rustypants speaks

2010 South Bend Urban Adventure REDUX from scott rust on Vimeo.

My cousin, Christine, and I ran the 2010 South Bend Urban Adventure Race together – this is a goofy video of the results of that race.

Shot entirely on a cheap Sony Cyber-shot camera, this film was not planned in any way. Due to rain early on, I wasn’t even sure we’d be able to take pictures. That we ended up with this much decent footage was a major surprise. Enjoy! (or not!)

http://www.urbanadventuregames.com/

This video was edited using Adobe Premiere.

the latest excitement:

• i’m down 41lbs from last june to 244lbs
• i continue to run 5x / week, lift weights 3x / week, bike infrequently, watch my calories, do some circuit training a couple times a week, drink lots of water, and juggle daily.
• i started doing yoga 3 weeks ago and am enjoying it quite a bit – very relaxing, yet also a workout. i frequently do it at night before heading to bed and it helps the insomniac in me fall asleep.
• this pic was taken this afternoon while hamming for the camera:
  
• the picture drives me to ask the question: if you had a high school teacher with guns like that, would you be messing around with him? no? then why the heck do my students mess with me? is it the shoes? is it the smile? maybe i don’t flash the guns around enough?
• i’m neck-deep in IEP writing, with somewhere around 18 IEP’s due in the next 2 months. oy vey.
• add to this that i’m taking a course on educational assessments at UWF and it’s a double oy vey.
• stephen king’s Under the Dome was a great read until the last 30 pages. he really is a master of plot development, but his endings are so frequently just blah.
• i’ve now worn my Vibram Five Fingers every day for three months and i’m telling ya: these things are absolutely awesome. i did acquire a second pair of them (seen in above picture) and do all my teaching, workouts, running, etc. in them. my feet / legs / knees / back have never felt better. i realize i have a followup i need to do on my previous post – it’ll happen, promise!
• spring break is the last week in march – i’m planning on being in Cincinnati for a couple days. am thinking of arranging some kind of party for a couple hours one night and see if we can’t get everyone together in one room to visit and catch up!
• there’s more to tell, but this was unplanned and as such, my brain is mush.

thanks to kate for the kick in the ass.

Click the pic. Why?

Pensacola – Spring 2009

Some places, people, and things from spring 2009.

Download C’mon down.

we were 17. we were young, stupid, and bored.

scott and i managed to swipe a bottle of old granddad and were out on a saturday night, mercifully without a curfew. we’d been driving, without the drinking, but now our master plan was to be enacted.

we pulled into the I-275 theater on the east side of cincinnati where every saturday night was a midnight showing of some concert film.

tonight’s film?

pink floyd’s The Wall. we’d been singing it in the car at the top of our lungs for the past year or so but had never seen the movie.

we sat in the parking lot and hit the bottle for a while, getting a buzz on. and then went a bit further.

we bought our tickets, grabbed seats in the mostly empty theater and settled in for what we were sure was going to be an incredible, mind-altering ride through one of the greatest albums ever made.

and all i can say now, even 23 years after the fact, is this:

the shaving scene had us stuttering like sylvester in a crazy, mouse-infested haunted house.

we were still twitching while the credits were rolling.

i never drank old granddad again.

the movie still disturbs me.

yeeeesh!!

an incredibly fun conversation with one of my girls who is super-smart, over-analytical, logical, gorgeous, who, at times, suppresses her “girlishness” as being illogical, and has at last found a boyfriend who is seemingly like-minded (after a… less than fitting relationship):

Adrienne: well I am writing a paper
and i was at the library
but I decided to pick another study place
so I could meet my bf when he gets out of class
:-)
rustypants: haha
wow
that was like, an OMG moment
sweet
Adrienne: why is that an OMG moment?
rustypants: because i have NEVER heard it from you before, and i’ve known you for…
4 years?
5 years?
Adrienne: heh
I LIKE MY BOYFRIEND
rustypants: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Adrienne: I THINK HE”S REALLY CUTE
rustypants: stop it!!
NIEFPOinhQP[W3ORA;owei”W{ISN
Adrienne: AND I WANT TO KISS HIM ALL NIGHT
rustypants: STOP STOP STOP!!!!
Adrienne: but I can’t
rustypants: NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Adrienne: :-/
rustypants: OMG
my equilibrium will never recover

when we lived in the D.C. / Baltimore / Annapolis area we frequently asked others for suggestions on the local fare, hidden restaurants, hole-in-the-wall joints – places that you only get to know because you’ve lived in the area your whole life, right?

