Running on Turkey, Tri-ing Harder, and Handicap Parking

Many of you have been asking yourself how I did during the 2009 Atlanta Marathon. What??? You haven’t been asking!? Well start damn it. I have kids to feed! Ok so I don’t have kids...but my dog needs to eat!

Ok calmed down and ready to go. The Atlanta Marathon went ok. Just ok. Sherman steamrolled the South at the end of the Civil War but I think he kind of mailed it in when he got to Atlanta. There are way too many hills. Each time I ran a hill and turned the corner another hill was right there waiting. But the last hill was fun because at the bottom you can see the Olympic Rings (1996) and you know the finish line is on the other side of that hill so you have to run. Along the way I met some interesting people including Sam (guy in the red shirt) who was the loudest person out on the course...scary considering my track record. And who can forget Samantha, our friendly course elf. Overall the race was 26.2 miles worth of well deserved Turkey. And yes that’s a turkey hat on my head. I’m not proud, but not surprisingly the same hat made a few appearances at your area Wal-Mart.


Need a goal to get you motivated? Well I need one and today I took the leap of faith and signed up for the 2010 Nation’s Triathlon coming next September. Now if I can just make it between now and then. I just completed my 19th marathon in 9 years but I have never taken on a triathlon before. Now I need to start training and figure out a few “sprint” (shorter distance) tri’s to get some experience. Let’s get it on.

Finally we go from something that may cause me to walk funny for a while to something that people have to deal with everyday, Handicap Parking. Here in DC, if you have a handicap plate or handicap “tag” for your car you can park free of charge at any metered spot in the city. Free of charge??? Yep. But it got me wondering, especially after seeing at least 8 cars in a one city block with the tags, if these people are really “handicap” or just know somebody at the DMV. I have no problem with the concept of free parking in any legal space for handicap drivers, in fact I think it’s a great benefit afforded them especially after you consider how much money they might have to spend for other basic necessities that we take for granted. But I have been looking at the expiration dates on many of these window tags and noticed that it’s not just good for a few weeks or a few months but rather a few years. A few years???? If the person needs a temporary tag because they are recovering from an injury fine....but a tag that lasts for longer is a complete joke of the system. If you are permanently handicapped you need to have handicap license plates on your car otherwise you open the door to (what I suspect is happening here) fraud and loss of city income. What is so hard about issuing a 3 month tag. If the person who gets the tag can prove (with a doctor’s letter) that they will need more time they can get an extension. If that same doctor’s note says this is a permanent condition then they can apply for new license plates. It’s just that simple. The tag is not meant to be transferred from car to car whenever the driver feels like it. Also it’s not meant for passengers. If you are a handicapped passenger, the driver should pull up to the entrance where you’re going and drop you off! You lazy #$!@#$@#$’s are screwing it up for the rest of us.

Good Day.

What’s He Wearin’ On His Head?

As promised I am delivering a preview of the Thanksgiving Day get up for the 2009 Atlanta Marathon. This is not exactly what it’s going to look like but close


Yes that’s a full Thanksgiving Day menu on my back and yes that is a hat made to look like a frozen turkey. Big Whoop...wanna fight about it?

From the Start Gun, To the Hand Gun, To a Shotgun Wedding

Sorry Nicole and Jordan...I know the wedding wasn’t under “shotgun” pretenses but I needed it to complete the title of today’s catch up post from my weekend in the deep south.

The PR
Another year and another Peachtree classic in the books and for the second straight year another Personal Record for yours truly. This year the 10k race was completed in the blurring time of 48:01 (or a 7 min 43 second per mile pace). That topped my previous PR from last year by over 3 min. The main difference I can point to this year is not having to start back in the 9th group but rather towards the front (1B). During the run I even had time to grab a couple of Moe’s T-shirts. But the best part of the morning was after my race was done, I back tracked out of Piedmont Park and began to run back along the sidewalks of the race course to get some more mileage in for the day. On the way out of the park I ended up running and chatting with another guy, Shaun, who invited me back to where his family was hanging out over near mile 4. We stopped and I enjoyed a cold Michelob Ultra (the beer that’s so close to water it IS Water) before heading back to meet the wife, SIL and MIL over at Mile 2. So 11 miles or so of running and then another 4 plus of walking with the family back to the finish line made for some tired feet. Meeting former US Senator (and Vietnam War hero) Max Cleland plus the guy near the end who gave me one of his Krispy Kreemes made up for any pain I was going through (mostly caused by mixing beer, water, and donuts).

The Firing Range
Friday was kind of a quiet day around the house so the BIL, FIL, and Scott all went a “shootin” down at the local range. I had handled 22 caliber rifles some years back so shooting wasn’t foreign to me, but I had never worked with handguns so it was quite a bit of fun. I think Carla should check Scott’s shorts for some marks as he seemed to jump a few times when he started to hear how loud the shots were. The video below is be shooting the little 380 Ruger. It always felt like it was going to slip out of my hand. I much preferred the glock. It was a little longer and had better top/bottom balance.




The Wedding
Leave it to anybody other then my Niece to steal the show. Why should the wedding be about the bride and groom (congrats to both Jordan and Nicole, we wish you lots of luck together and very few run-ins with the federales!) when it can be all about the Illana. She danced all afternoon long and when the band wanted to pack it up and go home, she went to the lead singer and said “mo pwese!” How can you turn down a request like that?? Needless to say she got a few more songs to run around to. You have never seen a kid doze off that fast in the car!

