Day 175 - Life is Chaos

The universe is chaotic. And that's cool.

Most of the day was normal. Meeting. Emails. No information or apparent progress on getting my motorcycle. The usual.

I thought my excitement for the day was finding out, through the magic of Facebook, that my humble little suburb, Carmel, IN, is going to have it's own marathon.

I know!

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

This thing is not only going to be first class, but also starting and finishing literally in my neighborhood. I could throw a baseball to the staring line, and my arm isn't very good.

"I have to do this.", I thought to myself... with a dash of excitement, and a pint of dread.

Regardless, I'd expected/planned for a quiet evening at home, after I'd made my every-4-weeks trip downtown to get my haircut.

What? Yes, I drive downtown every 4th Thursday to get my haircut. After 40+ years of bad haircuts I found a guy, make that genius, who can cut my hair. It's worth the drive.

While I was downtown, I pinged my buddy Marty to see if he was working at his downtown store. If so, I was going to drop in and chat while the traffic died down.

No, he wasn't downtown, he was up north, heading to a cross country race that he was putting on.

"You should run it.", he texts.

I'd planned a nice easy run on grass to kick off my lazy evening. I got it half right.

After a mad dash to spring the dog from daycare, and mad dash home to crate the dog, and a mad dash to retrieve my number, and a literal mad dash to the starting line, which I reached, again literally, as the starter said "Go!", I found myself in a 5K cross-country race.

With a bunch of high-school kids who had spent the week at cross country camp.

At this point I was questioning my choice.

I was dead last for the first 400 meters.

I have never been last.

At the first hill, I picked off a few of the young pups. In fact, at every hill, I passed some of them.

That makes an old guy feel pretty damn good. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I didn't finish last. I actually ran well considering, you know, I sprinted from the parking lot to the starting line.

After finding some water, I found Marty. "Hey, we're having hotdogs at the store. Stop over."

Of course, I did. Who passes up free hotdogs? Crazy people, that's who. I didn't win anything for the race, but I did leave with a bag of chips.

So I'm hanging around, eating a hotdog, mingling with the high school kids.

Point of information: A group of middle school boys is called a "Punk".

Once the Punk thinned out, Marty declares that we're going out for beers.

Of course, I went.

And here's where it gets freaky...

Guess who was sitting next to me at the table. Go ahead guess.

Seriously... guess....

WRONG!

It was Todd Oliver... the President of the company that is, wait for it... putting on the Carmel Marathon!!!

I KNOW!

Freaky, right?

He filled me in on some of the details and let me tell you, this race is going to be kick- wait for it - ass.

And Todd, as well as his partner Aaron, are very cool, and very passionate about bringing a kick-ass event to Carmel.

Anyway...

Just think, if I hadn't sent that text message to Marty, I wouldn't have run that race, I wouldn't have eaten a free hotdog, I wouldn't have a free bag of Lays chips, and I wouldn't have enjoyed the company of my kind of people over two Fat Tires and one surly waitress.

The universe is random and chaotic. Embrace it, go with it, or resist it and suffer, cause it's not gonna stop messing with you if you do.

Good running,
Doug

Numbers: 3.1 miles on grass.