We Don't Walk Slow

Rnningfool Speaks

I feel that the time has come for a new era of this blog. The reach of this blog is disappointing and it’s time for new, fresh ideas to take rnningfool.com into the future. I have been working intently with SEO optimization and believe that this will help traffic moving forward. HOWEVER, this isn’t enough to generate the buzz I’m looking for. I am a progressive person and constantly trying to improve on what I do. A definitive goal has been set which is “to reach 1,000 hits in a single day.” This will require an active website that will be updated more frequently and with better content. I am asking you, yes you behind the keyboard & monitor, for help. Either suggestions that could make this blog better or perhaps even material that I would be delighted to share. JKash does send me things from time to time which I haven’t acted on but sometimes I’m not sure how to create an entire post dedicated to Vontaze Burfict pointing at Matt Barkley. The only way for me to reach this goal is to have a collective effort from my readers. I can’t do it myself. A good indicator of the future of this blog is how many “GOOD” comments this post generates.

0-1 – Hope is minimal
2-3 – We stand a chance
3-4 – People are actually reading these posts
5+ – Ain’t no stopping us now

By Tom Stortz|2013-02-08T00:29:49-05:00February 8th, 2013|My Life|1 Comment

3 Things That Make You Say Huh

Humans have been able to create ideas that you or I would never have even thought possible. To even comprehend how far we’ve advanced in the past 100 years is mind boggling. You think Thomas Edison could have imagined there would be a means of communication where we click a button and information can be sent thousands of miles away in an instant? As I get older the more I feel ideas like teleportation, cloning, universe travel, time travel, are not out of the question. The world and it’s possibilities are endless and to think otherwise (or not think at all) is wrong. I”m learning that keeping an open mind to anything and everything is a good idea because impossibilities don’t seem to exist. With that little introduction in mind, I’m going to share three creations that spin my head.

The Compass

The magnetic compass contains a magnet that interacts with the earth’s magnetic field and aligns itself to point to the magnetic poles. Let’s just assume that being alive in 2013 would give us an advantage intellectually over people in the 1300’s when the compass was invented. I feel like I could wander the Earth for my entire life with the sole purpose of navigation and never come across this idea behind this instrument. I was sitting in a plane wondering how it knew which way to fly and thought of the compass. A magnetic field from the the Earth? The person who figured this out deserves a major pat on the back because he (obviously he) made navigation for centuries to come possible.

Dinosaurs

Favorite dinosaur? Velociraptor. I don’t even know where to begin on this one. Dinosaurs existed between a range of 230-60 million years ago. Let’s just comprehend this for a second. For 150 million years dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Humans have been on the Earth for roughly 200,000 years. The largest of these creatures grew to be 12 meters (39 ft) tall and 22.5 meters (74 ft) long, and would have belonged to an animal that weighed between 30000 and 60000 kilograms (70000 and 130000 lb). HOLY FUCKING FUCK. Just imagine if we had to worry about a T-Rex roaming our planet. This is the same Earth as back then. And here we are millions of years later living our pointless existences thinking the world revolves around our lives. You can’t even grasp 1) the time that has taken place 2) how badass dinosaurs were 3) how lucky they aren’t still around.

Space Shuttle

I’m just as fascinated by airplanes but the space shuttle is even grander. We (LOL I put myself in the we) can launch an aircraft which can land on a foreign moon 238,900 miles away. What? Most people have trouble programming their VCR (this is a better joke in the 90’s) and we have brilliant people in our society who can land a ship on a moon. When are the tours to the moon going to start? I want to be extremely clear on something, the Wright Brothers flew their shitty plane sometime in the early 1900’s. 65 years later we landed on the moon. If that isn’t progress I don’t know what else to say. THE DINOSAURS WERE ON THIS EARTH FOR 150 MILLION YEARS AND IN 65 YEARS, after flight, WE LANDED ON THE MOON. This should make your head spin and help you understand what crazy ass world you live in.

Nothing is impossible. Crazy ass shit happens.

By Tom Stortz|2013-02-07T23:36:30-05:00February 7th, 2013|My Brain|0 Comments

Questioning Religion

I wrote in the past entry that I am reading this success book and I found this point particularly thought provoking. It pertains to the idea about the “fear of death”. The success book tries to help you understand how to overcome fears that could potentially stand in your way of success. I’m going to quote this exactly:

Witness, now, the major source of the origin of the fear of DEATH!

“Come into my tent, embrace my faith, accept my dogmas (and pay my salary) and I will give you a ticket that will admit you straightway into heaven. When you ‘remain out of my tent’ says this same leader, “and you will go direct to hell, where you will burn throughout eternity.”

