I'm In (and out of) the Money

Last year I was left out.
Last year I worked twice as hard at the Croom Fools Run.
Last year I worked twice as hard at Croom and the race wasn't as good.
Last year I worked twice as hard at Croom the race wasn't as good and I made NO MONEY!

Now, I'm not talking about the kind of no money where you get paid and it's not very much (like say you are a teacher) so you say, "I make no money!"
I'm talking about the kind of no money where you work all day for days that lead into a couple of weeks and the people you are working for leave town and give you No Money. Zero dollars and Zero cents. Nada, Zip, Zilch, bupkis, like imagine all the money in the world and then it burns and you have none! That kind of no money! Oh, I was supposed to get paid, but the previous sponsors decided that even though I single-handedly staged the race that they would just keep the money. Then they had the nerve, the audacity, the unmitigated gall to try to charge me $1,000 to take the race to another sponsor. Hey, hang on, I got your money right here, wait, I think I found it:

The amazing thing is, after getting stiffed like a clumsy waiter in a room full of Canadians (hey, I love our neighbors to the North, but their customs are just different), I did the race again this year.

To be honest, I didn't know if I was going to get stiffed again, but I knew that I wanted the race to go on, and it looked like it was up to me to carry that out. Thank God, I went to the right guy! Jim Hartnett of Tampa Races has always been a good guy. I love to run and volunteer at his races. But I didn't know him. I didn't know if I could trust him, hey, I'd always liked the other sponsors, I'd always enjoyed running or volunteering at the previous Croom races.

Turns out that I did the right thing. Jim proved to be a hard worker, and very organized. Jim did more of the work leading up to the race than I did. Much more. We had agreed to split the profits, but I didn't really know what that meant. Would I only be paid if there was a profit? The memory of hours and hours of work and no money from last year was fresh in my mind.

Turns out Jim meant that we would split the profits down the middle. Wow, had I really believed that yall that ran may not have gotten t-shirts and my buddies may not have run for free (just kidding, I'll always be a sucker, you would have gotten T-Shirts! hehe)

So, turns out after paying all the bills and making several donations to charity (Friends of Croom, Park Service, Eckerd Youth) we still made a nice little chunk so for now: I'm in the money!

Actually in the money isn't correct it's more like this:

It's really in and out of money. As today and tomorrow I'll rectify that in the money thing by, buying my Western States Plane ticket, My Memorial Day weekend training camp ticket, my Leadville ticket and purchasing my WS accommodations, oh, and my $80 Eagle from the Grand Slam folks, gotta roll those dice! Yeah, that'll do it, I mean this wasn't the NY City Marathon Jim and I staged, there were only 250 races.

Still, it feels pretty good to know that I don't have to throw on a dress and work Nebraska Ave to pull off this Grand Slam thing!