A Writer's Journey Part VIII
Title: A Writer’s Journey
Part VIII
I’ll never forget the first race Josh Peraldo ever did with
us. It was the summer of 2004 at the 10 Ugly
Men Race in Rochester
At the two mile point I was going over a small wooden
bridge, the crowd much more thinned out, and there was Josh. He had all the signs of his muscles being filled with lactic acid. He was barely moving,
his body was stiff, and he next to an older man who was encouraging him to keep
going. As I flew by him I patted him on
the shoulder and said something encouraging as I accelerated into the last
mile. What happened to Josh is something
I often warn runners about, calling it, “going out too fast.” Josh
learned his lesson right? Well, not
quite. I didn’t understand it then but
Josh is a very free spirit and loves to do things different ways from what
others are being told to do. His first
sectional race Josh led the entire pack, (yeah, Marlatt and supermen like him were far behind),
for the first quarter mile! I mean he
was out in front! He was running a track
400 in a 5K against the best talent in the league! “Did he win?” you ask. “My dear friend, life is not a Disney movie," as I often tell the children. No, he was
almost dead last that year.
Oh, so many more Josh stories I could tell. The time he and another boy drank an energy
drink (something like Monster) before a race because it was going to help
them! I told them I didn’t think that
was true (energy drinks were brand new at that point) and they came in
sick. There is a picture of Josh and I
at sectionals and he has a golf ball with a huge smile on his face and I’m making
a face (it was after the Legend of the Golf Ball). There is the time Josh ran the steeplechase
in wrestling shoes... I’ll never forget that:)
One time Josh and I were training for a 5K and I was running repeat 800s in early
February. I was running around the
school parking lot, when Josh showed up.
He had JUST eaten at Wendys and he dove right into the drill after
warming up. It had been a long time
since I had beat Josh in repeat drills but I did that day. He threw up.
Again, Josh did things different from everyone else, and it was
something you loved and hated about him all at the same time:)
One of my favorite race memories with Josh. It was a cold, winter day and we left early
for a race in PA. My daughter now lives
in PA and she says their method of road clearing is the sun and that day I
would have agreed. I was almost at 50 on
route 36 in NY and then I hit 249 at the PA border. I was forced to go down to
35 MPH, ugg! Worst, we got VERY lost!! That was before GPS and when Map Quest was in
it’s early stages. Josh and I found
ourselves in the middle of nowhere! I am
not kidding! For miles all we saw was
trees with no houses! Not even one! We started joking that we had found the end
of the world. Finally a store in the
middle of nowhere appeared. We pulled up
and ran inside for directions. The woman
at the desk (who rented bikes for PA trails in the summer time) raised an
eyebrow. “Bellefonte?” she asked. “You boys are far away from that!” But she gave us some good directions, I might
have exceeded the speed limit a touch, and we made it to the race! It was a first year race and the competition
was very weak, so we placed very high! We were both very pleased with our awards! It
was a GREAT day!!
Josh’s personality though turned him into the first JT pole
vaulter when I was a coach at JT. I’m
the guy now (if Mr. Lewis isn’t around:) who am asked to be a pole vault
official at league meets or even the D II Championship... now. But then?
I had tried to learn how to do pole vaulting and had failed! I had read books about track and field trying
to learn and watched an old VHS video on it that the school possessed and it
didn’t help. When I “vaulted” in those
early days, I looked more like Wild E Coyote!
I would plant and then immediately get slammed into the matts face
first. It was pathetic.
Then Josh Peraldo started getting interested in it. “What are you doing?” I asked one day, very
displeased. I don’t even know why the
pole vault matts were set up but then again, back then I didn’t set things up,
so maybe maintenance just set them out.
He had a pole we don’t use for serious competition anymore, that I have
nicknamed, “The 180 Beast!” and Joshua O’ Neil nicknamed, “Fatty!” That was what Josh had to work with. JT didn’t have the state of the art 175
beginner pole we have now. Oh, what Josh
Peraldo might have done with that!
Anyway, the second time he was fooling around with pole vault, exactly
what I feared happened. Josh got
hurt. I was so upset with him but really
I was mad at myself for letting him try.
