The Royce Files

Finally! I can catch some rest and some fish. Some great catches Labor Day cometh and I can rest from my corporate labors. It has been an extremely busy time for me at the multi-national company for which I work. Fortunately I was able to add 3 more support staff this summer to help when the going gets tough. It has been nearly 2 and a half months since the last post so and I guess it looked like an unexpected hiatus. Well, it was expected  but definitely unintentional. Let me count all the adventures I've had since we wrapped up the Fargo Marathon. I planted a vegetable garden and volunteered at the Growing Together Community Garden. A separate post is forthcoming about gardening. I returned to the Back to 50s Car Show in St. Paul after missing last year due to the wedding bumper crop. June just flew by at lightning speed. In July I had a considerable amount of stuff. On Independence Day I visited Bonanzaville with my MFS and the Boe, a new character in the Royce Fil...

Lionel log dump car with the Switch Tower in background I wanted to have some action on my railway besides just going in circles. Lionel makes quite a few operational cars. I featured the milk reefer a few weeks. I doubt I will ever get that one to work. It is a long range plan. So I found this Northern Pacific log dump car from 1984 on e-bay in practically new condition. Even came with the box for less than $30. I was planning on getting a version of this car at one of the local antique shops for less than $20. However, that one was broken. The log dump car basically holds a few logs and at the desired point- notably the place where the collection tray sits and the automated track piece sits- dumps the logs. Lionel has made these types of cars since the post-war period . Earlier versions were all metal. Its close relatives are the coal dump car and the helium tank dump car. These cars can be operated manually with the manual uncoupler thingie and ...

It seems a bit late to wrap up my Fargo Marathon coverage. The race is long over and sort of forgotten for the year, but today I wear my "Team Fargo Rocks" shirt from a 2011 to make concluding remarks about the region's premier and largest running event. So we know the winners but what about those who ran with style and vigour and panache? Let's meet a few memorable runners. Neon on the rise The trending style this year appears to be day glo neon. I saw plenty of runners apparelled in the brightest colors on the spectrum. More neon I tend to wear the neon vests more than the actual shirts. It ensures that I am seen and not run over. For what appeared to be a mostly overcast day the runners in those loud colors stood out. In typical years in my marathon coverage I provide a snippet of particular traits of runners- like costumes or mustaches or tattoos. Well, this year I was distracted and did not come up with any consistent trend to cover. But I did re-...

Let me preface this just so you don't start thinking that running a marathon in Fargo is a hazard to your life. I will first say that marathon maniacs are generally decent people and non-violent. They like the challenge of zealously running marathons. It is a club of sorts with different levels of which you can attain through running lots and lots of marathons. Well there were plenty of them in Fargo this weekend. And investigating further I discovered that it was perhaps these runners who started their race early. Becoming a particular level of maniac has a time component in which you need to run so many marathons. So instead of perhaps bonking out in the humidity- they started earlier. Here is a blog post about the marathon from one nicknamed T-Rex.  2010 Chris Myers ponders his  upcoming Marathons  During my prep work for writing the post about the Fargo Marathon I check the registrants list to find people I know. I missed a few this year. I saw co-...

Kenyan James Kirwa has about a 2 block lead on next runner at mile 18 Although I was not anywhere near the finish, overall this was one good race. Sure the humidity was high a times and it was a bit wet in the morning but the race finished with a flourish not seen in Fargo since 2008 when Eric Sondag won. Sondag was on hand this year providing color commentary for the Forum's live blog. Let's rewind back to the 4th mile. James Kirwa sped by followed by a bit of a space and then Chris Erichsen. And this was how it was for a majority of the race: Kirwa was holding a decent lead on Erichsen. Chris Erichsen is steady at mile 18 Near mile 18 when I saw the leaders again Kirwa had what I would guess to be a under a quarter mile advantage over Erichsen. The rest of the elite men were further back and actually one of them, Eric Chirchir, withdrew around mile 18. He looked to be favoring his knee. He was in 3rd at the time he withdrew and got carried away in a golf cart. B...

Still dragging out this marathon. Probably because I did not get many pictures or find a theme. No I did find a theme and I will get to those later. Now onto to business. After the elites then came the herds. These are the halfies. the masses Apparently the man must be mistaken about this race- this is no beer run. However, I am wrong. There was a beer garden at the finish line. Bizarre but I suppose it makes you forget all those pavement pounding miles.  Jake and the Red Beard Looking through my pictures I then realize I had gotten a photo of a top beard a co-worker too- Jake. Jake identified What about the masses from the marathon?  MFS's co-worker in pink and sunglasses     My Mostly Finnish Spouse spotted a co-worker running the marathon incognito.   People ran by and by. Even Chris Myers ran by. Now he is turning into a real Marathon Maniac. And apparently 2 members of the Emmy winning web series Intram...

The view near mile 4 just before official race time My preparations for a morning of spectating and random coverage began at 5:30 AM.  My crew zipped over to our race corner near mile 4 at 6:30 AM and set up the easy up tent in a light rain. Not much was happening until we started to see a few runners trickle by. And these were runners with official race bibs. No clue what they were doing. Too far from the Dome to be lost. I think about 2 dozen passed before either half or full officially started. We do know that a guy from Iowa ran the 10K by accident but eventually got on the right course for the marathon. Cris Estes would be proud. Apparently some entrants felt that because of the potential for high humidity in the later morn it would be better to start sooner than later. But perhaps they were slow runners who needed more than 6 hours to complete the course. This is the first time I ever encountered anything like that. Let's go back in time ...