The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
May 25, 2008
Vol. 11 no. 20

Everything But...
           A wise person once said that the only real “news” in the newspaper is the sports – my kind of wisdom! On the day after the Celtics beat the Pistons and the Orioles shellacked the Yankees, 12-2 - all of the universe is in its right place - I wandered over to the Princeton University track. One of the delights being back here is being able to watch the East Coast track scene again. At the big meets the officials wear tuxedos.
           An old coaching friend invited me down to the Penn Relays at the end of April, arguably the biggest track meet in North America. Amazing the number of races and the excitement generated over four days. 50,000 attended the final day of championship events and relays, but the real track fan comes to watch the high school races. The noise is deafening and it doesn’t matter how fast the teams are going.
           I prefer to watch the longer distance races and I have attended two Friday “distance nights” at Princeton, last Friday being the IC4A championship meet, the oldest track championship in the country. I only watched 6 races (steeplechase, 5000m, 10000m) this time on a cold rainy evening, 18 on the night three weeks earlier. Never too many.
           A friend told about his fiancée coming to watch a meet for the first time. She couldn’t figure out why he was so enthralled. “All they do is run around in a circle and end up where they began. They never go anywhere!” Literally, that is true, but something does happen on the way to nowhere.
           Our lives are filled with events that go no place in particular, like worship. We finish where we start, in a way, then leave to “go out into the world,” then come back. Every pilgrimage is measured by what happens along the way, not by your destination. In track, no lap is exactly the same.