9/27/2005 08:28:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|We had a cross country meet today in Pasco. Pasco has a unique course. Out on the outskirts of town, where there is never a cloud in the sky to stop the sun from beating down on you, there is Pasco's 5k course cut out of rolling desert terrain. The hot, grainy sand is at least six inches deep every step of the course which makes it very hard to get a good powerful stride in without losing all your energy sinking into the sand. Whoever made the course decided to make the soft sand better by laying mulched grass all over the trail. The grass does make the ground a bit more manageable but gets kicked up into the faces of runners in the back of packs. The grass also does a great job of hiding the dips and divots in the sand so it's hard to know when you'll ever have sure footing. As the race starts, the runners kick up all the loose sand and grass into the air creating a grimy cloud that hangs in the air for the entire race. With that grime floating everywhere and the sun pounding on your back, it's not much of a favorite course amongst runners. If hell were a cross country course in Pasco, this course would be it.
In fact, at the beginning of the boy's JV race, everyone started talking and letting people know how much they hated the course. For anyone that hasn't ever been in a cross country race, talking is a very odd thing to do in a race. At most races, as soon as the gun goes off, it's every team for themselves and you'll only hear teammates encouraging each other or grunting as runners get shoved around. Today was different though. About 15 seconds into the run, around the first corner of the course, some kid asked everyone who hated the Pasco course. Someone a bit further ahead in the race didn't quite hear him and asked him what he said. Then another guy got into the conversation and asked everyone who hated to the course to raise their hands. Nearly twenty guys nearby raised their hands. It was one of the funniest things that I have ever seen. Here were twenty guys, all running their hearts out for their teams, casually talking to each other at the beginning of a race as if we were just jogging the course and making casual conversation.
I started talking to Crawford and commented how this race didn't even feel like a race. He agreed and we kept on talking with everyone else. I suggested that we all turn the run into a fun run and just blow through the course while keeping conversation, not running, our main focus. I looked over at a guy running next to Crawford and asked him what school he was from. He said he was from Pasco and I told Crawford to elbow him in the gut or something to take our competition out. Then Crawford had a great idea and suggested that we make ourselves into a great racing pair by using my great conversation skills to distract people while he ran behind them and took them out somehow. By the time we were talking about this we were running up a big hill and all conversation stopped. It would have been so cool to keep the fun run going.
Two and a half miles later in the race I was coming up to a big pack of guys on a hill. After the hill there was a small stretch of the course where there was actually gravel instead of sand. I had forgotten my spikes for the race and knew that this stretch would be where I would have to kick it into gear and use the good running surface to pick up some speed with my not-so-fast training shoes. I ran up the hill, surged my way past the group of guys over the hill and in through the stretch of gravel to a huge downhill that marked the beginning of the end of the race. I let it all go down that hill and caught up with some freshman from my team and some Moses Lake guy. The very last part of the course looks something like this:
The steep downhill flattens out for just a little bit before leading back up onto a raised flat section and then back downhill into a flat shot at the finish line. Along the raised flat section and the final segment to the finish line, there are bales of hay set up to mark the edges of the course.
Now I may not be a great runner, but I always make people fight to pass me. I play dirty too. Whenever I hear someone coming I'll listen to where they are coming from and then slowly drift to the side of the course that they are trying to pass me on. I'll run beside fences, trees or haystacks and make people really put a lot of energy into passing me. Most people don't like to risk hitting trees or smashing into fences trying to pass me so they'll back off and try and pass me from my other side. I'm proud of my strategies.
As I came off that steep downhill and onto the flat part, a pretty big Moses Lake guy came from behind me and tried to pass me on my right side. Sticking to my strategy, I stuck close to the hay bales on my right side so that he wouldn't try something stupid and pass me this late in the race. He was a persistent guy and kept coming. I couldn't really tell what was going on when he tried to continue on his original route and squeeze between me and the hay bales. So there I was, running along, with this big guy that I didn't know trying to pass me and him squeezed up against the hay. Without really thinking about it I threw an elbow into him and sent him flying up over the edge of the bale! I can't believe that I actually did that. He stumbled over the hay saying "what the 'heck?'" Then he regained control, tried to sprint past me while calling me a "jerk" and got blown away by my awesome kick anyways. He seemed really mad at me for totally taking him out so I stuck around in the chute and made sure to apologize to him. He said it was ok and we went out separate ways. I hunted him down a while later to make sure that he was ok and we talked for a little bit. Although we were both fine with the situation, I think I found it a bit funnier than he did.
