Since 1982 people have been gathering on the isthmus of Madison, WI to run the Crazy Legs 5 mile race from the capital building to Camp Randall Stadium.

Since 1973, Mike Becker, Joe Vale, and Myself have been getting wiser, funnier, and better looking. It also turns out that two of three of us have been getting faster.

Want to know which of us is slowing down? I’ll give you a hint: His last name is a homophone of a ski resort in Vail, CO.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Vale v. McCormick Crazy Legs rivalry, I will give you a short lesson. Basically, Joe and I ran our first CL in 1996 and it was such a celebrated event that we were featured on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal with the race’s namesake, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hersch. I have the newspaper clipping in a shoe box to prove it for all of you doubters.

Since, and including, that first year, Joe always ran a valiant race. Moving his pudgy body over the race course with the stealth and grace of an over fed and under exercised cat. Despite his efforts, though, Joe was only ever able to get within 20 seconds of my time. That was in 2002 - the year I decided to retire undefeated from the Crazy Legs.

However, like Brett Favre before me, I could no longer sit idly on the sidelines and watch others compete in an event that I had once so thoroughly dominated. So, this year, 2009, I decided to come out of retirement for one more race.

I won’t lie. I was nervous. After all, in 2004, a year I did not run, Vale completed his fastest time ever in the Crazy Legs: 30:40. A most impressive run at an average per mile time of 6:08. I know these numbers well because Vale kept bringing it up all weekend.

Anyway, it turns out I had nothing to be concerned about. Something about having a wife, a dog, and a five month old son had managed to slow Vale down to a beatable pace of 35:36. One second slower than his brother Jason and approximately 2 minutes and 8 seconds slower than my time of 33:28. However, he did manage to beat Becker who ran a personal best of 40:20 - a full 2 seconds faster than his previous record. Mike, if you’re reading this, congratulations on a race well run. Vale, if you’re reading this…well, you always have 2004.

Oh, and for the record, I’m pretty sure all of us would have beat Kris Dressler who chickened out for this year’s event. Something to do with being tripped and finishing in last place in his last attempt to let his crazy legs run free. That or some BS excuse about studying and Fourier Transforms.

On Friday, April 10, 2009, the tentacles of Chicago’s corrupt underbelly finally reached out and took hold of the Pizza Experiment, a semi-regular wine/beer drinking festival that involves a normally good-natured pizza making competition amongst a group of old and new friends. Notice the emphasis on “normally”. It turns out, that in today’s cut-throat economic environment, nothing is sacred any longer.

It all started when Kris and Leslie Dressler anounced this year’s “First and Possibly Last Good Friday, Better Pizza Experiment Competition.” The Dresslers are big believers in the theory that if you’re going to have a party, it’s gotta have a theme. It turns out they are also believers in the theory that if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.

After an hour of heating the oven and pizza stone, the minimum temperature of 500 degrees was reached. This is an important point because it’s impossible to make a good crust, and hence a good pizza, if the pizza stone is any lower than 500 degrees. A fact well known by most people at the experiment and most certainly known by the Dresslers.

After the heating of the oven, Leslie Dressler, from here on out known as Conspiratorial Radical Using Suspect Tacticts - X (or CRUST-X) put in the first pizza of the night. CRUST-X is the wife of Conspiratorial Radical Using Suspect Tacticts-Y , Kris Dressler (or CRUST-Y), a known pizza professional and perennial winner of the Pizza Experiment competition. But CRUST-X does not have to ride her husbands coattails for her glory, she is an accomplished pizza maker in her own right. And her pizza, the first of the night, came out of the oven with a perfect crust and a delicious flavor. One of her best pizzas to date.

Next up was another veteran to the Pizza Experiment, Matt McCormick (from here on out known interchangeable as I or Me). I had prepared a delicious set of toppings made from chicken baked in verde sauce, sauteed peppers and garlic, and topped with feta cheese. A sure fire contender for top pizza of the evening and an obvious threat to the Dresslers normal dominance. This the Dresslers could not stand idly by and watch.

Thirty minutes after my pizza went in the oven, someone asked what was taking so long. It was at this point that we noticed the oven had been turned off! That’s right, sabotage! CRUST-X was quick to try and lay the blame on a new comer to the experiment, Patrick, and her husband CRUST-Y was quick to back her up. A little too quick. This coordinated blame transference just screamed foul play to me.

