement you can’t find here, passenger rail to the rest of the outside world (like Chicago), and on and on.

So check out She RunsEverywhere. Check out Galesburg.

Today’s story

 

Track-ball is kinda hard to see in there.

 The title of today’s entry, besides being a good lead-in to pushing somebody else’s blog, was born of the confluence of three of the first four songs in the shuffle list: The Wind, Flying and Time for Me to Fly. But that’s about as far as it goes.

The real story is about a ball. The one non-can find of the day was a foam rubber baseball. I almost passed it by; it was lying between the rail and concrete in the railroad crossing at Ferris and Cedar streets. I decided it might be the only object worth collecting for the day, so I stopped. First a couple of pix, then I tossed it into the bag and kept running.

The ball on the tracks reminded me of a story from my youth, though. My mum’s from Philadelphia and we used to visit my grandparents there every summer. The trip always included a Phillies ballgame in Veterans Stadium. We’d take the train from Huntingdon Station into Philly and transfer to the underground to get us to the park. I recall one such trip found some poor boy crying about the baseball he’d dropped from the platform down onto the subway tracks. I don’t honestly recall if it was a ball he was taking to the game in hopes of getting an autograph or if it was a souvenir from the game. Either way, he was upset. Even at the young age of 11 or 12 or whatever I was, I saw the dark humor in the wino’s suggestion to “ask the nice policeman to get your ball for you.”

The ball was lost.

Today's Stats

Temp: 62 degrees F

Distance: 3 miles

Weekly Total: 5.5 miles

Treasure: 1 foam rubber baseball; 9 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

The Wind – Billy Bob Thornton (Covering Warren Zevon)

Flying – Secret Machines (Covering The Beatles, from the “Across the Universe” soundtrack)

Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles

Time for Me to Fly – REO Speedwagon

Dance Hall Days – Wang Chung

My Love is Your Love – Whitney Houston

Studebaker – Jordan Zevon (Covering his dad) Beautiful song, informative video. Watch it.

Ya Ya – Lee Dorsey (“American Graffiti” soundtrack)

We Will Not Be Lovers – The Waterboys