Mile Marker 33

I think I can write this post in 25 minutes, then it will be ready for tomorrow, which is the day it focuses on.

I was born on Sunday, November 28, 1948. Now that you know this, you may think to yourself, "What an old person. I have no interest in a blog written by an old person." But yet, you might, if you read on. You might just find this post intriguing.

The day I was born was the 333rd day of the year. It was a leap year, so in most years that I have lived, for instance, 1949, 1950, and 1951, I was born on the 332nd day of those years. But every leap year, I was born on the 333rd day of that year.

We fast forward from 1948 to 1984. I was attending California State University at Los Angeles. The finals were scheduled for probably the last week of March. They were scheduled at odd hours, not like our regular classes. Thus it was dark when I returned to the parking lot late one March night in 1984 after taking a final, and found that my 1957 restored VW was stolen. A postal employee called me several days later and said he saw my trashed car in Monterey Park. He foraged around among the papers scattered around and found my identity, and gave me a call.

My friend George Kasparek was sort of a garage mechanic who took in abused cars and fixed them up. He had a 1971 Datsun 210 station wagon that his daughter Kelly had owned for several years, but she was ready to move up in transportation. He told me I could have it for $1200. So I agreed to the transaction. This car lasted me about three and a half years. It got good mileage.

I was driving later in 1984 to Las Vegas. I was glancing at the odometer with interest and curiosity every once in a while because it was coming up on 33,333 miles. This particular car, like many older model cars, does not get to 100,000 miles and keeps on counting. It gets to 99,999.9 miles and then rolls back to 00000 miles. So I knew I was really at the 133,333 mile mark of the car's life, but yet the odometer was coming up on 33,333. And of course, like most older cars, it had a tenths of a mile digit as well. It is the Gospel truth when I tell you that just exactly as my car passed the road sign which read "Las Vegas 33," the odometer was precisely at 33,333 and three-tenths, it could not have been a foot closer.

On October 1, 2009, an interesting statistic is that I will be 22,222 days old. And lately, I have been thinking how nice it would be if I could live to be 33,333 days old. I would theoretically reach that age on March 3, 2040. What do you know? 3/3, just three days after Leap Year Day 2040, February 29.

Just think what a person could accomplish in a thousand days, if resolute and goal-oriented. I have given it some thought. One could just about go to law school in a thousand days. One could just about build a house in a thousand days. One could just about write a book, even if quite slowly, in a thousand days. One could think of eleven separate goals that require a block of time of one thousand days each, and envision those goals in advance and see if they could be brought about.

Curious About The Day I Became 11,111 Days Old

After spending this morning basking in the glow of being on the brink of turning 22,222 days old today at 4:20 p.m. in the Time Zone I currently live in here in Alabama, it occurred to me that by reaching this 22,222 days-old milestone, there was a point in time when I reached 11,111 days old. So I got my calculator and determined that the day I turned 11,111 days old was May 1, 1979. Then I recalled that it was in November 1978 that I began to run in the road races. I had run primarily on the track prior to that. And I recalled this morning that I have a log book listing my training and how I did in races in 1979. It was on the top shelf of a closet. So a few minutes ago, I got that book and checked it out, pardon the pun. It turns out that on March 31, 1979, a Saturday, I ran a Personal Record at the SCATS 10K in Huntington Beach, California, finishing in 9th place (and I recall it was quite a big crowd of runners, maybe 1500 or more) in 33:30.2. The following week, in Santa Monica, I ran the Schick 10K in 33:45.3. Then on May 19, I ran the Bullock's Westwood 10K in 33:20.6, and on May 27, I ran the Brentwood 10K in 33:26. There is no earth-shaking significance to these events, other than they constitute four 10K races I ran in 33 minutes and something within 33 days of when I turned 11,111 days old.

This morning (Oct. 1, 2009), 11,111 days later, I ran more than six miles, but only at half the speed I ran about 11,111 days ago.

(c) 2009 by Hooknose McGee