With the oven temperature having “accidentally” dropped to the low 200’s, my crust, and hence the pizza itself, was ruined. And not only that, but the next 3 pizzas to go in the oven also came out with sub-par crusts. None of this the fault of the pizza makers, but rather the fiend who shut the oven off!

Now I can’t prove who is to blame for this travesty of competitive spirit, and I would hate to drop any names, but it was definitely CRUST-X and CRUST-Y.

Fortunately, while their unscrupulous efforts may have worked at keeping me down, the oven eventually reached it’s necessary temperature again and the Dressler’s were dethroned and shamed by a new participant in the pizza experiment: Gregoire. He’s a Frenchman and I have to say, as cliche as it is, he is an incredible cook. Not only did he make the best savory pizza (which took over 2 hours of topping preparation: involving roasted vegetable, honey, and about $30 worth of specialty French cheese) but he, along with the help of Patrick, followed it up with a dessert pizza that was amazing. The dessert pizza actually involved doing a flambe of oranges, bananas, and Vodka. Truly incredible.

But I digress, this story is not about the remarkable skills of our new French friend, but about the overt act of subversion by old and trusted friends. My world has been turned upside down and I’m not sure I can ever approach another pizza experiment the same way again. I hope you are happy CRUST-X and CRUST-Y!

My friend Bryn is hysterical. Seriously, one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. She made a comment the other day about birthdays. If she made this up herself, she’s not only funny but brilliant. If she read it somewhere, she’s just marginally intelligent and very well read:

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that people who have the most live the longest.

To help celebrate my birthday I recruited some old friends and a few new ones to join me at a place called Latitudes near my apartment. Half priced bottles of wine and 3 for the price of 2 appetizers kicked things off to a good start. But the real excitement came when we showed up at the local dive bowling alley to knock down some pins. Well, we really didn’t knock down all that many pins - we were all pretty pathetic in fact. To give you an idea, the Frenchman in the group, Greg, beat the rest of us Americans at our own game. No worries, though, because we had a blast.

For the past 4 years I have been trying to lose my nickname of “County”. This was acquired while snowboarding with everyone’s favorite angry inch (Brett Liebman) back in about 2003. At the time I was a pretty much a novice snowboarder and, upon seeing me come down a particular steep slope with my board “plowing” snow in front me, Brett commented, “Give that boy a bag of salt and a little yellow siren and he’d be the perfect county snow plow.” Ever since, he and others have referred to me as County.

After 5 years out west I feel it is time for me to officially shed that nickname. I’m incredible now! Okay, maybe I’m not “incredible” on a snowboard but I no longer plow snow with my board and I can ride down just about anything. As proof, I went to Revelstoke, BC Canada with a couple of friends a few weeks ago. It was awesome!

The mountain is pretty much brand new with just 3 lifts that take you up a total of 5620 feet of elevation gain. Because it’s new, there’s a lot of work left to be done on the mountain. The trees are close together, the runs are steep, they are really long, and there’s pretty much no easy way down unless you like taking green cat walks down. There’s also hardly anyone there. I think the longest we ever stood in line was about 60 seconds - and that was even on a Saturday!

In short, if you are a good skier/boarder, this is a mountain you need to get to sooner rather than later. It’s going to get more developed and more crowded over time. In fact, if you’re thinking about it, give me a holler and I’ll go with you next year.

One thing no one will ever accuse me of is keeping this blog up to date. For a long time I’ve been meaning to get a whole bunch of photos back up on this site and reorganize some things. This dates back over two years to a trip I took to Italy! Basically, I wanted to update my Travels, Outdoors, and Friends pages to contain all necessary photos as well as my usual witty banter.

Things that have been missing:

• My recent solo tour of Europe (Amsterdam, Berlin 1, Berlin 2, Munich, Vienna, Southern Hungary, Budapest, Prague 1, Prague 2, Dresden, Krakow)
• Snow and sledding in Seattle.
• A two-year old trip to Italy.
• A year old trip to London, England.
• A year old summer camping trip to Neah Bay, Washington.
• A backpacking trip last summer to Mt. St. Helens.
• My Seattle going away party.
• Christmas 2008 in Madison.

I would promise to keep all of these pages much more up to date but we all know I’d be lieing. So you’ll just have to check back regularly to look for new updates. I promise to try to keep my life exciting for all of you out there living vicariously through me.

Coming soon: St. Patty’s Day in Chicago, Snowboarding on Revelstoke, and my going Seattle going away party. I know you all can’t hardly stand the excitement.