over dinner with friends one evening, we’re asked if we’ve ever had ann’s footlongs in glen burnie. we replied that we’d seen the place before but had not stopped to eat. oh my goodness, the litany that followed this was stunning: greatest hot dogs in the world, been there 50 years, we used to go there after school every day, they’re like hot dogs from God, when you go you HAVE to get the “double-dog” because those are the best, oh, remember that time when we went there, blah blah blah, 100% beef dogs that, if you get them done correctly, have chili, onions, mustard on them as well, and if you’re going to do it, you have to do it all the way, etc. etc.

well, it just so happened that i worked not a mile away from the mighty ann’s footlongs! oh, goodie!!

a plan of attack was devised and a week after this exchange i left school at lunchtime to grab an ann’s double-dog footlong.

i walk into the place and could tell it was a genuine greasy-spoon, hole-in-the-wall, been here forever kinda place. old-timers hanging around, folks behind the counter who look like they’ve been there since the eisenhower administration, grease that looks like IT’S been around since ike, too, old-timey seats and a standing-room-only lunch crowd waiting.

and the first red flag? instead of cooking their dogs on the griddle, they tossed them into this humongous pit of bubbling grease. i stood in awe (and disgust) at the sheer amount of grease and the huge number of dogs percolating therein.

i step up and boldly demand a double dog with chili, hold the onions. into the festering grease fly two more dogs.

red flag number two? they pull the dogs out, put them on a huge bun, slather chili on top, put the results in two sheets of aluminum foil, wrap several napkins around it, and put it into a paper bag. this wasn’t the red flag, though – the red flag came less than a minute later when, walking out to the car, the napkins and paper bag have soaked through with grease. and soaked through my clothes. and was about to soak through my seats in the car.

why, oh mercy, why didn’t i stop right then?

i ate the ann’s double-dog. it was a mess. it was a greasy delicious mess. it slid down my throat and began a toxic chemical reaction unparalleled in the anals (sic) of history.
it. was. disgusting. worst hot dog ever. period.

anyone with an iron gut would love it. otherwise, find another hole-in-the-wall place to eat (like the honey bee restaurant on rt. 2).

—————

edit: one of the best hot dogs ever? chicks drive-inn in west haven, CT – mark took us there one of the times we went up with him. there’s something about open-air dogs on the beach with good friends.Â

driving was what we did. every weekend, sometimes both friday and saturday nights. pink floyd in the tape deck, a bag of chips, a couple cokes and the open road. we would intentionally go off and try to get lost on the backroads of clermont and adams counties in ohio. funny thing about that: when you do it for a couple years, it gets harder and harder to get truly lost.

but this post is about the day we got really stupid.

we were bored. it was summer. a saturday afternoon. the sun was out, it was warm, there was nothing to do. we hooked up early that day because we weren’t going to be able to go out that evening.

scott was driving that trusty old granada that had taken us so many miles down so many roads. we drove around for a while trying to think of something to do when he finally turned to me and said, “do you want to jump myrtle’s tit?”

well, this was a new one on me.

