Return to the roots

Back to the downtown circuit today — mostly because I wanted to pick up the hair scrunchi (or whatever those things are called) that’s been lying in the Cottage Medical Plaza lot since last weekend. But it was worth it. One good item, which the hair thingy is, makes my day, and I found a couple other goodies to boot.

 But today provided a couple notable photo ops, or so I think. First was the sign in front of Central Congregational Church — Galesburg’s coolest-looking church — inviting Knox College students to attend worship. At the risk of stereotyping and/or pissing off some folks (not usually a big concern for my mouth or pen/keyboard anyway) I’ll observe that I find it ironic that our local liberal arts colleges — Knox and Monmouth — founded with deep Presbyterian connections, have grown to embrace the “liberal” tag more than their religious roots. I know, to an extent I generalize, but I think a cursory overview of the student body at either school, but particularly Knox, and the institutional philosophy of these colleges — OK, MC does still have a chapel and a chaplain — will uphold my assessment.

Anyway, Central Congregational Church on the Public Square shares a common ancestry with my church, First Presbyterian, Prairie and Ferris streets. And both churches today court the students of Knox. I know we have and have had several Knox students among our congregation over the past few years. And I thought it pretty cool that Central Church, just a couple blocks away from campus, openly woos those in the purple and gold.

The nice thing about photo ops is that I get a brief breather. Now, I make it a point of pride anymore to run pretty much non-stop (photos and scavenges notwithstanding) for the duration of my exercises. But it really is a relief to catch my breath during a short stop to grab a photo. 

 The downtown leg was otherwise uneventful and uninteresting. But as I headed north on Prairie Street approaching the railroad tracks, I saw a guy standing on the “bridge” over Cedar Fork by Anderson Cleaners, watching some activity there. A city? Crew was cutting down the trees and brush between the drive-thru lane and the top edge of the Cedar Fork concrete channel. I don’t know why. Perhaps the roots of the trees were a threat to the concrete. Maybe it was considered unsightly. Maybe the vegetation was encroaching on the dry-cleaners’ drive. Whatever. I think it a shame most anytime nature is rooted out for no apparent good.

Let the earth thrive and we shall survive (Listen to Alabama's "Pass it On Down," below).     

 Today's Stats

Temp: 39 degrees F

Distance: 3.37 miles

Weekly Total: 6.37 miles

Treasure: 1 hair scrunchi (blue); 1 spoon (flattened); 1 magic glove (black); 1 Sharpie; 1 sprig plastic holly; 9 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

Ship of Fools - Robert Plant

Pause - Duke Ellington

Into the Fire (live at Gothenburg 2003) - Bruce Springsteen

Keep Me In Your Heart - Warren Zevon

The Kids Are Alright - The Who

Pass It On Down - Alabama

Radar Love - Golden Earring

Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes

Just Got Paid - ZZ Top

Movie Time

OK, it's been two weeks since the St. Patrick's Day 5k, but my video editing time is limited. So are my video editing skills. Here it is, though, just under 3 minutes from the CASI St. Patrick's Day Race. Video was shot by 12-year-old daughter No. 3, who has never shot video before. I think she did well, especially considering how darned cold it was -- thus the shaky picture.

Survival Run

What a lame day for street scavenging. OK, so I bypassed a nylon wrist strap from a camera or something and a 3-foot length of brown faux fur, but those were hardly major prizes in the world of lost and found. OK, the fur might have had a use and I may still pick up the wrist strap on a future run (it's been in the same spot for weeks if not a couple months). I guess I just wasn't in the mood to mess with trifles.

So why did I bother with the bangle? I mean, I have three others from a few months back and my daughters don't want them. They're plain and a little scratched from being trampled and ground into the pavement by car tires. But they're not in poor condition. Hey, I get it if my girls just aren't into bangles (apparently they are not, as they don't wear even the ones they've bought) and I'm sure there's more than a little reluctance to embrace my trash habit. Oh well, their loss.

The bangle goes in the Rubbermaid then; the CD hit the trash. I did hop on a bike a return to Florence Street to snap a pic of the redneck pickup with two cattle skulls affixed to the grill. It's not exactly a common sight in the Midwest and it reminded me of the big Army truck driven by the disfigured nut-job killer in last night's Netflix indulgence, "The Butcher." He had just one cow skull on his grill, though. Does that mean our local guy is twice as deadly? Twice as crazy? I'll settle for not knowing, thank you.

I recently finished "How to Survive a Horror Movie" by Seth-Grahame Smith, author of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," and I learned some valuable lessons. Actually a lot of it simply reinforced what I already knew about the subject and I'll put it into practice by not investigating that truck any further. Of course, biking up to it and stopping to take two photos already may have put me on the guy's victim radar. Let's hope not. I really don't relish the idea of torture and vivisection, thank you very much.

