I have been really busy and haven’t touched this in ages.
This last weekend was great. Friday was misery at work with a problem had had me stuck at work till really late. By the time I got home I just went to sleep. I woke up and we got ready for baseball. It was a great game. Grant park is being resodded and we were at this cool park right downtown that I think belongs to MLK middle school, but I am not sure, we approached it from the back. It was all shady behind the plate and we brought chairs and it was just super relaxing. Everyone was being cool and cheering for everybody. We won by quite a bit and Hunter got a decent hit this time but it was high and got caught. I was feeling super social and told Kelly to invite people to eat somewhere. We know half the families pretty well because they have kids in the Neighborhood Charter School. We got almost everyone on the team to go to Daddy D’s. It was ok but the counter dude / cook is a huge cubs fan and one of our dads in a white socks fan from south chicago. He was telling me on Friday morning how the Cubs fans are just jerks and hateful and I didn’t really believe it. It was really funny that we saw it played out the next day. The guy was being crazy. I guess its tough after the cross town rival wins the series and you have always struggled. Anyway the guy got a little out of hand I think. After that 2 parents and I walked with several of the kids down to oakland cemetary which is one of my favorite places in the city. When I went to Ga. State I ran there every day. The trees are just huge, the civil war dead is an amazing sight, its just got tons of Atlanta history. Anyway we walked to the far end which has huge open fields. We tossed the ball for about an hour in the blazing heat. At the end I was playing catch with the coach and it was a lot of fun. I came home pretty tired.
Sunday was jammed full. We woke up to the sound of the Georgia Ing marathon outside our door. By the time i was up it was the tail end of the full marathoners. We walked down the Little Five Points and saw the half marathoners finishing up going by. Only Carter was up. We walked back to the house and Carter wanted to see more. We looked online and saw you could track people by bib number. Carter suggested putting in 31 and that was cool. we saw the front runners had almost worked themselves back up to freedom park which is just a few blocks from us. we got Hunter and raced down there. I have done four marathons, 2 when I was younger and stronger and two when I was older with kids almost 10 years later. My best time was 3:39 which is something I’m pretty proud of because I never played team sports and its the most athletic thing I ever did. So I was trying to tell the kids about it because I still think the marathon is a really cool thing and i have never watched one before as a spectator. When we got down to the park I ran into one of the guys who was in the group of marathoners that really got me interested in doing my first ones. He had just qualified for Boston which is in alot of ways the holy grail of marathoning. He was going to run in this one but got injured. We cheered everyone with the kids for about an hour. The kids had no understanding of how fast the front runners were. I guess seeing them go by you don’t realize what you are seeing. I kept having to tell them, no kids – these people are flying. My friend has a cow bell. My hands got really sore and I wished I had one.
We came back and raced to church and got there the usual 10 minutes late. We had a big chess tournament and left soon after the sermon cause we had to get there at 1:30 and we were taking Hunters good friend Emma and she needed to get signed up for her USCF membership. We got there and it was really lightly attended. People probably have better things to do then chess on such a perfect day. We tried to make up for it by tossing a baseball between rounds. Its super tough there and Emma lost all her games and took a bye in one round which always seems like a rip off. Hunter also had a bye but he won a rated game and got his rating up off 100. He has won 8 tournament games in the past but never against rated people. That made it a pretty great day. Carter lost 1 and won 3. His rating went above 900 again so it was great for him. He is still all excited about chess and really wants to play in every tournament. Here is the cross table for Carter – they scored it on USCF as k-8 but they actually had trophies for k-6 and k-8. Carter tied for 1st in K-6 but took the $12 bucks store credit instead of the trophy.
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200703250581.1-12945576
For Hunter and Emma:
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200703250581.2-12945576
I was one of the half marathon runners (had to switch from the marathon the day before because of an injury). I knew we were near you, and wondered whether you’d be up.
It was a glorious race, fantastic weather and great support and running through the neighborhoods was really cool. Can’t wait for next year!
I remember that people were rabid sox or cubs fans. As a kid, I went to both teams’ games with summer day camp. I didn’t care; I was just glad to be there. I remember outside Kaminsky park there was a cemetery that once had Charlie Chaplin buried there, but his body was stolen. That’s what my Dad told me, but Wikipedia says he died in Europe. Hmm, have to have some words with Dad…