The rest of our teams did great too yesterday. The awesome varsity girls took 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th to totally sweep the meet for them. I don't think that the Richland guys ended up winning, but Kevin Joyce had an awesome finish and passed two Walla Walla guys at the last second. Talking to him on the bus, he said that it hurt to run fast enough to catch them.
By the time the meet ended, most of the team had hitched rides home with their parents. There were only about 10 of us boys waiting for a ride back to school from the bus. After looking around for a while, we couldn't find the bus. The bus had apparently just taken off without everyone on it. We went to talk to the coaches about it and were wondering how we would get home when we noticed another bus off on the side of the road instead of in the parking lot where we had been dropped off. We headed over to check it out and were relieved to find out that it was indeed our ride home. The driver and bus were different than the ones that we had come to the meet with so it was really tricky to find them.
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The secret to good writing is writing what you want to write when you should be writing things for school.|W|P|112788230925106807|W|P|The Most Fun Cross Country Race Ever|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com9/26/2005 09:03:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|Today was a bad day and then it was a great day!
I saw that my favorite comic strip series in the entire world, Calvin and Hobbes, is being printed again in the Tri-City Herald. That was pretty exciting. I have collected every single Calvin and Hobbes book ever published as a kid growing up. Those books are what have made me what I am today. They were probably the biggest influence on what my sense of humor has come to be today. If there is one person responsible for my horrible, unavoidable sarcasm, it would have to be Bill Watterson, the cartoonist behind the magic.
Everyone knows who Garfield is. It's still in publication in probably every newspaper in the country. There's a funny thing about Garfield though. Sure, he's everywhere on cheap merchandise, had a TV show about him, even had a whole movie made about him, but when is the last time that you have actually read the comic and laughed? Never. That's because he is not funny. In fact, there's a word for what he has become. That's "sellout."
One of the few times I remember crying in my life was the day that I found out Bill Watterson had decided to stop writing Calvin and Hobbes. He was a great man that stuck true to his own values and I respect him for stopping when he did. Unlike Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes was never sold out by it's creator. Bill Watterson fought long and hard to keep his work from being merchandised and gave up a lot of money passing up that chance. His choice to not merchandise Calvin and Hobbes kept his work pure and artistic. In the end, he stopped writing the strip because he was tired of the daily deadlines and pressure put on him to keep up his great work.
After reading today's strip in the paper and passing time by looking up Calvin and Hobbes information on the internet, I ran across the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. A 23-pound collection of over 3,000 comic strips published from 1985 to 1996 is going to be for sale on October 4th. I can't believe this has been kept in the dark from me for so long! I must have this collection. Who loves me and wants to buy me a gift? ...only $150.
There were other totally awesome things about the day, but I got kind of sidetracked with Calvin and Hobbes. Among other things that happened, getting gas for my car, planning Chillfest, preparing for October Eve, getting my tree back and seeing Corpse Bride last Friday were all awesome.
Calvin & Hobbes Wiki | The Complete Calvin & Hobbes | A Great Article on Bill Watterson|W|P|112779674650946436|W|P|Awesomeness|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com9/21/2005 05:15:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|The secret to getting things done is starting them. The secret to getting them perfect is perfecting them and the faster you finish, the sooner you'll be done.
Profound, eh? We'll see if it ends up meaning anything.|W|P|112734825461255515|W|P|New Motto|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com9/07/2005 10:29:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|As this school year wears on and things just get better I find less to blog about here. The crazy thing about not having anything to blog about is that I actually have more stuff than ever to talk about here. I am excited for everything. Everything is exciting. It might just be that I talk to everyone I see about everything that I am excited about instead of sitting down here and writing it or it may be that I am too excited about things and I'm actually doing them instead of sitting here and writing about what I'll never do with them like I have usually done before.
Until I get a good chance to get everything written down I'm going to throw everyone at the forum for a few days. Enjoy.|W|P|112615767148732637|W|P|Feeling Fantastic|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com9/03/2005 01:08:00 AM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|This is the first time that I am going to cut it to you how it actually is. Google is an evil company run by evil people. All this time, when Google has been claiming to organize all of the world's information and make it more accessible to us, they have really been planning to take control of all information and, in effect, rule the whole world.
I'm not joking. Just read the article where this quote came from.
"A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest," John Battelle wrote in his widely read "Searchblog." "Thanks to Google Purge, you'll never have to worry that your search has missed some obscure book, because that book will no longer exist. And the same goes for movies, art, and music."
We'll all be lucky to keep our own personal diaries if Google keep this sort of stuff up.|W|P|112573518446297011|W|P|SERIOUS THREAT|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com