Today's Stats
Temp: 28 degrees F
Distance: 3 miles
Treasure: 1 gold-colored bangle; 1 CD-R, unlabeled, apparently blank; 7 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Wait for Me - Les Fleur De Lys (From Jimmy Page, "Have Guitar, Will Travel")
Paris - James McMurtry
Down Here Below - Steve Earle
Strong - Velvet Chain (Buffy the Vampire Slayer series soundtrack)
Killa - Cherish
Key - Devics (Buffy the Vampire Slayer series soundtrack)
City of New Orleans - Willie Nelson
Blue (Hawaii 1973, live) - Joni Mitchell

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Today was my lucky day. I received my race shirt from the St. Patrick's Day race in the mail. Guess that means I better wrap that video and get it up.

Well, that was my thought 13 hours ago when I started this entry. It is now 12:23 a.m. Friday and I've not made any video progress. I'm sure you'll forgive me when I tell you the delay was due to work and an extended reading session with daughter No. 3 -- "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins. We finished the first book in the trilogy, "The Hunger Games," earlier this week and just started book 2 Wednesday night. We're already well into it and it's proving just as captivating as the first.

Anyway, Thursday was a fruitful run. Besides logging a good distance and a solid start to my 30 miles in 30 days challenge for MapMyRun.com, I picked up a few interesting items off the street/sidewalk. The little Kia hubcap is in good condition, just one minor scratch, and I have a plan for it. Yet another "magic glove" -- you know those stretchy knit gloves that come in maybe two sizes to fit just about everybody? -- joins my vast collection. Add a purple fuzzy scarf and a thin black headband and you've got a pretty good haul for one day.

But that's just the beginning. The really interesting, though ultimately less useful, stuff came within a half-block stretch along Henderson Street in the vicinity of the Kentucky Fried Chicken. CDs, baby! Three of 'em. First was a home-burned Aretha Franklin disc (Happy Birthday, Aretha, by the way). It's actually spinning some tunes right now, despite some serious scrapes (as in down to clear plastic in a couple spots). Track 1 ("RESPECT") played flawlessly. Track 2 made it about halfway through and sent the player into skippy fits. More skippin' the light fantastic until Track 7, which played OK, with just one hiccup, and now Track 8 is going well. And then it falls apart until Track 15 ("Chain of Fools"), which is stumbling but trying hard.

Sadly, Josh Groban ("Closer") and The Isley Brothers ("Body Kiss") were too badly cracked, corroded and otherwise zombiefied to render any music. Groban tried. He iterated a couple prayerful syllables before he was overcome by his zombification and left speechless.

The highlight, however, came after I returned home, as I sat down to record the day's statistics and start this blog. Daughter No. 3 rushed in with the mail, which included a large bubble-wrap-lined envelope for me. Lo and behold was my race shirt from two weeks ago. Nice. I'm still pretty excited. Time to celebrate! 

Today's Stats
Temp: 30 degrees F
Distance: 4.67 miles
Weekly Total: 9.17
Treasure: 3 CDs (Aretha Franklin homemade disc, Josh Groban's "Closer" and The Isley Brothers' "Body Kiss"); 1 purple fuzzy scarf; 1 black elastic headband; 1 black magic glove; 1 pink baby sock; 1 Kia hubcap; 15 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Miss Judy's Farm (live) - The Faces
The Bed's Too Big Without You - The Police
Every Rose Has its Thorn - Poison
Poles Apart - Pink Floyd
You Keep Me Hangin' On - Kim Wilde
Rock the Boat - Hues Corporation
China Girl - David Bowie
Young Lust (Floyd Cover) - Luther Wright & The Wrongs
Near the End - David Gilmour
Darla's Sacrifice - Robert Kral ("Angel" TV series soundtrack)
Passage of Time - Rachel Portman ("Chocolat" soundtrack)
Save a Horse/ Ride a Cowboy (Dance Mix) - Big & Rich
The Hill - Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová ("Once" soundtrack)

Chachi loves Joni

But I'm not completely sure that I do. You see, I received a gift a couple years ago of an extensive iTunes library that included the complete Joni Mitchell collection. Pretty impressive. Now, I like some Joni Mitchell and I respect that she is widely respected. But, while I haven't really delved deeply into the Joni Mitchell, I find that she wears on you. 

For some folks all music is that way. My wife isn't big on listening to whole albums unless it's a compilation featuring multiple artists. I, on the other hand, can listen to some artists over and over for extended periods of time. But I haven't fallen in love with Joni. So it was a little annoying that today's shuffle list should come up with three Joni Mitchell songs, although only one was performed by her. Weird thing is, as I wrote last week, I let iTunes fill my iPod at random except for two playlists of my choosing. Yeah, the whole Joni collection is in my library, but so is the entire Led Zeppelin catalog, nearly all of The Beatles and lots of other stuff.

Oh well.

Today's Stats
Temp: 52 degrees F
Distance: 4.5 miles
Treasure: 1 orange-red washcloth, 1 blue pencil (unsharpened), 1 hand-clapper noise-maker (broken), 1 Spider-Man glove, 1 baby stocking cap, 6 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Free Man in Paris (Joni Mitchell cover) - Sufjan Stevens
In Your Atmosphere (life) - John Mayer
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite - The Beatles
Little Sister - Jewel
In the Dark - Billy Squier
Generique - Miles Davis
You're My Home - Billy Joel
Running to Stand Still - U2
Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio (Joni Mitchell cover) - Wynonna Judd

Give me a break

Special treat today: first photo of me in the red
CSC shorts by Nike that I found while running
last fall just south of Churchill Jr. High.