What more do you need to understand that religion scares you into believing it’s true? You belong to the church, give them money, and in turn you get to go to heaven. What a crock of shit. I know what being swindled is and this is right up there with the best of them. At least some of those better sex pills can make you think you’re having better sex. I’m totally cool with the idea of believing in God because he can help make you a better person. You have a value system, you work for something you believe in, it can inspire you to better things than you would do on your own. But from my short time on this Earth, I feel like the above statement is how a god fearing religion works. Where would religion be without any followers? Nothing in this world would change! Religion needs gullible people to survive.

I went into a church while in San Antonio to see if I could feel any spiritual awakening. I sat there for 5 minutes with my eyes closed and thinking about things I would pray for. After being in the house of God I came out exactly the way I went in. I don’t doubt “god” has influence over peoples lives but I also consider that perhaps the world beats to its own drum and what happens happens. My random bar talk with a guy from Texas told me about a motorcyclist who happened to get struck by lightning. I can’t verify any truth to this but I certainly don’t doubt it could happen and I certainly don’t think God did this. People actually believe God does everything! Not me.

By Tom Stortz|2013-03-15T02:58:50-04:00February 7th, 2013|My Brain|0 Comments

International Roofing Show in San Antonio

My traveling has finally concluded and I’m back in the frigid air of Philadelphia. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I enjoyed the 80 degree weather of the keys and the 80 degree weather of San Antonio. On Monday, I scheduled a flight into San Antonio for the International Roofing Show in the late evening. I was chatting it up with the cab driver on my way to the hotel and learned that 50% of San Antonio is Latin American which for whatever reason I hadn’t considered. I arrived at 10pm at Hotel Contessa which was quite a luxurious hotel. I had a king suite which I packaged for 2 nights and airfare for about $650 dollars which I thought was pretty reasonable considering how nice the hotel was. I went to sleep early to get a good start on my Tuesday.

I woke up at 7:15 and ate a buffet style breakfast which was tight. After rocking a deuce, I put on my running gear to explore San Antonio. After some basic running around the streets to get my bearings I found the Riverwalk which you can see from the picture below.

On just a fabulous run I must have taken the Riverwalk upstream about 4 miles or so and then back. Early in the morning, not many people on the path, and beautiful weather was a perfect start to the day. When I got back I showered and prepared for the first day of the roofing show. I also downloaded a book called the Keys to Success by Napoleon Hill which I’ve been pretty floored by after only finishing about 20% of the book. More on this in future posts. Without getting into great detail about the show, I spent 5+ floor hours meeting people and networking with contacts amongst the industry. A Gourlay lookalike who I’ve been working with and has taken a liking to me and invited me to a business “party” hosted by a huge player of the roofing industry.

It was at 7:30 and the show ended at 5 so I went back to the hotel and to the pool area where I just relaxed on the top level of this beautiful pool. After that I found the Riverwalk again and ate some Spanish food and had a few beers at a local spot. I met some random Texan at the bar who was pretty entertaining. After my first sentence to him saying I was from Pennsylvania he replied with, “you sure sound like it.” After dinner I met up with my contact and we drank some beers and basically just had a good time at this open bar. I probably drank about 10 beers and was pretty buzzed but not out of control. I went back to my hotel and called it a night around midnight.

Sadly that was the most exciting part of my adventure. The 2nd day of the roofing show wasn’t nearly as beneficial to me as the first day because I had done most everything I wanted to do. I spent some time exploring the Alamo which I can know say I know what happened there and more of the city of San Antonio which I will say is a pretty nice, clean, well laid out city. The weather is pretty fantastic as well. I boarded my plane at 6pm to connect in Chicago and then back home. I got in around 1am and everything was smooth sailing. The trip was really quite refreshing and doing things like that are essential to keeping your mind open and thinking.

This is just a quick thought on airplane travel which bothered me. Carry on bags are just that, carry ons. They aren’t small suitcases. I watch all these guys who think they are so smart not checking in a bag and watch all the inconvenience they cause with their too large for a small compartment suitcase. In the past 6 days I’ve checked a bag 4 times successfully. Literally not having to wait more than 7 minutes after getting to the carousel. So the idea of them losing your bag isn’t a valid argument. USAIR makes you pay 25 bucks so I understand the cheapskate mentality of not paying this fee but seriously if I watch one more idiot stuff a bag too big for the storage compartment I’m going to flip. I also watched this idiot Asian play this game on his Ipad that made a sound every time he made a move. I almost spazzed out when I heard it for 30 minutes straight but figured he was some foreigner who didn’t understand English and it would be more trouble than it was worth. MUTE MOTHERFUCKER! Same thing with people playing Solitare. That’s the worst game on the goddamn planet. I don’t even feel I need to back up the shittiness of that game.

