Canal Running For Profit

A 30 hour travel home from a time zone 9 hours away... well... I'm not returning to human as fast as I'd like... but I'm at least sleeping more than 3 hours at a time now... so I'm on the mend. As always a ton of to do items following extended time away... so quilting will get back on the agenda soon ( i'll have some photos of upcoming project stuff soon. ) I thought I'd at least share a fascinating ( to me at least) story from last week of a young 'entrepeneur' in St Petersburg. We were taking a boat canal cruise thru the city. St Petersburg is mostly below sea level and founder Peter the Great planned canals throughout the city hopeing to create a legion of sailing enthusiasts. Beautiful, eh?

We suddenly saw a handsome school age boy running along the canal toward the bridges that periodically cross over the canal.

He ran to precede our arrival at a crossover bridge, wave and blow kisses looking for coins tossed to him ( some he would catch while others failed to reach him).

He kept this running race up for over 30 minutes easily outrunning a motor boat. Such stamina. We later heard he does this routinely. He raced back to our point of disembarkation and received substantial rewards for his efforts. I fantasize that someday I might learn of a young man distance running in the Olympics and telling his story of how be became a runner in St Petersburg.