What's in a run?

I've been pretty busy with a couple of projects I have going on right now (building a website, jotting down some stories I've been thinking of for a while), on top of all my other goings on during the day. But I felt I had to get this one off my chest.

Between the last couple of days, I've had some insightful runs. They weren't that I had never noticed these things before, but for some reason my brain decided to play games and did not kick in until today.


I think part of the reason that running was the sport that just fit me like a glove is that you really notice things when running. Which in this day and age is highly appreciated. What do I mean? Well when you go down the road in a car what does a person notice? The color of a house? The style, maybe the mailbox or what kind of car is paked in the driveway? Perhaps, if you have a good eye. But when you're running you also notice things like how the owner of the house has painstakingly tried repairing his mailbox after kids were playing a round of 'mailbox baseball'. Or maybe you catch a glimpse of a parent being greeted by his wife and kids after coming home from work. But for me it has to be things like noticing how blue the sky is, or how great that freshly cut grass in the afternoon smells; things that you can't really experience in the comfort of a car. It is stupid things like these that make running so endearing for me.

Plus there isn't really a whole lot to do while on a run besides materialize your thoughts or talk to the person/people you're running with. In this case you can have many meaningful conversations, which can easily be remembered years down the road. I still remember the first time I ran down at Red Bank when I did not want to take my shirt off and my coach asked 'if I was dumber than a bag of hammers'. You really get to know a person when you spend at least 5 days a week running for at least an hour, with nothing to do but talk.

Some of my best high school memories took place during the heat of the day on a run. So yes on top of trying to prepare for the upcoming season/race or the never-ending quest for an improved time, running has many different levels of significance that make true runners stay with their sport even long after they've graduated.

"summer breeze, makes me feel fine"

Where does the time go? It seems like it was only yesterday when I had to make about a million trips down the stairs of Fowler Hall to painstakingly load all of my dorm into the truck. (Consequently I did not run that day due to the stair-masters workout I got on my butt.) Last night a couple of friends and I got together before Kasey had to go back to Auburn. It's so surreal to me now. It was nearly a year ago when we were all headed off for our first year of college. We never said it to each other last summer, but everybody knew we were all thinking the same thing: we were nervous about leaving home and worrying about how our first year would go.... My first summer back home after being on my own for a year has been a strange one mentally. It's one of those unexplainable feelings. For some kids, this summer can bring back mood swings as strong as when we were gawdy pre-teenagers going through puberty. Now I had some moody days, but never to where I would describe it as what middle school was like. I think this partially comes from having to get over your home-sickness at school; and once you get used to living on your own away from your family, summer comes. You are once again living at home with everybody you learned how not to live with. It is a weird thing, this whole growing-up experience. So last night when the group started out the door to go home, I thought of how much easier it would be this time around for everybody to leave home. I also wondered if everybody's sophomore year would go as well as the last year. Because now each of us also has other friends at our new schools to unload our problems on.

Thank you Kardashian Family

You know it occurred to me just the other day that what some people think is entertainment, in hindsight really is stupid. I saw an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians where almost the whole episode centered around Bruce Jenner getting a colonoscopy. That's right. A Jay Leno statement came to my mind: 'Are Americans so bored with their lives, that they actually want to see what comes out the back end of a celebrity?

4th of July

Fireworks, barbeque, grilling out, and enjoying company with people you care about. These are the things that comprise of most people's Independence Day celebrations. Yesterday I headed to the lake with some friends, some of which I had not seen in over a year when we graduated. It was a great day for going to the lake, not too hot, kind of overcast. That oppressive/legendary, muggy, southern heat had escaped us. Later that day our family had more of a laid back/low key get-together at our house. We had smoked chicken, and just had a good time being together, partially because we didn't really discuss Grandpa's injuries sustained in a fall over a month ago. But I was once again taken back in time when my younger brother just could not wait to set off all the fireworks that he had bought up at the little store at the top of the road. I still remember nearly ten years ago when almost all of the cousins of mine who lived on this road would gather at our grandparents pond to shoot off the fireworks once it got dark. I loved those nights where it seemed as if we could not possibly run out of bottle-rockets. The smell eventually built up so badly from so many fireworks going off in the area, and all over the mountain that you could still smell it the next morning. For several years after that until my early sullen teenage years, I was alarmingly obsessed with shooting firecrackers. We were kind of dangerous with them, because I recall a day at the bluehole when we had a kid "pinned to the rock" because we were shooting bottle-rockets at him. Time seemed to stand still for a second as I could almost look at a mirror image of myself cautiously lighting the fuse, then running away. What broke the moment and brought me back to reality? -When a bottle-rocket almost hit the very porch I was sitting on.

"The Lost Generation"

I have been pondering how to approach this subject for quite some time. Actually ever since I took the Facebook quiz "Are you a '90s kid?". Last night when I went to the movies with a friend, I got an epiphany on how to start talking about this subject. Actually, it wasn't an epiphany. It was the movie and the previews. Count them and weep; I saw Transformers, the preview for GI Joe, Terminator and Pelham 123 were also playing, and I had recently seen where they were going to remake The Ninja Kid, and Top Gun. That's right, they're redoing six movies/shows that were originally made in the '70s and '80s. Which brings me to the question I've been asking myself for weeks ever since taking the "90's kid" quiz: Are we in the final year of the "lost generation"? Ever since the year 2000, it seems as if kids who've grown up between then and now have nothing to identify with except remakes. At least when I was a kid in the '90s (considered gen Y), we had Doug, Power Rangers, Jurassic Park, and towards the end Hey Arnold. I even remember my cousins who identified their childhood with the '80s (also considered gen Y) telling me how cool their movies, toys, and trends were. Gen X'ers and some of gen Y can often recount a "Star Wars Christmas", when almost every toy under the tree had to do with Star Wars. Kids today talk about stuff that's already been remade. When the new millennia began, I believe the earliest remake was Charlie's Angels, and it's been unrelenting since then. I'm not saying that these are terrible movies, but starting next year, what will be left to remake? Who will the new ideas come from? And what will the kids who identified their childhood with the current decade recall as their own?

What Were You Thinking?

Ok, if any of you know me then you know that I am a car junkie. I love looking at them, talking about them, reading about them, and above all driving them. This being the case, has anyone seen the Cube from Nissan?



Ever since the french company Renault took over quite a few years ago, Nissans have just gotten uglier and uglier. I think their bad design has culminated when they brought this over from Japan. Honestly, I've seen things come out of the back-end of my dog that look better than this car.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Ah, today was a good day: Father’s Day. To most families this holiday includes getting together, giving their fathers presents, and a time to discuss stories involving father and child. But today, for me anyways, it had a deeper meaning. I suppose this realization started last night when my immediate family went to my dad’s “2nd parents” 50th anniversary celebration. As my dad and one of his oldest friends traded stories, it occurred to me that sometime in the not-so-distant future, I may be able to tell similar stories to my significant other. If you could not tell from my profile, I love the movie “Stand by Me”. In this movie, a father recollects stories from his childhood years later after hearing of a friend’s death. I made this connection between my dad’s stories and the movie today, because after going out to eat at Applebees, we decided that we would go dirtbike riding at the end of Kell Road. Our family has property down there and we hadn’t gone riding in a while, so we decided it would be a good way to wrap up Father’s Day. As we were riding towards Edward’s Point, all these memories started flooding back to me from the time I was between ten to thirteen. Just as in the movie, we “fudged our parents” with false stories, cursed and snuck smokes because we thought it was cool, and witnessed that life was not always fair. But on top of that we had dirtbikes, go-carts, and we never did go look for a dead body. I am nineteen going on twenty and today it seemed impossible that that much time had passed since I first got in trouble for riding on the road, since we thought the coolest thing in the world was to go ride the go-carts and dirtbikes out in the woods without parental supervision, and how small talk was split between “kid things” and noticing how girls were developing. As we left the woods where the trees were being logged, I realized that these experiences that my dad had also experienced are a part of what shaped us to become what we are today. Just like the movie says so well, "For some, it's the last real taste of innocense, and the first taste of life. But for everyone, it's the time that memories are made of."