He had gotten up in the air and then ran out of steam right over the
BOX!! Today that might be okay, we have
a mandatory box “collar” that is padded but there was no such thing then. You know the old expression, “What goes up,
must go down!” Josh went down alright...
straight down! He landed and twisted his
ankle. I thought that was the end of
anyone using the pole vault.
But the next year Josh still wanted to try and I’m like, “Didn’t
you learn the last time you tried!” Kayla Dretto
said, “My dad, used to pole vault.” Mr.
Dretto came in and gave one two hour lesson and Josh could vault. He taught Chris Hadley and they both took
nice points in our next meet against Avoca.
Then they taught me. “Come on
Coach,” Chris begged. “It’s fun!” “I can’t do it! I’ve tried!” I complained. “Show us,” Chris challenged. In frustration I did my “Wild E Coyote vault,
once again slamming face first into the matt, like an idiot. Chris said, “Coach, I know what you are doing
wrong.” Chris gave me ONE tip and I was
vaulting! I loved it! Josh came close to tying the old school
record (10’6” with the BEAST!!
Wow!!) Over a decade later, if
Josh came into our pole vault program, he would have gone so much farther, but
he was a pioneer. He helped create
it. I had been right SO many times in
Josh’s life (unlike a modern sitcom where the adults are idiots and the kids
solve all the problems) BUT this was one time where his free spirit and
carefree attitude did something great. Where he was right and I was wrong! Today, JT track is synonymous with pole vaulting. We’ve had three different athletes get
sectional patches in it and multiple top three finishes. When our bus unloads people expect to see
poles being carried toward the meet.
Josh helped start all of that!
In writing, you need different kinds of characters with
different motivations. It’s what makes
the world go round and it makes your book more exciting! Take my C-3 characters. You have Jack Pascel, the spoiled rich kid,
who eventually becomes the best LIGHT warrior in the world. You have Heavy, the hypochondriac/lazy kid,
who becomes a character who is a hard worker, who has a big heart! Six, the jock of the group, who learns some
painful lessons about his good looks, and about friendship. Boom, the quiet kid, who becomes a strong
advocate against attacking different kinds of LIGHT warriors. Not only do these characters all become
better than they started out as in book one, but all of them feel
different. Each reacts differently to
situations as they change and it is their growth that makes the series
interesting to hardcore fans. It doesn’t
matter how much “action” you pack into a book, if your characters are
boring. I don’t think action drives my
books, but the characters do and when they are in dangerous situations it is
exciting to a reader. Why? Because they like the characters.
Supporting characters need to be different too. In book seven, there is a character Yon-Yon
who is becoming a fan favorite, because of how casual he is in the most
dangerous situations! His banter with
his side kick, “Lance”, is some of the funniest lines in the series (almost like a Marvel Movie). But not every character can be like
that. There are also intense characters
(Kenton Streck), scared characters (Wet), insane characters (Mop), fun
characters (Adeline Frost), serious characters (Amanda Prime), and noble
characters (King Frost). How they all interact makes them interesting. It’s like Josh in JT athletics. He made my life MUCH more interesting and he
gave a huge gift to JT Track. He had the dream of pole vault, no matter how
much I discouraged him from it.
*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on
Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen! All of
them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which
will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.
All of his books are available in soft cover too! Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s
page should come up ***
Book list
Fiction
Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense
Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science
fiction
American Fairytale – Colonial America
Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian
Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)
Asylum
Killer Robots
Werewolves
Elf Princess
Zero Book – 666
C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)
An Assumed Risk
Heavy Opposition
A Distant Boom
Two Hearts
The Magnificent Six
Don’t Pass Go!
Two Paths – Coming Soon!!
The Princess of Ashes Series (C-3 Series spin off)
Falling Ashes
Non-fiction
Miracles Can Happen: The Jim Ross Story – Jim Ross was
miraculously sparred from death... twice!
Attack on Girl’s Track – A look at boys competing in girls
sports, from the perspective of a track coach.
The book uses five years of track results from Section V (2012 – 2016)
to prove its point.
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