OK, I'm drawing a blank here on the inspiration front. Nothing special stands out about Friday's run, just that I did it. I was up late Thursday night watching a zombie movie, and spent some time piecing together the worthy bits of last weekend's race video, so I slept in and didn't hit the streets until almost 11 a.m. And the video still isn't done. Maybe sometime this weekend.

I can share some minor tales about the soft goods collected today. Very minor stories, I assure you. The dirty pink washcloth has been lying in the gutter just up the street a few doors on the west side of the road for probably a couple of months. I've seen it many times before and always passed it by. Too ratty. Too dirty. Too close to home. Finally I snatched it up. It is in pretty foul shape, but I think a washing will turn it into a usable shop rag.

The women's vest from Maurices was spotted Thursday, about four blocks away, as I biked around town on errands. I rode past it twice, going and coming, but left it lie because there were some junior high age kids playing just across the street and I didn't want to face their ridicule. Mostly I don't give a hoot what others think of my peculiar avocation, but as a bicyclist I take plenty of abuse as it is, even from kids (I was pelted with a snowball two winters ago on Martin Luther King Day) and I just didn't feel like giving them an opening.

I don't consider myself particularly thin-skinned, but it gets old and infuriating to be shouted at just because you're on a bike. I mean, people will drive by and some punk will shout something incomprehensible my direction, like it's cool to harass the guy on the bicycle. I don't get it. I want to shout back that they're the idiots spending loads of cash to tool around town in their loud, stinky car. Sometimes I just want to shoot 'em. I mean, really, live and let live, jerks. "But if this ever-changing world in which we're living, makes you give in and cry, say live and let die."

Today's Stats
Temp: 45 degrees F
Distance: 4.5 miles
Weekly Total: 9 miles
Treasure: 1 women's vest, brown (Maurices); 1 dirty pink washcloth; 1 Camel hard pack; 7 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Presence (My Heart's Desire) - Newsboys
12 For the Roses (live) - Joni Mitchell
Believe in Me - Dan Fogelberg
Holding Me Up - The Dandy Warhols
Blue Jean Blues - ZZ Top
100 Years - Five for Fighting
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
That's the Way (live) - Led Zeppelin

Pick-Me-Up

Three days off: just enough or too much? It's hard to say. My body was well rested after that killer 5k Saturday. I say "killer" because I kicked it with my time and it was chilly and windy, but the course was not tough -- straight and flat. 

A little clarification on my standing in the results is in order. I found online that I was considered 412th out of 1,253 runners. Now, in my defense of 411th, I was tied with Devin Ruark a woman from Moline. But hey, she was in the 30-34 age division, so she had at least a 10-year age advantage on me, and I had a 4-second edge on split time. So how is it she was ranked ahead of me? I'd say it was a case of "ladies first," but that's not consistent elsewhere. I was robbed. :)

The down side to three days off was that I was literally kind of down yesterday. I think I need that pick-me-up. Got it today and I'm better for it. I was saddened, however, on this beautiful day at the sight I beheld as I rounded the northwest corner of Churchill Junior High after cutting through the school property from Academy Street to Maple Avenue. A lone bike stood in the main bike rack in front of the cafeteria windows. The southern rack was empty.

I've seen the parade of cars dropping off and picking up kids at that school and others on a daily basis and it's an affront to my green sensibilities. What is wrong with kids and parents these days? I see some kids walking, which is great, but a bike is the way to go, baby. Think about it. Many parents may be (irrationally) concerned about abduction, and I suppose on foot that could be a possible, though extremely unlikely, threat. But on a bike, there's little fear of someone snatching you up for nefarious purposes -- just pedal your ass off.

OK, the soapbox is teetering under the weight of my ranting. Better step down before I fall off. But, before the usual naysayers out there chime in about the dangers of Galesburg motor traffic, I must say the streets are pretty darned safe here. The alert cyclist who makes an effort to be seen and follows at least most of the road rules should not fear for his or her safety here.

All in all it was an otherwise uneventful run. Only one neat item on the pavement and barely a handful of cans. 

Today's Stats
Temp: 45 degrees F
Distance: 4.5 miles
Treasure: 1 cardboard milk shake guy; 1 plastic Buick emblem (plain); 10 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel
My Heart Doth Beg You'll Not Forget - Broceliande
Norwegian Wood - The Beatles
If I Fell (Cover) - Evan Rachel Wood
Future Shock - Curtis Mayfield
Devil in Her Heart - The Beatles
Hard Habit to Break - Chicago
Gives You Hell - The All-American Rejects
Sick of You - Lou Reed
Seven Bridges Road - The Eagles
Why Don't We Get Drunk - Jimmy Buffett
I'm Looking Through You (Cover) - The Wallflowers
A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles

Note: I reloaded the iPod before the race Saturday. Two favorite playlists formed the foundation, then I let autofill do the rest.