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RUNNING CLUB UPDATE
From Matt "Riff" Riffle

Saturday was a busy day for the Waterfront Hall Run Club. Here in Wheeling, we had another successful Trash Run, removing over 200 pounds of trash from our downtown streets. Team Ronica took home the victory and the Waterfront Hall gift card by clearing over 50 pounds themselves. Thanks to everyone who participated—stay tuned for details on how to join us next time!

The rest of the squad was busy making us proud across the river at the Barkcamp Races in Belmont, Ohio. In the road 10k Chris Burns placed fifth with a 54:44. From the comfort of my laptop I feel safe assuming that everyone who beat him either cut the course short or is a blood-doping cheat. In the Trail Half Marathon Bryan Crozier took home the bronze while Chloe Lefchak and Melody Petras ran side by side to finish 23rd and 24th.

Our hometown showoff Jeff Wesolowski got the win in the Road Half Marathon. I heard from unreliable sources that after crossing the finish line Jeff popped his top and hit the crowd with the Kirk Cousins “You like that?!?”.

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And if there’s anyone else from the run club I didn’t mention who ran the race this weekend please know it’s not that I overlooked your name in the results, it’s that you were rude to me and actively chose to exclude you.

If these performances have inspired you to jump in a race yourself, I have good news: you can sign up for ours, the Small Business 5k on November 30th.

From Ian at the Bar

My all time favorite cocktail? The Margarita. I have proclaimed my feelings for it in earlier editions of the WF Times - but I also love a Negroni. I realized that we just missed "Negroni Week" and didn't do anything to celebrate (there's a week for everything at this point) so I figured this is the best place to give it the respect it deserves.

The Negroni is by far my favorite stirred cocktail to make. Why do I care that it's a stirred cocktail and what exactly does that mean? Cocktails are primarily either shaken or stirred. The easiest way to know which to do? Juice in the cocktail = shaken.

If the cocktail contains only alcoholic components then you typically stir it. The exception being James Bond, who I heard recently moved to Wheeling like many other sophisticated people from across the globe.

Let's get back to the Negroni: on paper it's a very simple cocktail with only 3 ingredients:

• Gin
• Campari,
• Sweet vermouth

A little ice and a slice of orange you can make this tasty cocktail in a matter of minutes at any home bar.

And our Negroni is all equal parts! So you can easily make one for yourself or a batch for a group of friends. This modern recipe of 1-1-1 came from a French Cookbook from the 1920's called L'Heure du Cocktail. Bartenders have been using this basic framework of ingredients and flavor pairings to make countless riffs and variations using any type of spirit you could imagine.

There are Mezcal Negronis, the Kingston Negroni with rum, and even the popular bourbon cocktail - the Boulevardier is a variation of a Negroni. Do yourself a favor next time you're in the mood for a cocktail give a Negroni a shot, especially if you've never had one. The bartender will probably enjoy making it for you.

From Dan

When I notice my screen time rising and stress approaching a place that's unmanageable, I usually go to my calendar and try to find a day or two where I can make everything slow down. There is a special place that I go.

It's called The Ponderosa. No, not the 90s-era buffet juggernaut Ponderosa Steakhouse - but The Ponderosa. It's the name my family lovingly gave to our farm in western Harrison County, Ohio. They named it after a fictional place - Ponderosa Ranch, which was the setting for the long-running (1959-1973) Western T.V. show Bonanza.

It's pretty remote out there. Lots of farmland. There are Amish families tilling up the land behind horses and bumping down the road in their buggies.There's endless birch, beech, oak, maple, hickory, and walnut trees, and the pace is akin to running your podcast or audiobook at about .05x speed.

My great grandparents Arthur "Brady" and Mary Milleson purchased the land in 1964. Then my grandparents Kinsey and Ann Milleson took over. My parents Rich and Lori and Uncle Jim and Aunt Dawn split the farm a few years before we lost my Grandpa. Now, they manage their respective halves of it. I am forever grateful to all of them for keeping the place going, and I know the other members of my generation feel the same way.

There's no more cattle, no fencerows. Just soybeans or corn, depending on the year, and hay production each year (though this year was less than stellar for everyone in the region) and lots of timber. There's a one acre pond with largemouth bass, bluegill, and I hold out hope there's still catfish. Unfortunately, there have been no recorded encounters since I was drug around by one on a paddle boat when I was 11 or 12. ​

All the classic midwest fauna reside out there. Most prominently, whitetail deer and turkey, which are sought after by my aforementioned father and uncle. Their friends come in from all over to hunt and hang out together. My Dad has done Yeoman's work to the farm to make it all more accessible and he built a modernized cabin on it back in 2017, among many other special projects. He has contributed so much to making it a place of peace for the rest of us.

Whether it's Wheeling Park, Seneca Rocks, Barkcamp, a small garden, or the woods outside your home; whether it's running, walking, fishing, hunting - we all need a place and we all need a way to put ourselves back into the restorative embrace of nature.

To quote my other uncle, Seneca the Younger, who showed up in the WF Times previously, and who I'm still receiving letters from: "Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain."