#44 Not Tracking

My dear bride is a runner. And she’s pretty serious about it. That means she likes to train in a variety of running environments to increase her overall speed and endurance. With runners, speed and endurance is pretty much it. They don’t really have to work on their slice or their hook, figure out the best wedge to use in a bunker, or which wood to use on a short dogleg. Then again, they wouldn’t be caught dead driving a little electric cart to go 100 yards.
Anyhow, one of the many workouts my wife and her friends used to enjoy was going to the local track and doing speed laps. Interval training I think they call it. Well, lately that’s not possible. Seems the high school upgraded its track and has decided the public is no longer welcome, so chain link fences have been erected at great public cost to prevent said public from entering said grounds, which, need I point out, were also constructed at great public cost.
Now I could understand the school district taking this stance if in fact the track in question had been subject to vandalism. Not so. The high school is not even close to any of the places teenage ne’er-do-wells like to hang out. In fact, it is so far from any place considered cool that students, upon hearing the last bell, universally desert that entire side of town. And really, the chances are pretty remote that any disgruntled juvenile delinquent could find much to vandalize on a quarter mile oval. Surprisingly, graffiti just doesn’t seem to hold up on rubberized pseudo-cinders. And I think it’s highly unlikely that a disgruntled angst-filled adolescent would go to the trouble of digging a pit or something for the varsity track star to stumble in come race day. My experience with disgruntled angst-filled adolescents is they’re pretty dang lazy.
So the only possible vandalism the school district has to worry about is the occasional Pekinese dropping or Shitzu poo that the old folks who used to walk around the same track failed to pick up. The same pet-walking old folks, one should note, that continue to pay property taxes which support the construction of both school and track, and support the education of youngsters 50 years their junior. The funny thing is, the neighborhood the high school is in has aged quite a bit. And off-hours use of the track in question far exceeded the on-hours use by the students for whom it was built.
Maybe I’m way off base here, but publicly-funded facilities ought to be able to be used by the public. I mean, what would they say if they dared to charge an exorbitant admission fee to a publicly-subsidized place like Safeco Field or something? Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. It’s not called Public Taxpayer Field. What was I thinking?
America, Ya Gotta Love It.