Good Morning, RVA: Don’t Hulk out

The Richmond Marathon is this Saturday! Figure out which roads are closed so you can cheer on runners, not SMASH them.

November 14, 2014; 6:55 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Joey 23

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F. Highs today will reach the mid-40s (gah), while the sun shines wanly down upon us. At least it’s decided to shine at all, I guess.

Saturday and Sunday look pretty much identical to today: sunny, chilly, wan.

Water cooler

This is your final warning! The Richmond Marathon is tomorrow. Don’t ruin its reputation as “America’s friendliest marathon” because you’re grumpy and unaware of road closures. Look at the map, and plan to stay in bed. And if you’re an insane person that enjoys running a couple dozen miles…good luck!

I’m bitter that there are no low-cost flights from Richmond to New York City, and that’s why I didn’t tell y’all about these new, low-cost flights to Tampa. For this, I apologize.

Today’s disappointingly not literal headline: “Man left holding bag after Henrico party.”

This coming Wednesday we are hosting an event. Like, an event where people buy tickets, come to a place, and interact with each other in a non-digital, greater-than-140-characters way. The gist? We’ll host three, panel discussions on the most popular RVANews stories from the past couple of months, featuring folks involved in those stories. This first set of humans is pretty legit, if I do say so myself. Check out the list and grab your ticket.

The 2015 open enrollment period for Obamacare begins this Saturday, November 15th. I had a chance to stop by a local Enroll Virginia office this week and speak with one of their “navigators.” She helped decipher (navigate?) what, at most times, seems like a convoluted and completely unparsable system. If the servers hold (good luck federal IT folks who have some long hours ahead of them!), on Saturday you can apply for health insurance from the comfort of your own couch while avoiding the marathon.

Sports!

• #15 Rams open the season against Tennessee in Annapolis at 6:30 PM on the CBS Sports Network. Make sure you read our preview so you know the haps.
• Spiders face the Radford Highlanders at 7:30 PM in the Robins Center.
• Hokies (roundball) begin the Buzz Williams era against Maryland Eastern Shore at 7:00 PM.
• Hokies (oblate spheroid) drag themselves down to Durham to face the 8-1 #19 Blue Devils at 12:00 PM.
• #8 Wahoos (roundball) travel to Harrisonburg to battle the Dukes at 7:00 PM.
• Caps face the New Jersey Devils tonight at 7:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

Paleontologist Jack Horner is hard at work trying to turn a chicken into a dinosaur

At points, this article gave me the shivers.

Horner posits that three primary engineering tasks will lead him from a conventional chicken to something resembling a miniature velociraptor (a small predator that became famous in “Jurassic Park”): creation of a long tail; the development of a toothed, beakless head; and the fashioning of arms with fingers and claws instead of wings.

Bonus link if you’ve come this far!

This morning’s Instagram

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November 14, 2014 6:55 AM 0