Fred And Toody Cole Finish The Portland Marathon!
Here's a fact: Fred and Toody Cole (of Dead Moon/Pierced Arrows fame) live more in one week than the rest of us do in a year. Fred had threatened to me a few years ago (as he had with many others) that he was going to run the Portland Marathon someday. When he told me this, he was on his umpteenth cigarette of the day and we had been drinking Yukon Jack and Bud all afternoon on his backporch. But I had to believe the guy. This weekend, he finally did it...and so did his wife Toody and their son Weeden. These people are nuts!
Fred emailed yesterday and said they had to wake up a 4 a.m., drive into Portland for the worst marathon weather ever...windy, rainy, shitty, cold. At mile 21, Fred says his legs and the backs of his heels went out on him, his son Weeden blew a hamstring, so they jogged/limped/walked slowly the rest of the way. They finished somewhere in the middle of the pack at about 6 1/2 hours. Toody finished about a mile ahead of them. Then...and this is the best part...
"By the time we got home we could hardly get up the stairs. We all got drunk and passed out for close to 24 hrs and I can still barely walk. We're heading out on the US tour at 5am this morning and play 12 gigs in a row before a day off."
Like my wife said: "I think they might be insane...no, like, really insane!"
Yes, insane and totally badass awesome!!!
4 comment(s)
Marathon Man says:
Not insane, just stupid.
Posted On: Wednesday, Oct. 8 2008 @ 8:19AM
Lily says:
Not stupid, just very, very cool.
Posted On: Sunday, Oct. 12 2008 @ 12:50PM
SteveFX says:
Great story!
I met Fred and Toody in '02 @ the old Echo Lounge (3rd of 4 Dead Moon shows for me) in ATL. Used to snarky suburban coverbands and "edgy", arrogant, "flavor of the month" touring indie bands; I was amazed at how grounded, normal, and just some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
After some local "fotm" band played the middle slot; most of the crowd left. There were 7 or 8 people when DM took the stage. Fred said, "Don't you be embarrased by how few of you there are. 3 weeks ago we played for 2 people; and all 5 of us had a good time".
Tuesday night (10/21/08) I walked into the back room of the EARL in east ATL for the Pierced Arrows show. You enter right at the merch. table. I was wearing standard rock & roll formalwear (jeans and black tee/Dead Moon). Toody sat up, clinked her Bud bottle to mine and said, "I like your shirt".
They rawked.
Posted On: Thursday, Oct. 23 2008 @ 3:51PM
Patrick Rock says:
Beautiful. Just beautiful... They know how to live.
Posted On: Friday, May. 15 2009 @ 5:34PM