Archive up

The archive is working. Thanks Abe and Duracell.

Archive down

I'm trying to cut down the size of the main page of the blog, so I enabled archiving by week. However, there seems to be a problem with something. We're looking into it. Don't worry, no posts have been lost.

President Simone, doing some last minute stretching, with Trish Sliker giving him a shoulder to lean on. Photo by Phil Goodwin, RIT Campus Safety 

The Coast to Coast team, posing for a photo with President Simone. Photo by Phil Goodwin, RIT Campus Safety 

The RIT Coast to Coast team, exchanging words with RIT President Al Simone before the ceremonial run into campus. Photo by Phil Goodwin, RIT Campus Safety 

Ryan and his father---both sporting the "RF" sign, in the Appalacian foothills of West Virginia outside of Parkersburg.  

Ryan "Sanford" Pancoast running with his dad in West Virginia. 11/28/04

Trust me, this guy was serious. He's looking at our IDs right now to make sure they're not fake.

Coast to Coast "uncensored" -- somewhat

Coast to coast provided all participants, those on the road, and the support staff an incredible opportunity, and enormous trust was placed on us to “not screw up.” Mossman would always finish his conversations with me on the run with “be safe.” I know people were extremely nervous about the experience, so some innocent items were omitted from blog entries from the road, so that people wouldn’t get nervous.

There were tensions on the road between people, and between subgroups on the trip. The experience was indeed a stressful one. Things weren’t always wonderful during the whole trip. In fact, sometimes things got pretty damn trying between people. Don Campbell, a ’79 runner told me that if nobody kills another runner, then we’ve done a good job. The inter-RV tensions were because on a trip like this, we fall into survival mode, and we become clan-like. It’s actually really interesting how each of us reverts into survival mode on an experience like this. If we had more inter-RV interaction, I think the issues between the groups would have been mitigated. Oh well, lessons for 2029.

We learned to absolutely appreciate state police. We were pulled over countless times, but we didn’t get one ticket. The state police were really interested in the run, and were extremely supportive of our effort. In fact, in New Mexico, we were encouraged to stay on the Interstate, which was simply amazing. Local police were another story, however. We had a local authority threaten runners and drivers with arrest in eastern New Mexico. In Missouri, we were accused of being terrorists, manufacturing bombs in our RV, with the intent to blow up a small electrical substation.

The Missouri story is particularly interesting. Firstly, Missouri state roads stink. They have no shoulder. The white line is painted on the edge of the road and they were quite dangerous. It’s a stroke of luck that nobody got injured from a vehicle strike during the whole trip, particularly east of Kansas. Because of the dangerous shoulders, the RV that I was living in backed into a driveway of a substation. We were sitting for about 30 minutes, and a town police officer approached our RV. He questioned our intentions, and we told him our story. He asked us if we had any papers, which of course we didn’t. However, we did have a newspaper that told of our story. He didn’t buy it. He was convinced we were terrorists. I told him that RIT Campus Safety contacted the state police and notified them of our event. I don’t think he was too fond of us talking about the State Police, however. He asked to search our RV, and one of our runners said, “sure.” I however wasn’t too keen on this idea and I blocked him from entering the vehicle. He wasn’t too happy with this, and threatened to call 10-11 Sheriffs deputies. I told him that that was fine with me, but I would not grant him access to the vehicle. He kept mumbling how we could be making a bomb in the RV. He asked if any of us had outstanding warrants, and then asked us to come outside, and present identification so he could “check for warrants.” Of course we were clean, but he kept accusing us of making a bomb. After about 45 minutes, he let us proceed.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad staff weren’t too happy with us running on the side of the road that was next to railroad tracks outside Phoenix.

When on the roadside, watch out for small cactus. On coast to coast, the entire country is your bathroom, and almost all of us appreciated this luxury, except when it was raining. Things are bound to go wrong on the trip. We didn’t drive the route and explicitly go over the route with the runners, so things are bound to go wrong. Flexibility is key to success on this event. Mitigate risk. Wal Marts are everywhere, except when you need them. Purchase extra fuses. Arizona and western New Mexico definitely has the most interesting terrain of the trip. When you hit Missouri, you’ll wish you were in the western panorama. In Texas, which smells, people know you’re from “snow country” when you are wearing shorts in November. Route 50 in West Virginia is pretty crowded with cars at 5:30 a.m., and don’t park the RV on a narrow blind turn.

That’s all the innocent “uncensored” items that I can think of for now. Comment away with other innocent “uncensored” items.

