The problem with being a goody two-shoes most of the time is that on the rare occasion that one's inner Janis Joplin pays a visit, all of one's friends are shocked. Or thrilled to have something to use against the possessor of the hidden Janis. In this case, judging by the phone calls I received in the days following Sunday's on-in, I'll go with the latter. Most of the time, I stick to moderate boozing and early nights, though every now and then, I let my hair down and party like a rock star, with dire consequences following suitably. But before we get to the on-in, and the aftermath of said on-in, we'll have to review the trail. Trust me, it won't be as painful as running it. Or nearly as painful as my Monday. I swear.
Steve Douglass was nowhere in sight at the start, and neither were various parts of the pack, as they were separated by the many potential exits from the 2nd Avenue stop on the F, and only one exit was marked. I dispatched Scot "Scooter" Gleason down Houston to round up a few who were standing in the sun, and he brought them into the nice, cold shade where the start mark was located. Chann was in no hurry to get us started, so there was ample time to discuss Vince's mangling of temple Emanu-El into Emmana-Loa. Perhaps Vince has spent too much time watching the debates on videotape. Finally, the pack broke into "Why are we waiting", and only then did Chann see fit to give a quick chalk talk and set us off south.
We encountered the first check right outside of an old Italian bar that is apparently one of Rick's favorites, and is rumored to be a one-time Mafia social club. On this day, it proved to be a lovely place to observe Hardman in fine form, proving that he is the ideal AOTY. From what I gather, a number of people breezed by the first check with nary a pause, and couldn't fathom what had happened when they discovered, several blocks later, that they had run out of marks. His AOTY-ness was forced to run back, muttering "bloody fookin bloind…" and find true trail. But not mark the check, of course. Not marking checks was the theme of the day, handily separating the pack into smaller and smaller bits as we continued south, up onto the Brooklyn Bridge, under the bridge, and around the seaport area and more than a few housing projects. As a result, many more people in addition to the usual hard-core lazy fucks were reluctant to check, knowing full well that such foolhardy measures would cause them to circle back to the check, and find it abandoned and packmarkless. [Note to DB2: the preceding word is a fine example of one that should be hyphenated, as it is not yet accepted into the popular lexicon, and ergo doesn't pass muster with spellcheck. Neither does spellcheck, for that matter. However, as the readership of this paper has its own linguistic rules and regulations, I've chosen to leave it in the familiar.] At one point, at a check on Rutgers, I really thought that we were heading for an on-in chez Chann, which would explain Steve's absence, but there were still a good two and a half miles left to run. When we got to Tomkins Square Park, most knew we were bound for Ugly Coyote, and were none too happy about it. Five and a half to six miles total, two weeks before the NYC marathon. Rick knew full well how many of us were beginning our tapers, and had done longer runs already that day. Obviously, since he was forced to skip his fall marathon, he was trying to make everyone else miss his or hers, too.
The Coyote was manned for the day by a lone woman who kept disappearing for prolonged, tearful goodbyes with her boyfriend, who was scheduled to move to Vermont that very night. She seemed to feel bad about her periodic lapses, and made up for it by making sure our pitchers were full at all times. Vince and Crofty filled in as old geezer JMs for the day, and kicked things off by telling everyone to avoid Seth if they wanted to scrounge a bite to eat. As it turned out, Seth wasn't the problem, a skimpy pizza budget was the culprit. Chann drank by himself for the trail, without bothering to explain Steve's mysterious whereabouts. Virgins and visitors, welcome, though I can't remember your names. Someone drank for new shoes. Hardy got the rabbit ears. For the life of me, I can't remember who else got down downs, and for what. Oh, well.
After everyone scrambled to get even one slice of pizza, the drinking began in earnest. In hindsight, a worse idea than usual given the lack of eating. The bartender, after her fourth bloody mary, decided that we weren't rowdy enough, so she started hauling the men over for upside down shots, and trying to badger the women into dancing on the bar. Many, many beers later, after resorting to declaring an hour on the house immediately after the hash cash ran out, she succeeded. I think it was AC/DC that did it, but before I knew it, I was dancing on the bar, and had dragged Michele and Idaho Sue along with me. Dancing and a feeding frenzy of ridiculously cheap beer were the order of the night, with Sue's friend acting as a drunken Fred Astaire to various Ginger Rogers impersonators. I finally grabbed my one remaining molecule of sense and headed home around 11:30. Far, far too late to allow me to make it into work the next day, however. The next morning, I had plenty of time to envision myself as the proverbial trapped coyote, wishing I could chew my own head off, but knowing that alas, I was too hungover to do it myself.
On out.