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Dress like a Bedouin and keep your camel close

Carts and cones OK, but you ain’t getting no ride
July 20, 2021

Pop roast - I had scheduled myself to photograph about six games of Eastern Shore girls’ lacrosse (three age groups) over a three-day weekend at  the DE Turf Surge Tournament while also folding in a pair of 5K road races. I have floated through the zone where heat exhaustion seeps into heat stroke, coming from an era where drinkingwater during summer workouts and football camps was considered a sign of weakness. “Dress like a Bedouin and keep your camel close,“ Grandma Rose used to say before I went out to play on a hot day. I wore a dumb Pot-Nets hat to protect my ears, but it was solid canvas with no mesh, cleverly trapping all the heat inside my Fred head. So on a cloudless day with heat coming from above and below, I felt like a tom turkey in a convection oven whose thermometer was ready to pop. I lasted one game, then trudged toward my black 4Runner totally ignored by young drivers of carts whose job is to deliver orange cones to no-parking zones. Kids don’t play under those torrid conditions because they are so tough; they play because their parents think it is so cool.

Runner’s high heat - I photograph runners. Most are happy on the way out while many are in distress on the way back when the heated atmosphere feels like a hot breath from an alpaca, which is a South American camelid mammal. In a 5K race, there is usually a water stop at the turnaround – just don’t take the cap off the radiator. This past Friday and Saturday were the worst days. Many athletes came running past me saying, “This may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Did you get my picture?” 

George Michael Sports Machine - A syndicated program launched in 1984. George Michael was a disc jockey turned sportscaster who sat in front of a mockup of a giant computer. George pushed a button, and sports clips and highlights came in from all over the world. The sports machine is now cranking hundreds of millions times a second via cellphones capturing then reporting results to social media with instant analysis. It's like evolution – where did this platypus come from? Culture morphs and technology is a part of it. And so truisms like “It is what it is” seep into the lexicon, but maybe it isn’t what you think it is, and just maybe, simpler times were better times.

Antonio Bowe - A Cape kid turned 50 years old who used to be a powerlifter for Delaware Special Olympics, now the cart guy at the SuperFresh that has since become Acme. Everyone who knows Tony says, “He’s such a nice man,” while I say, “He’s a nice kid; always was and always will be.” I can't imagine this latest summer crop of quick-to-come-impatient tourists ever laying a hot cross word on Tony without being attacked by a friendly gang of local muppets.  

Summited better than plummeted - Lewes/Cape local John Henriksen and his wife McCall were married Aug. 1, 2020, in Snohomish, Wash. On July 10, 2021, they spent an eight-day journey along the Lemosho route to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet the highest free-standing mountain in the world. The couple honeymooned in Tanzania, which is 7,775 miles from Tullytown, Pa., near Bristol, featuring Tullytown Lake where Susan and I threw down a blanket and called it a honeymoon. Cape grads Will Albanese and Billy Peden have also summited Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Snippets - The Milwaukee Bucks won an NBA title in 1971 behind Lew Alcindor and Oscar Robinson. Both will be seated in the front row for a potential championship-clinching game on Tuesday night. Donte DiVincenzo out of Salesianum and Villanova is on the Bucks’ roster but out with an injury. There is a pool of $15 million that playoff teams share as they advance through the tournament. The surging Phillies, now two games over .500, will play two games at Yankee Stadium Tuesday and Wednesday, July 20 and 21. Broad Street in the Bronx, a classic matchup of two tough towns. Go on now, git! 

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