"Last Mile" Celebration

This afternoon's celebration was definitely a capstone to the Coast-to-Coast experience. It was great to celebrate RIT's accomplishment with our family, friends, teammates, the community and with RIT administration. President Simone certainly ran a good pace, especially at the start, down the hill on John St. We weren't used to the police escorts, so having flashing red lights in front of us rather than behind us was a welcome change.

Running towards the Sentinel, with a great crowd making a lot of noise made us all feel very welcome and proud of our accomplishment. For me, the most exciting part of the festivities was when President Simone indicated that the Coast to Coast Run is now an RIT tradition that will continue in the future. To me, this means that from 1979 forward, RIT runners will have a chance 4 times per century to run coast to coast.

The commitment indicated today is not an entitlement to this incredible learning experience by any means. The 2029 team will have to have the commitment to their University, their team, and commitment to honor the 1979 and 2004 teams. They will have to work towards their goal, from planning, to running, to celebration. I think that the commitment to this tradition that President Simone spoke about today will extend beyond the current President's tenure, and will endure throughout RIT's future. My heart is filled with pride, for the 1979 and 2004 team's accomplishments, and I eagerly look to 2029, when the torch of this tradition will be passed to the next generation of RIT runners.

Again, to our history; 1979 team, Coach Todd, and RIT cross country alumni, thank you. Thank you for tradition. Thank you for the pride. Thank you for the history. Thank you for the success. RIT runners are a model for RIT tradition and success, and we should be proud. RF.

And to today; runners, coaches, Mossman, Dr. Lamas, President Simone, campus safety, student health, advisors, and all support staff---thank you. Thank you for taking a huge gamble on supporting this experience. We had a lot of luck, but even more support.

Again, my heart is exploding with pride. Pride for us as a team, and definitely pride for RIT.

Thank you.

River Road Rats Running Club

This blog has been amazing, in getting back I have still only gotten through 2/3 of it, and I know it's still growing. I'd like to use it while we still have everyone's attention to see if I can get another great thing running. I have gotten some positive feedback thus far from current runners, but I'd really like to start up the River Road Rats Running Club, as an informal running club for former RFXC runners.

I think this would be a great way to keep a contact network together for all the RF Alumni, as we didn't know who to email/call when we put on this event. There would be nothing formal to start other than just providing your contact info and location, and if you run a race independently in your neighborhood just put down the River Road Rats as your club affiliation. Eventually I think we'd get some jerseys made up for people who wanted to race with them.

If I get a positive response from any Alumni that are out there and still reading the blog, we'll see what we can do on the logistics end. Cause not only would this be cool, I think some of the RF alumni could take on groups like GVH or the Syracuse Chargers in the area too, which would be pretty cool as well. Thoughts... Comments...


Sheik (crb3587@rit.edu)
RF

Team - Submit your Pictures and Videos

Per Lugie's suggestion from the comments in the '1979 Coast-to-Coast Video' posting:
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Leon and I were the two people in which had video on the trip. Others also had short videos on their digital cameras too. I was wondering If we can get all of this video together so someone can put together a video of this c2c. I volunteer to do this...I have a good amount of experience...unless someone else is more qualified or was already planning too?
~Lugie
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Please submit whatever pictures, videos, and other media you may have to the website FTP server ( ftp://abe.rh.rit.edu ). You can login using your RIT user ID, and your nickname as the password (lower-case). Don't worry about file sizes.

Others who are non-RIT members or non-team members, please contact me to submit what you have. (I know there were several cameras rolling at our finish in Annapolis).
Together with the media from tomorrow's festivities, Greg Moss has suggested that we can make a DVD compilation of everything related to this historic event.

-Abe

1979 Coast-to-Coast Video

With the gracious help of NTID media services, I have tracked down the old 1979 coast-to-coast video and copied it to DVD format. This should be much better than the copy currently owned by the team, and will allow anyone to view it. The video is about 25 minutes long (1.8GB), with audio and CC; either a DVD-burner or Daemon Tools are required to view it. Enjoy!

Download DVD Video

Poster Picture

Howdy,
I am trying to figure out what picture people like most for a possible poster shot. I know some people had mentioned that the shot on the beach of the team running down the beach in San Diego was a good poster shot. Some guys on the '79 team said that even though the poster they had was great, they would have rather had a shot that showed the whole team, and I know that that is the case now. I guess just let me know what people like best out of the pictures, so I can push RIT in that direction. Thanks,
Matt "Krackle" Hartman