Craig's OTHER List: What Can Brown Do for You?

Sometimes long runs are needed for more than just training. They are used for contemplation, to focus on something other than the present and - now and then - they are a way to avoid dealing with a mess. Last month, without knowing it, a long run helped me avoid swimming in a river of sh*t.

It was Wednesday, August 23rd, and after arriving home from work I had planned my weekly 10+ mile run. I usually do this on Tuesdays, but a work related event the night before forced me to push it back one day. As I headed out, L (who has started running) was going to leave shortly thereafter for a couple of miles. I turn on my Garmin Watch, wait for it to connect (which now seems to take forever) and take off.

For a couple of days our summer weather turned mid-autumn and it was a rather cool late afternoon for August, around 70, which made the run that more enjoyable. As I return - one hour, 15 minutes and 10.20 miles later - I pass our house and see L moving something to our carport. I stop my watch and walk for a quarter mile or so as a cool down, an out and back. As I'm coming back L is headed toward me and once she is within an "I don't need to let the world to know" distance, she says, "Oh, I have story for you!"

Jameson & Whiskey taking advantage of our basement
belongings now occupying our front room.

She says just after I left, she went back inside and heard a gurgling sound coming from the basement. Upon investigating, she sees a brown liquid emanating from the floor drain. And in the style of The Beverly Hillbillies, "..up through the ground come a bubblin' crude." No it wasn't oil, or black gold, or a tea from any state. It was sewage, brown poop water, a pool of human discharge and within minutes it is encompassing nearly a quarter of our basement. Being a much better manager of things than I, she freaks out - but only for a minute or two. She leaves frantic, yet informative, messages for our landlord. Then starts evacuating everything she can.

We were saved from the fact that the lazy fountain of feces was located away from nearly everything we have in the basement. Utilizing the stairs and our basement door to the backyard, L moved everything worth something to our upstairs front room and/or carport. Our landlord finally returned her call to say an area emergency plumbing company would be swinging by soon. And the representative from that company was all of four houses down from us.

The look on L's face when explaining the awful smell made me want to puke just thinking about it. If I had been there, this easily to queeze stomach of mine would have erupted instantaneously. The plumber arrived and after investigating our indoor spa from hell, said he remembers being called to our place a few years ago for something similar. My thought was, "Dude, we've been here for five months. We are free from persecution."

He had to go next door, the other side of our duplex, to get into their basement where the access to our toilet plumbing is located. Thankfully, we are on good terms with them. After 30 minutes or so of snaking the pipes and testing various forms of water flow, the swamp began to drain. Still sitting on the floor of our front room in my soiled-with-sweat running clothes, L looks at me, "You know, it's late and I don't feel like cooking." I was in complete agreement, so we showered and ordered pizza.

Our landlord had indicated they would have folks come to clean the basement the following day, but L says, "If they don't, would you mind starting the process when you come home tomorrow?" Now, I have yet to enter the basement or even open the door to glance down the basement stairs - so I know not what it looks like or how it smells. I reluctantly said I would, but in hopes of avoiding it, I was praying to god our landlord was the grand champion of keeping promises.

Once home the next day I notice our basement door is still closed. Maybe, because we had it closed, those who were expected to come clean up closed it as well. I crept down the steps gingerly hoping not to see what took place the night before. It was sort of a reverse Christmas morning tiptoe, "Santa didn't leave anything behind, Santa didn't leave anything behind" I keep telling myself in the way Rain Man was enamored with "97X BAAM The future of rock and roll".

Halfway down I slowly turn to the left to look behind the stairs and there it is, a puddle of chunky liquid round the drain with an even larger outer ring of dried pieces of whatnot surrounding the puddle. It didn't smell horribly, but I did open the basement door to the outside and turn on our HVAC's fan in hopes of encouraging the stench outdoors. A mop, bucket of hot water & multi-purpose cleaner, elbow grease, our $10 yard sale find shop-vac and 90 minutes later - our basement was free from the dungeon of discharge and with a nice lemony aroma to boot.

When arriving home, L comes to investigate and apologizes for my having to clean it up - but it had to be done. She notices the shop vac, which is old anyway and louder than an NHRA event (it can be heard several house down, can't imagine why it was in that yard sale we visited a few months ago), and says to me, "We are throwing that thing way, RIGHT?!

"Oh, hell yeah", I reply, "Do you want to go dump it?"

She looks at me like I'v just eaten a live kitten, "Just set it next to the trash, we'll empty it somewhere before Tuesday (trash day)."

I washed, then sanitized, then washed (again) and sanitized (again) my feet before putting on clean, lemony-scent free clothes so we could fulfill our regular Thursday night visit to Staas Brewing. The newly tapped Cinnamon Basil Saison that night hit the spot. The proprietors, Liz & Donald, have become friends of ours - I had never appreciated them more then on this particular day.

Three days later, one of our duplex neighbors finds us outside, "Oh, they (those who work for our landlord) wanted me to let you know that they came by to clean our basements on Friday." Um....what?! So someone did come by to clean the standing lagoon of excrement in our basement, but it was TWO DAYS LATER. Not only that, we were never notified (which is typically the case when they have to enter our house). I don't know why they would think we would let the cesspool of stool linger. Holy crap (yes, I get the irony...shut it!), thanks for the effort! Remind me call you a week after we set the house on fire.

