Too slow

Someone rigged a five-kilometer road race in Levy so that Rock and his friend David Maloney were forced to maintain a pace between zero and two miles an hour, with an increase of a quarter of a mile an hour each fifteen minutes.

Both were dressed in Santa Claus costumes. Neither knew why they were required to proceed so slowly.

A tournament and a race

It was the Fourth of July weekend in Little Rock, and Rock was in War Memorial Park to cover the Firecracker Fast 5K and the 4th of July Classic (a men's golf tournament featuring Arkansas's best amateurs). They were by far the most significant sporting events in Arkansas that weekend and right up Rock's journalistic alley, but there were oddities about both that he was unsure how to handle.
In the 5K, a very overweight friend of Rock's named Chuck Drury ran anchor on the winning four-man relay team. This was a result that demanded investigation. Rock had known Chuck for years and knew there was no way his slowness could be overcome by three other runners, regardless of how fast they were.
As for the golf tournament, four men had won a team competition of some sort, but Rock knew one of the men and had seen him and his teammates drinking heavily in the clubhouse. He was fairly certain they had never been on the course.

Bees

Rock had just built a beehive in his backyard but had yet to see a bee. He walked with a teenage boy in a long basement hallway beneath a complex of government buildings and complained. "That thing isn't worth a shit if there aren't any bees around," he said.
Suddenly bees appeared everywhere. There were honeycombs on the floor with bees buzzing all about. They began to sting Rock, who wasn't sure what to do. After a moment he began to run. He took a hard right turn and immediately came upon an enormous, muscle-bound man who took a full swing with a heavy wooden broom handle and hit Rock in the head.
Rock felt and heard the harsh crack and was stunned. He wondered whether this man was about to beat him to death.

Women's basketball

Each of the players on the women's basketball team were dressed in all-white uniforms and performed a sequence of drills with such precision that Rock and his associates knew they were watching a highly-trained exhibition squad. Rock was with a group from the paper, including their boss Wallace Hill, in a beautifully maintained gymnasium built at least seventy years earlier.
Watching the women inspired Rock to pick up a loose ball and dribble toward the unoccupied goal at the other end of the court.
"Rock, don't do that while the girls are still playing," Hill said.
Rock ignored him and took several shots, none of which came close. His technique was so bad that the ball failed to reach height of the rim.

Race day

A big race was clearly at hand. Rock was at Oaklawn Park to cover it, and before he went to the pressbox, he wandered around the track and the infield to see the crowd and interpret its level of enthusiasm.
Rock and all around were amused to see a man pretend he was a race horse. He ran counterclockwise in a large circle across the infield grass and announced his progress as if he were a track announcer: "And Bill wins the Arkansas Derby!"
He was soon joined by another man, also in his mid-20s and also dressed in a short-sleeved white oxford-cloth shirt. They raced one another like children, and everyone there laughed hard at the ridiculousness of their effort.

Going fast

It had been five years since Rock last ran in a road race, but he entered a 5K at the last minute in a small town's city square. He completed the paper work late and started at least a hundred yards behind the field.
Rock recognized with his first steps that he was very fit and seemingly as fast as he had been at his peak, thirty-five years earlier. He passed most of the slower runners in the first minute or two and held hope that he might catch the leaders.
The only matter to somewhat stymy his effort was the slickness of the wet brick streets. He had trouble with traction on any but straight and level sections of the course but otherwise felt great, indeed indefatigable.

Underdressed

As he usually did, Rock showed up at Oaklawn Park for an afternoon of horse racing and looked to make sure his friends Ray and Carrol were there. They both had four reserved seats for each day of the meet and always welcomed Rock with good cheer.
Rock walked up a ramp to the grandstand and heard Ray say, "Rock. Good to see you. Come grab one of these seats."
Rock was delighted, but then he suddenly realized he had forgotten to put on his clothes. He was dressed only in white briefs, and embarrassment washed across him. But luckily he happened to have a pair of blue jeans and a shirt draped across his right arm and quickly dressed.

