Volume 3, Number 6
June, 1998
A Tale of Embarrassment, Humiliation and Defeat: SCROOMtimes Does the
Bay to Breakers
By Dean Shutt
Ah, but what a hardy bunch of adventurers we were. Fortified by our tasty and nutritious Jack-in-the-Box breakfasts and our Mega-Man vitamins, our little group made it's way to the 1998 Bay-to-Breakers. The Bay-to-Breakers is a uniquely San Francisco event, mixing the finest runners in the world with a pack of drunken yahoos in penis outfits... oh... and us. Our team consisted of Andy, our fearless publisher and carpenter, Tony, our long lost but now recovered Domestic and International Leisure Affairs Advisor, Beth, a friend of Andy's and resourceful teammate. Oh, and yours truly, Editor-in-Chief and pseudo-sports columnist.
Our plan was to spread the word of SCROOM amongst the heathens. To ease the transition to SCROOMness, we were going to provide the converted with martinis and Sinatra, we are after all... civilized. To that end we had built a fine mobile bar, painted it up with SCROOMworthy slogans, and loaded it for bear with seven liters of Vodka and Gin and a thousand SCROOMpamphlets. We had spared no expense in our holy quest. Well, actually we spared quite a few expenses. The most important one being the wheels of our little contrivance. Instead of buying large wheels and axles, we had gone in for 3 inch casters. They rolled well enough, but they did make the cart quite loud. We thought nothing of it during the shakedown cruise, but we would eventually.
Sunday came and we were in our chosen location at an early hour. Soon we were passing out screwdrivers and making new friends. As the crowd thickened around us, we were confident that our plan would work to perfection. Then the race actually started and we were moving. The first problem was the steering. It took quite a lot of work to keep the bar cart on the straight and narrow, and when you are crammed onto a city street with 100,000 other people, steering becomes important. As the crowd thinned and we got up to speed the steering became less of a problem. Unfortunately, the noise became a real problem. With the 3 inch wheels the cart put up a racket like you wouldn't believe. We had a stereo that was blasting out Sinatra in honor of Frank's passing. The cart made so much noise though that I couldn't even hear the music - and I was two feet from the speakers!
After about a half a mile, we made our first pit stop to offload the screwdrivers we had consumed. At that point I made the decision that the cart was not going to work. When we were all reassembled we talked it over and decided to dump the cart in Beth's truck and carry on without it. We had failed, and failed miserably.
Which is not to say that we didn't finish the race. We did finish (sort of), turning in 20 minute miles the rest of the way, our pathetic little stereo being drowned out by every set of speakers we ran across, our brightly colored umbrella shading us from the sun and the pain and humiliation that was rained down upon us. We made it to the six mile mark before the sights of Footstock lured us into a shortcut through the woods. Beth finished without us and we limped into the finish area, defeated and less than men.
Now we are stuck with multiple gallons of cheap booze that Skippy won't even touch and a bunch of brightly painted firewood. We were felled by an imperfect design and ultimately a lack of will. We are not proud of our performance on Sunday, but rest assured, we are in the early design stages of next year's cart. Big tires, lightweight frame, larger stereo, better alcohol and a large SCROOMtimes balloon to initiate the worthy. We will be back and we will bring martinis and Sinatra to the masses. It's what we were put here to do, we are after all... civilized.
FLAG FOOTBALL UPDATE: The Hagerman Titans are 5 and 0 thus far this season after last Saturday's vistory over the Warriors. With yours truly playing a standout linebacker and Dave Lind putting in a rocklike effort on the offensive line, the Titans have outscored their five opponents to the tune of 134 to 28. Our defensive has yet to allow a meaningful score after five games and we are dominating on both sides of the ball. More updates will follow as the season progresses.
SJ Rhinoshttp://www.rhinos.com/rhinos/
Indianapolis Coltshttp://www.nfl.com/colts/
Red Soxhttp://www.redsox.com/home.html
http://www.sportscircuit.com/baseball/
NY Rangershttp://www.nhl.com/teams/nyr/sitehome.htm