Gags, The Great Wall, and other odds and ends

I have been asked by my family and a few friends to continue updating the blog to let you all know what I have been up to these past few days.  I will also post a few more for posterity.

For those of you who aren't in the track world, and that is probably most of you, you probably have no idea who Gags, or Frank Gagliano, is, but I have gotten to spend some time with him and you all would love him.  Gags is known as the Godfather of American track and field.  He was a college coach for quite a while at Georgetown and then moved out to Palo Alto to coach distance runners at what was called the Nike Farm Team.  He has spent the past two years in Eugene, directing the Oregon Track Club and he has a few runners here at the meet.  I had the chance to go to the Great Wall with Gags, Jerry Schumacher, the former Head Cross Country Coach at Wisconsin, and John Hayes, the Head Cross Country Coach at Air Force, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  We left at 7:00 am from BNU and hailed a cab.  The closest section of the Great Wall is called Badaling and it is also the most visited section.  As our cab driver didn't speak any English, he proceeded to call his boss and put her on speaker phone to talk with us about payment.  Remember that the local currency is yuan, pronounced you-on, and that Gags is a large Italian New Yorker with the accent to boot.  These are both important parts of the story.  We let Gags take the lead and we came to the conclusion that the hour cab ride to the Wall, the cab driver waiting about an hour and a half, and the hour cab ride back would cost us 500 yuan, or about $65!!  As Gags was talking to the lady, he yelled into the spear, "Ok, so this is gonna cost us 500 younos (you-knows)?"  We were all dying in the back and she proceeded to go with it and called them younos as well.  Needless to say, we haven't let Gags forget that one.  

We got to the Wall and Gags headed to the Gondola as Jerry, John and I went to take the stairs.  Remember, these aren't ordinary stairs, this is the Great Wall.  It was like a death march up this thing.  Nothing is more embarrassing than a 6 year old girl in tap shoes and a dress running past you as you struggle up the Great Wall.  It wasn't my best showing but I made it up to the top with the rest of the guys and we got our picture up there.  Then, for some reason, all of the locals started taking our picture and started asking to have pictures with us!!  Too funny.

Here are some great videos that I have taken over the past three or four days to let you guys know what I have seen and done.

The first is a of a cab driver talking on the phone.  For some reason this totally cracked us up:

The next is a video of Jerry Schumacher shopping for gifts for his kids:

The next is of another Cab driver.  Even though this looks staged, I swear that he said this before I recorded it, I just prompted him to say it again so I could get it.  Hope you like:

Hope that one works.  

Thats all for now.  Hopefully more in a day or so.