“myrtle’s tit? you get a girlfriend or something?”
“no, you dumbass,” he replied, using his hands to give a visual. “myrtle’s tit is a stretch of downhill road in anderson township that has a big bump halfway down it. you can jump it and go airborne!”
“woo-hoo! let’s do it!” was my response.

we arrive at the hill and sit at the top, making sure there’s no oncoming traffic before making the big run. coast is clear, we’re buckled in, tunes cranked, scott guns the engine, and we speed off.

now, i’ve heard of instances where people talk about life suddenly going in slow motion but it always sounded a bit fishy to me. this was the first time i ever experienced it myself and it was stunning.

we hit myrtle’s tit at a high rate of speed and the world slowed to a crawl. you feel the crunch of the road, see your knuckles white on the dashboard, feel the car going airborne as the back tires finally follow the front, severing contact with the pavement. time stretched and it felt like we must’ve been free falling for ten seconds or more. the adrenaline hits around this point, and you think you can do anything.

then the film speeds back up, the thud of 3156lbs of steel reestablishing ties to terra firma brings you back to your senses, and you let out a loud cry of victory and surprise – you left the full ashtray open, both of your cokes are uncapped, and your bag of doritos unsecured – all of these items now occupy space throughout the interior of the car.

we pulled off at the bottom to collect our wits, relive the excitement, and clean up our mess.

we drove a couple more hours that day, but we kept hearing this metallic ka-thunk-ing sound coming from the rear. we stopped to look several times but found nothing. it wasn’t until we got to east fork lake that scott finally realized what it was. we pulled over, walked to the back of the car, and took the hubcap off the passenger side rear tire.

the rattling ka-thunking? two of the lug bolts snapped off, the third one was stripped almost to the end, and the fourth one was quite loose. we’d been driving on essentially one lug bolt all day.

that was the beginning of the end of that sweet car. it didn’t last too much longer after that. but the memories of myrtle’s tit? they’ll last forever.

scott went into the air force right out of high school. that we kept in touch was pretty amazing, given both of our personalities and lack of letter-writing skills, but hey – we were best friends! (still are!)

so at some point, he’s stationed in okinawa, japan for the long haul. i was living in some crap apartment in mt. washington that had an annual fly problem that resulted in literally dozens and dozens of drunk flies that appear in the apartment, sit on the patio door for 2 days, and promptly die.

in a fit of brilliance, i scoop up a dozen or so dead flies, put them in a little tiny plastic baggie, stick it in an envelope with a note inside the baggie saying, “genuine ohio shitflies,” and send it off.

months later, i get a letter from scott telling me the reason it’s taken him so long to write was that he was imprisoned for introducing a foreign organic substance onto japanese soil, how this is illegal in that part of the world, and the consequences could have been worse.

and me – i stopped breathing for a minute and my heart skipped a couple beats. i was floored that i had gotten him into that much trouble sending him a baggie of joke shitflies.

at the end of the letter, knowing i’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, he tells me he’s “shitting” me and ha-ha-ha.

i’ve never been so relieved and so wanting to kill someone as at that exact moment.

we were seventeen years old. it was labor day weekend & scott’s parents were out of town. i “spent the night at scott’s house” and we, in turn, spent the night driving all over tarnation.

this was our usual routine on friday and saturday nights: scott comes and picks me up. we pick up a couple cokes, a bag of doritos, make sure one of us brought the pink floyd tapes, and hit the road, driving scott’s ’77 ford granada through the backroads of clermont county, ohio and beyond until i had to be home.

but this night? it was the longest we’d been out driving ever. we took off around 7pm and drove all over clermont county, out to adams county, probably into brown county, and then decided to hit hamilton county. it’s probably 4 a.m. and we’re driving through delhi, where the hills are crazy big. we’re running on adrenaline and talking all kinds of silly crap.

we crest the hill and head down the steep ravine-like road when i spot a huge pile of trash sitting on the curb at the very bottom of this hill. the following conversation takes place:

me: …and you better watch out because if you hit that garbage at the bottom of the hill, it’ll be like, ‘BOOM!’ shit flies everywhere!!
him: shitflies? what are shitflies?
me: no, no – you hit that pile of garbage and shit… flies everywhere.
him: yeah, i heard you the first time, but what are shitflies? i’ve never heard of those.
me: no, dude – look… you’re driving down this hill and you run into that pile of trash. if you do that, shit will fly all over the place! shit – flies, not shitflies.

we give each other “the look” like the other is crazy, and bust out laughing. there are few times i can remember laughing so hard and re-telling it live is one of my favorite stories to share.

and the code word, to this day, is shit flies. or is it shitflies?