The Food
I would be remiss to wrap up this posting with thanking the food that made the trip even better. Here it is in no particular order:
Green Turtle
McDonald’s
Stacey’s Cupcakes
Sweet Tomatoes
Fox Brothers BBQ
Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer
The Chocolate Bar
Capozzi’s NY Deli
Cheryl’s Brownies
All the Food along the Peachtree Course
J Christopher’s
Bricktops
Starbucks
Moe’s

My Niece is a Germ Carrier

This is not to mention that she’s also very dainty and lady like (first time ever) when it came time to eat her first birthday cake. Instead of pulling a “Me” and smashing her head right into the cake (Mom, you can attest to this one!), she took small handfuls and “sampled” the icing. Alton Brown

would be proud to see that even at one-year old she’s mastered the “cake as an icing delivery system” concept.

We had a great time in the ATL this weekend and Bloggerman even got his first experience running the world famous “Peachtree Road Race.” This 10k runs through downtown Atlanta and as Mrs. Bloggerman said, “If it wasn’t for the start and the finish the race would have been great.” Note to the Atlanta Track Club: Either give everybody a timing chip or don’t time anybody. I thought it took a lot of nerve for the organizers of this 57,000+ runner race to announce the “winners” before our wave of runners made it to the starting line. I would point out that while it’s not likely, somebody from the later groups could have placed or even won the race (net time). But as the locals say you run it for the T-shirt. Well the T-shirt was the worst choice of the 5 designs voted on. Never fear though…Bloggerman is resourceful and it only took a few minutes after crossing the finish line that I was able to swap shirts with a volunteer. Their “race team” shirts were more along the lines of what I thought the race shirt should look like. Special thanks go out to the in-laws for housing/feeding us this weekend, to the Boigs for watching the Mookster and an extra special thanks to the folks at Moe’s at Terminal C of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport for staying open long enough for us to grab a quick snack before our flight out late Saturday. They know that the way to my stomach is through my mouth. Yeah...you heard me!

Speaking of Food….My Knish is soggy. Truth be told make it a combo. For those of you who want closure from the Wendy’s fiasco of last week…you can now rest easy. The district manager at DaveCo Restaurants wrote me a personal letter to apologize for my experience at the drive thru and to “make it right” he sent me two coupons, each good for a combo meal. I’ll forget for the record that this whole thing started out because I didn’t want the combo when I ordered and say that I appreciate not only their quick response but that they genuinely seem to want to keep me as a customer. I’ll be back but next time I’ll go up to the counter to order

Humpty Dum(b)pty Part II and So Long L’Orange

Being a Met fan I’ve tasted my share of disappointment and heartache at the hands of the Atlanta Braves, but nothing irks me as much as that insipid “Tomahawk” chop they perform by mimicking an ax motion with their arms to the beat of a Seminole war drum. It makes me wish that a tribe of Seminole warriors would rise up from hiding in the upper decks of Turner Field and rain down a barrage of arrows and slings into the fans. If nothing else it would certainly stop them from doing things that Mets fans have tried and failed at.

Specifically I’m speaking of sliding down stair and escalator rails. Last month a fan leaving a Mets game at Shea with his young daughters, decided it would be “funny” to ignore the sign on the down escalator that said “closed” and instead, slide down the railing. Yeah it was freakin’ hilarious as he slipped off and fell several stories to the concrete pavilion below and his death (which his young girls had to witness and will probably be haunted by for the rest of their lives.) Well rejoice, Brave Fan, because you proved yesterday you are just as stupid.

Today’s NY Daily News reports about Justin Hayes, a 25 year old who yesterday died when he fell several stories at Atlanta’s Turner Field while trying to “slide down a stairway railing.”

Lets see, what would inspire somebody to slide down the railings? Would it be such a love of adventure and “X-Games” that they see the railing and the potential danger a fall from said rail posses and say, “Damn the torpedoes…let’s get extreme!” (Harold and Kumar shout out!) Or can it be, possibly, maybe, perhaps, slightly, an outside chance of, an inkling of….BEER?! Even those of you who debase yourselves to read this site on a regular basis can answer that question. (For those of you who are first timers here…the answer is the latter!)

Perhaps these teams and ballpark operators might think about cutting down the amount (quantity) of beer served. They could start by limiting beer by age. The younger you are (above 21) the less beer you get. For example, a 25 year old, could only buy 2 10-oz beers at a time, while a 60 year old could buy 2 20-oz cups at once. This works kind of like car insurance. The younger you are the more you pay because you are more of a risk on the road and to your car. Further drawing this out, maybe you can get your hand stamped so that each beer you buy you get a stamp. Each person at the game (of age) gets up to 4 stamps, at which time they are cut off. I like to drink a beer as much as the next guy but even I can limit myself to a few brews for 9 innings. Just an idea.

L’orange, we hardly knew the. For those of you who have been keeping track, and I don’t know how if you haven’t been to our home, in which case why are you there when we’re at work, and if you were there when we were home, how come you didn’t knock and say hello….what kind of anti social SOB are you?? But I digress. L’orange is the name we bestowed upon a duck (mallard we think) who took up residence for her nest between the base of our house and the azalea bush in the flowerbed. There she laid an egg and has been nesting on it for the last month or so (actual gestation period is in the range of 20-30 days for ducks.) Alas upon leaving the house this morning, she was gone and in her next were the shell fragments from a cracked/hatched egg. We wish her and her new duckling well and may her next child be a masculine child. Or at least a really good omelet with a side of bacon.