five things...

Well, this has been going on for some time and I was secretly hoping I would get away without being tagged. But I was tagged last week by Michell, so here are the 5 things most people don't know about me (hope I won't cringe when I read this in the future):
1. Once, in my early teens, I flipped through the entire 30-plus volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, page by page. Didn't read all the subjects, but read at least the titles. It took me a long time, can't remember how many days, but it was a (very) long enterprise (maybe I had too much time in my hands).
2. I used to run the 100m in 10.9s. Not exactly fast, but fast enough to win some school races.
3. When I ride my bike nowadays, I pretend I'm Kevin Bacon in "Quicksilver"(oh, how we like to fool ourselves!)
4. I once worked as a swimming instructor. The only caveat was that I never was a great swimmer (I'm a track guy, remember?). But I managed to keep my part-time job for a couple of years. People actually learned to swim with my guidance (and I considerably improved my swimming skills along the way).
5. I once had the pleasure to meet Bob Beamon (my claim to fame?), the 1968 Long Jump Olympic Champion and world record holder with a jump of 8.90m, in Sao Paulo, around 1984. Years later, in 2000, walking by in San Francisco, I ran across the man who beat his mark, Mike Powell, who jumped 8.95 m in the Tokyo World Championships in 1991. Not exactly exciting for most people but I guess you have to be a track nut to fully grasp the enormity of these feats. Just go somewhere with enough space and measure the distance. It's humanly impossible for someone to jump that distance (or at least, that's what you'll think, believe me).
Well, that's it. I won't tag anyone but if you feel like, please consider yourself tagged. Have fun.