Jealousy

He hadn't yet admitted it, but Rock suspected that most of his cohorts in the newspaper's sports department knew he had a crush on an intern named Amanda Lewis. He had first seen her in the pressbox at a college football game, where she worked as a part-time student aid for the school's sports information department as an eighteen-year-old freshman.
From the start, Rock thought Amanda was lovely. She was tall and lean with shoulder-length brunette hair and the face of a fair child, unadorned by makeup.
Amanda had just turned twenty-one and traveled with Rock and Todd Troutt to cover a college basketball tournament out of state. Rock and Todd each had rooms in their hotel, and much to Rock's disappointment, Amanda chose to room with Todd.
Later that first night, Rock decided to drive somewhere for dinner. He walked into the parking lot to find his twenty-year-old Toyota Camry balanced vertically on its grill, pointed into the asphalt. He immediately wondered how to get it down and how anyone could have put it in such a bizarre position.

A place to run

The track at Oaklawn Park was damp and tightly packed, and a jockey named Greta told Rock it was a perfect surface for runs early in the morning before trainers brought their horses out to train. She and Rock stood near the edge of the track at the end of the runway from the paddock.
Rock decided to give it a try. He jogged out and back for twenty seconds or so from where they stood.

"You're right," he said. "This reminds of Daytona Beach."

MASH

The characters from the television show MASH were in Rock's house and on his front lawn. Apparently someone was filming a reunion show. All the actors were there, including Alan Alda and Jamie Farr.
Rock was baffled. It seemed as if they were attempting to wrap up the show but were confused and couldn't decide what route to take. They all seemed hungry as they dug through bowls of candy in Rock's den, particularly Harry Morgan.

Ben Hogan

His glasses from the past, which he found under his back bedroom bed, were a product of the Ben Hogan company. Rock found them while hypoglycemic, but put them down and did not find them until hours later when fully awake and after he'd eaten half a Mounds bar.
By then he had found the newer, non-Ben Hogan glasses which were otherwise identical. He figured something was up, and figured it out when he realized he had picked up a pair of Ben Hogan golf shorts and apparently mistaken them for glasses.

The Pepsi 10K

It was the first time Rock had run a road race downtown since the 2010 Little Rock 5K, and he was surprised how good he felt as he ran the revival of the old Pepsi 10K, particularly considering his lack of training. He was well into the race and had managed to keep up with Zach, a relatively fast friend from the Little Rock Hash House Harriers.
With about two miles to go, they passed the house of a pretty Hasher named Stephanie. She told them she had refreshments and snacks inside. Years earlier Rock had a crush on her, though she was clearly disinterested. Rock had let it go with little more than a thought and now she refused to so much as acknowledge his presence. Consequently, Rock merely walked into her house, grabbed an energy bar and continued his race.
He felt very good and soon ran away from Zach.

A picnic in Searcy

They treated him as if he belonged. Rock was with a large group of Harding University students near a large, dilapidated barn. Most were dressed in clothes appropriate for exercise and were taking turns shooting an old, almost slick leather basketball at a goal hung near the roof of a storage building beside the barn.
Most of the crowd were eating foil-wrapped snacks of corn and beans, but there was something about Rock's ear of corn that seemed to appeal to everyone, many of whom stopped when Rock was close to reach in and pinch off a few kernels.

Television news

There was some sort of calamity in downtown Galveston, Texas, and news crews from the network affiliates in Houston piled into town. But something went wrong with their equipment, and their newscasts became nothing more than thirty-second loops they used for promotion as the catastrophe in Galveston continued.
Rock watched from Galveston with several Little Rock Hash House Harriers. It seemed unbelievable to them that there was no television news coverage. When Rock awoke in his back bedroom nearly paralyzed by hypoglycemia, he literally yelled for help, but it was soon obvious to him that he was alone. "Where are all those fucking news anchors when you need them?" he grumbled aloud. Two tubes of energy gel later, Rock knew there were no news crews responsible for his dilemma.

The Fortieth

Lots of beer and liquor had gone down the hatch the night before, and Rock and most of his classmates could feel it. He was with them in a vast olive-drab tent set up just as it would've been to host troops near battle grounds anywhere on earth.
It was the fortieth reunion on of the Russellville High School class of 1977. Rock woke up perhaps five minutes after the bulk of his class. He wondered from his bunk past friends from his past, classmates he had seen in some cases frequently over the years. That's where he began an impromptu tour that took him past aging and sometimes familiar faces, most of which he had no chance to attach names to.

Rock's sandwiches

Somehow the goodness of Rock's grilled-swiss-on-rye sandwiches were tied in with the high-flying offenses of the New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants. The announcers talked about it. One suggested a jar of sauerkraut would really help Rock's cause.
The play-by-play man said he thought Rock should consider opening sandwich shops in New Orleans and New York, and of course Rock immediately began to consider just that.