Race between the raw bar and the brewing company

SoDel Cares 5K and Mile Walk - It was a beautiful socially distanced morning for an in-person race Nov. 7, starting and finishing between Bluecoast Seafood Grill and Thompson Island Brewing Company, a blue wave start with a bagged breakfast finish, which included a homemade Rice Krispy Treat that was decadent and delicious. But enough about me. Dylan Smiley – no relation of muppet Guy Smiley – won the race in 15:28, followed by Colten Morris in 16:44. Bethany Killmon Wright, first cousin to the Vanderwendes of Bridgeville, was the overall women’s winner in 19:56, chased by the running nanny Cindy Conant of Kensington, Md., in 20:09. 

Symbolic speech - Young, fast, pretty and delightfully interactive local runner Michele Karsnitz ran a race two months ago and flashed two fingers, indicating two months pregnant, as she ran by my camera at Fredman Bend in Dewey Beach. “A few people saw the photo on Facebook and commented, ‘Why does everything have to be political?’” Michele said before Saturday’s SoDel Cares 5K. “Today I will hold up four fingers – just means I’m at four months. Who knows what people will read into that?” I do! 

Step up, step off, sit down - I roll around town like Bobby Best’s old Ford from Best Equipment. When Bobby got a new truck, many muppets were morose and bellicose, just too much change in the village, like Ken Dunning getting a riding mower. I have for the moment stepped off Friday night football because I move like Bobby’s old truck with the bed stuffed with rusted farm equipment. Dan Cook does a great job with nighttime football photography. He is the Best Truck of the present. I'm the Monday afternoon JV specialist, where I have a better chance to talk to kids about their grandparents, aunts and uncles – football is just a vehicle to start a conversation. 

Wearing out strangers - We all suffer from pent-up socialization, so if out in the wild someone pulls the voice activated string like a 1960s rubber doll, we chat them all up and down until they pull their mask up over their eyes. I was wearing a Cleveland Browns shirt at DE Turf Nov. 8 tracking Cape in a boys’ lacrosse tournament. A dad in a Penn State hat remarked, “Brown’s fan, you must be loyal.” He opened the door and learned my brother Tom played at Penn State for Rip Engel, that my nephew Mike played for the Browns, Ravens and Titans, and as he was weighing the likelihood that anything I was saying was true, grandson Mikey scored an underhanded athletic goal off a rebound as the crowd gasped, “Nice shot!” I said nothing, just went off to shoot some defense. 

Shaking off the rust - What happens during fall tournaments doesn’t matter much for school sports played in the spring. Except if you believe in a winning attitude and that competitiveness speaks to underlying character and that athletes are never in a static state, their skills are improving or eroding. I watched a deep and super-talented array of Cape lacrosse players look less than stellar in a game versus 302 Lacrosse, which they lost 6-5, mainly because 302 had several good players and a great goalie. “Just have to shake off the rust,” I heard, but rust doesn’t shake off. It takes a wire brush or a sandpaper disk on a drill. 

Snippets - I learned that Gabe Best will be heading to Mount St. Mary’s next year to play lacrosse. Blake Gipko will take his lacrosse skills to the University of Lynchburg, which he has already visited twice. November shotgun season begins Friday, Nov. 13. There is an 80 percent chance of seeing a steaming dead deer in the bed of a pickup truck parked at the Chicken Man north of Milford on Route 1. If you have a hunting license, you don’t need any advice about safety precautions, but if you don’t hunt, you and your dog should stay in the driveway or dog park, or go to the beach in Dewey. Darby Dog is rated “unfit for small dog socialization.” He likes to bowl them over like Andy Varipapa doing trick shots in the 1934 movie “Strikes and Spares.” The Notre Dame double overtime 47-40  home win over Clemson was incredible – in particular, students falling from the stands and rushing the field in a green sea of stupidity. But why no mention of the mural featuring First Down Moses and Touchdown Jesus? Go on now, git!