Stork sightings

How many storks have you seen on the toll road? If you said none that would be one less than Stephenie and I. We were on the toll road last weekend and came across a stork hanging out on the side of the road. We both did a double take.

Seeing this stork got me thinking why are storks associated with new babies? Well apparently the myth of the stork swooping in with baby in tow dates back hundreds of years in Europe. Storks frequent ponds, wells and springs, people believed that babies souls resided in these places before they were born. So the myth was born. People would pray to storks for a baby boy or girl. In Germany storks were also signs of good fortune and luck.

The modern myth was popularized by Hans Christian Anderson in the 1800's. Storks would routinely nest on people's chimneys in Northern Europe. Storks have one of the closest family ties of any animal. When a stork becomes old its offspring will take care of it. This probably has something to do with the myth. Since storks nested on peoples roofs and would return every year it was a convenient explanation to little children on how a new baby was coming.

So now that Stephenie and I have seen a stork; how much long could it possibly be before Grant shows up??

RSM Labor Day 5k 2008

Today I ran the RSM Labor Day 5k. It was a last minute decision. Usually I pick races to enter months in advance, but this one I signed up just last week. This race was like my wife's pregnancy it was broken up into trimesters. The first trimester was the "race around the slowpokes" trimester. I ran my butt off zig-zagging around people that lined up near the front but then decided to go really slow. Then there were the people that wanted to chit-chat and they would run 5 wide and it was a son of gun to get around them. Once I passed the one mile mark I had finally overtaken the slowpokes and luckily I got a break; the next mile was down hill..Yah!

So it was the second trimester had begun. This one was the cougar trimester. Suddenly I was surrounded by buff 30-45 year old women. It seemed that every couple of seconds as I raced down the hill a cougar would pass me on one of my flanks. I was getting tired but I could not let this stand and I found myself sprinting every 20 -30 yards just to fend them off.

Once they had fallen back or smoked me, I entered the third trimester of the RSM Labor Day 5k. This trimester was all about avoiding little kids that had sprinted the first 2 miles only to run out of gas when the down hill of mile 2 was replaced by the uphill of mile 3. They would be in front of you and just stop. So the first trimester and the third were similar in that I spent all kinds of energy avoiding slowpokes and road hazards.

In the end I ran the whole thing unscathed, and enjoyed every second of it. Can't wait to do it next year with a stroller!