By Tom Stortz|2013-03-15T02:59:00-04:00February 7th, 2013|My Life|4 Comments

South to the Keys

I returned safely from a trip to West Palm Beach, to Fort Lauderdale, and the Florida Keys. I left on Thursday and met up with one of my dad’s old friends who lives in Delray. It was the first time I’d seen him in about 5 years so we had some catching up to do. We talked about investments, family, and everything in between. In the evening he drove me to Lauderdale where I met up with the Rock.

I’ve wrote this before but the two of us just get along pretty well. There is no awkwardness or anything, we just act like we’ve known each other for years even though we only see each other every few months. We went to Los Olas Blvd and had food at an overpriced tavern and purchased a few cigars for later. Next we went to a local pub by him and met up with another bro who we used to go to high school with. Even though we only talked for a few hours, it’s still fun to catch up. We called it a night at around midnight because Rock still had to work on Friday.

I woke at 9 or so on Friday and got some breakfast and then went on a 6 mile run down A1A. Running along the beach in warm weather is quite a treat in February. After that I went to the Galleria and got some lunch by myself on the water. At 5 pm, the Rock got back and we had made hotel reservations in Key West which is the southern most point of Florida. We met one of his friends who ended up driving us down there. We stopped at Red Robin along the way because his friend really loved the bottomless steak fries. After driving for 3 hours or so, we finally arrived at our destination.

The hotel was pretty decent and we wanted to see the bar scene even though it was already pretty late and we were all sober. We walked around a bit but it was tough interacting with all the tourists when there was no alcohol involved. We had a few drinks but called it a night at 1am so we’d be ready for the next day.

Saturday was perhaps one of the best Saturdays I’ve had in a long time. We got up at 9am and went to get some breakfast. Along the way we stopped at a resort to rent some MoPeds which the Rock said was pretty fun. For some reason we had to wait an hour before they picked us up to get the MoPeds. When we got to the place, I made it pretty clear I’d never rode a Moped before when I almost slammed into a fence by gunning the throttle the first time I tried to make a turn. Still, the guy didn’t really care and sent us on our way. I’ll be perfectly honest and say it was pretty exhilarating riding these things around with no training whatsoever. We were in traffic being tailed by cars and having no idea how to switch lanes properly or even turn. Amazingly we managed to get back to our hotel where we lounged around the pool for an hour or two. For 5 minutes in the pool area I can honestly say I didn’t have a care in the world and felt really great.

We got on the Mopeds again to head to town to watch the Miami Hurricanes basketball game when the first Moped mishap almost occurred. I was feeling a bit too cocky on the Moped and tried to make a left hand turn onto a two lane street with a car coming in the far right lane. On my turn I swung the bike out way too far and thought I was going to get rear ended but somehow the car avoided my stupidity. We took the Mopeds to a place called Dante’s which was an outside pool bar. After some time there we went joy riding for a bit more before we turned the dangers of the motorcycle world in.

We watched a really tight Hurricanes game that they ended up winning and then headed to a bar to smoke some cigars we had bought earlier. This was the view and us at this point.

This was the 2nd time I could say I was truly happy. The view was unreal and the cigar / Johnnie Walker combo hit the spot. I was starting to catch a pretty good buzz at this point and my memory isn’t perfectly clear. We met up with a few of his friends at a bar and I Irish exited out to a strip club at one point. Once I got tired of that I went to a bar called the Garden of Eden which was a nude club. I figured it was worth a look. As I got up the stars the first thing I’m greeted with is a 50 year old fat man with his junk hanging out. I promptly exited and called it a night.

We woke up at 10 today and had breakfast before the brutal 3 hour drive made worse by the singing of Dave’s fat friend. We got back at 3 and hung out for a bit before the Rock drove me to the airport. I put 187 dollars on the Ravens which covered and helped to bail me out of the large some of money I spent there. I spent about 700 dollars there which included every single thing I did aside from the 48 dollar Moped charge. Throw in the airfare and it was about a grand for 3 days. Bottomline, it was worth it. We had an experience that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life and that’s priceless. Plus there were multiple times I can say I was truly happy which I haven’t been finding as easily of late. Now I’m off to San Antonio for a few days. The fun is just beginning.

By Tom Stortz|2013-02-03T23:57:53-05:00February 3rd, 2013|My Life|0 Comments