That weekend, L was brave enough to empty the encapsulated bowel movements located in the little shop-vac of horrors while I was out town. It took all she had not to puke. I'm sorry, but I'm glad it wasn't met.

In an effort to make light of our brown colored misfortune, I thought taking part in the Little Brown Jog 5k and Kids Fun Run in our hometown could ease the memory of our visit from St. Excrement. This event coincides with The Little Brown Jug harness race for three-year-old pacing standardbreds hosted by the Delaware County Agricultural Society since 1946 at the Delaware County Fairgrounds. And, also, maybe the logo for the race made my 10 year-old brain think of a giant turd getting a workout, so of course I had to sign-up.

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Benefiting People in Need Inc. of Delaware County, the race would take place on Ohio’s famed Little Brown Jug race track, home of the fastest half-mile harness race in America, and helps kick off Delaware's fair month. It didn't hurt either that the race, and fairgrounds, were all of .7 miles from our house and started at noon.

The course would start and end on the race track and wind through the fairgrounds. And you have to love those community races that list these as event highlights: Finishers medals, Kids Fun Run (a lap around the track), Face painting and balloon animals by a local artist, Get your picture taken with a Little Brown Jug race horse, Learn how People in Need is improving the lives of your neighbors and Free parking and refreshments!

The start, I'm in the yellow.

Being the first full Saturday of college football, the attendance was expected to be light and it was. If anything, it would be a nice way to stretch the weekend legs. At packet pick-up, the gentleman takes my name, looks up from his computer and gives me a number, "You'll be 1919", then looks at L, "...and Karen?". She looks at me, then back at the official, "Oh, no. It's just him", pointing at me. He apologizes for his mistake and we move on.

We watch the kids fun run and finally get to the starting line. We're told to follow the signs and for added assistance there would be someone at each turn making sure we are going the right direction. We take off and around half of the horse track we go. I have a young kid riding my tail and I feel like I'm going a little fast, but no worries, this is just a fun run. We go off the track and follow a maze of turns around the fairgrounds.

At mile one, I'm at 5:55. The young kid drifts out of earshot, but I hear another coming up behind me. I come up on a water stop and those manning it are watching as the cups are sitting on a table. I try to reach out and grab one, but my perspiration covered hand slides right off of it, knocking a few over in the process. Frustrated, I wave my arm in disgust. Just before the two mile mark (6:08), a high school aged kid passes me. Working on sticking with a good pace, we come upon the backside of the of horse track from whence we came.

The 2.24 mile 5K. We could have backtracked to make it 3.1,
but that was too much to ponder I guess.

Expecting to go around the fairgrounds again, we're directed back onto the track. One of the two race workers seems confused but follows his fellow "turn-pointing person". The kid in front now has a rather large lead as I work my way around the other end of the horse track. I start to wonder why we are headed to the start/finish line and think maybe there's another turn somewhere, but the answer to that is "no". When I could finally read the clock through the sun glare, I'm only at 13-something or other.

Did we go the wrong way?

I cross the finish and I'm greeted with a high five from the kid who finished ahead of me. I grab some water and look at my watch to see 2.24 miles completed in 13:39. That's when I hear L from a distance, "How long was that?" I tell her and she proceeds to relay this information to a few onlookers who are equally confused. The kid who won asks me, "Did we make a wrong turn?" I reply with, "Maybe those directing traffic were wrong."

Though everyone else seems to be either okay with what just happen or are unaware. We hang around for a few minutes and L spots the race director walking by and, "Hi, I'm sorry to bother you, but was the race a little short today?" The woman wasn't perturbed, but seemed a bit annoyed and came off a little snarky, "Yeah, we were under some route restrictions, so we had to shorten it up this morning." She then walks off like everyone shortens races by an entire mile, assumes it wouldn't be a big deal and figures there is no reason to share this information with anyone. What seemed to be an easy fix was something she didn't want to mess with.

Post Race football Saturdays
are awesome

It was a small community event with proceeds going to a local charity, so it wasn't a huge deal. I, though, would have enjoyed knowing what was happening. Before leaving I tried plugging in my bib number into the results computer and nothing came up. Figuring they haven't been uploaded, L and I then strolled home and flipped on the television to join the rest of the sports loving world in watching college football. As we are lounging around, I grab my phone to look up the race results and...I don't see my name or finish time - I some how did not exist at this event.

Thinking back to packet pick-up, the folks at the table were manually inputting bib numbers as they were being handed out. When the gentleman thought L was "Karen", he apparently backed out of the number input window on his computer after catching his mistake and never saved my information. I preregistered, appeared on the race entry list, received my race swag bag and ran the not-quite-5K - but that's about the extent of my involvement according to the results.

It wasn't something to be overly concerned about, just annoying. It was a hot, muggy, long September weekend and had more pressing things to do. We took it all in stride, despite the goofiness.

Next weekend, it is the Amish Country Half Marathon for me and the 5K portion of that event for L. This will be a telling event for both us: can I sustain progress on a course that isn't flat? Will L regret her decision to start running and take out her frustration on me? Will we melt now that the sweltering late summer weather has arrived? We shall see, there's no turning back now, so...way down we go.......

Kaleo - Way Down We Go

Father tell me, we get what we deserve

Oh we get what we deserve

And way down we go

Way down we go

Say way down we go

Way down we go

You let your feet run wild

Time has come as we all oh, go down

Yeah but for the fall oh, my

Do you dare to look him right in the eyes?

'Cause they will run you down, down til the dark