We’ve decided to use the imminent time change on Sunday, November 2, 2025, to suspend our Monday happy hours for the winter. Shallowness alert: Because what’s the point of cheering on shirtless runners if you can’t even see them?
To that end, we were going to make Monday, 10/27, our last happy hour, but the runners are participating in a special Halloween run route through nearby Oakwood Cemetery, which means they won’t be coming by our house.
So, our 10/20/25 happy hour was our big hurrah for 2025.
We wanted to let the runners know about this, which we did with this week’s signs:
This might rank as the best birthday I’ve had in my entire 68 years on the planet.
On Saturday (10/11/25), Bob and I felt like local celebrities when we wore our specially made t-shirts to the Pelagic block party:
“We own the red house!”
and many of the people there were members of the Pelagic Run Club, which runs by our house every Monday around 6:15, and whom we cheer on while having a front-yard happy hour with friends and neighbors.
We’ve been cheering them on for a little over a year now, and it was so great to meet many of them at the party.
So 2 days later, on Monday, 10/13/25, which just happened to be my birthday, there I was just going through our usual preparation and set-up for our weekly happy hour and cheering event, with no knowledge of this message the run club’s esteemed leader and organizer, Jay, had sent to their runners’ email list.
So, it’s Monday run club and our front-yard happy hour now… and as the runners approached they started yelling, “Happy Birthday, John!” (perhaps goaded on by this sign on a car up ahead of me that they could see but I couldn’t):
The were waving greeting cards and signs for me, which they either handed to me or put on a nearby table as they passed by.
The gallery of runners bearing cards and other birthday greetings. (You can click on first picture and flip through the gallery, if you’re interested in enlarged versions.)
This is a different gallery, click on the first pic to flip through.
Here’s the table, which my friends who had helped plan all this had conveniently placed by the road to facilitate the runners dropping off their greetings.
A few of the runners whom we’d met on Saturday at the block party stopped for a bit to wish me a happy birthday.
And here I am giving their leader, Jay, a huge hug of thanks!
In the end, my friends set everything out on my car to capture the overwhelming stash of greetings!
Including signs made with love…
And as a sign of our times, a special THC-infused drink delivery from one of the runners. Thanks, Cyndi!
This was by far our largest happy hour gathering with around 65 people comprising friends and neighbors!
More than once, I was overcome by all of the love — between the entire group in the yard singing happy birthday to me, one friend playing happy birthday to me on his trumpet, and by all of the cards and greetings coming in, particularly when gratefully realizing of all the work that so many people put into making this happen.
Thanks to all of our friends and neighbors for being there and for your best wishes, whether in greetings or gifts — or both.
A special thanks to a group of Mordecai friends and neighbors (Beth, Ella, Guy, Sam, Claire, Jen, & Michael Ann) who:
Worked ahead of time with Jay from Pelagic to ask the runners to sign greeting cards
Made signs ahead of time for the runners to pick up as they neared our house
Staffed a place up the street during the event to hand the runners the signs to give me as they passed by
And a huge thank you to Jay and all of the runners of the Pelagic Run Club who have my heart!
And finally, you saw that pile of birthday cards on the car above. I received 25 of them from the runners with a total of 94 good wishes inside them. Who’s counting???
Here are pictures of 8 of the cards. And in between them are the sentiments from most of the other cards — all of which I’m capturing here for posterity.
Thank you for cheering us on at the point of the run when we are questioning the run! Maggie
Awesome John! Thank you so much for making our Mondays so fun and special! Happy birthday! From Iza & Devin (your new friends!)
John! Happy birthday. Your cheers and smiles motivate us each Monday. Thank you for being a ray of sunshine. Love, Tori (Pelagic Run Club)
Happy birthday, John! Thank you so much for supporting us on these Monday night endeavors. Alex H.
So awesome to wish you a Happy!!! Birthday!!!! Hope you are having a great one and have a lot of people to wish you a good day! Thanks for all you do!!!
John! You’re amazing! Happy birthday! Eliza
Happy birthday to the captain of the very best cheer crew! We appreciate you so much! The Chiodos
Thank you for all the encouragement! Now it’s our turn to cheer you on! Happy birthday, John!!!
Love your house dearly. – Derick
Feliz cumpleaños! Ari P
Happy happy birthday! We appreciate you so much. Makes my day every Monday! Callan
John, thanks for making Mordecai such a lovely and welcoming neighborhood. Little act of kindness (such as cheering on runners every week) make a wonderful difference. Y’all rock!!! Love, Alex, Michael, Craig, Anna, & Liz
Happy birthday, John!!! If I wasn’t running, I would absolutely want to be invited to your house to party. Today we cheer for you! Charlotte
Happy birthday! Thanks for all the joy you bring to our runs. – emily
Happy birthday, John. Thanks for all the cheers and support. Mike.
Happy birthday, John! Thanks for all the good cheer! Loren, Rusty, Krebs, Chip, and Tom
Happy birthday, John! Hope it’s a great one and the drinks are extra strong at the Big Red House today! – Mike
Happy birthday, John!!! Thank you for always cheering on our run club every week. 🙂 Reb
Happy birthday! Thanks for spreading so much joy! – Lucy
The highlight of every Monday! Happy birthday! Jen
Happy birthday, John! Thank you for all of your support. You keep our spirits high! Diana, Ryan, Carly, Nathalia, Michael
Happy birthday, John! Thanks for the cheers every week! – Jesus 🙂
HBD! Thank you so much for the amazing energy every Monday. – Deanna
You make Monday great! Philip
Happy birthday! You are the best! Thank you for showing up for us every week! We so appreciate you! Drink up and enjoy! – Kristyn
We love your vibe!
Happy birthday ya legend!!!! Rock on. Dave
And a huge, huge thanks to my husband and partner in crime for all of these happy hours we’ve had over the year. He does a tremendous amount of work:
Keeping our yard and house looking stellar
Coming up with the slogans and making the signs each week
Preparing (making most of it!) the food
Helping with everything that’s going on inside the house leading up to, and during, these events
Pelagic Beer & Wine is a bottle shop on the edge of our neighborhood, and they have a run club whose runners run by our house every Monday between 6:15 and 6:30.
We’ve been cheering them on with a happy hour in our front yard for just a little over a year now, and our crowd of neighbors and friends has grown exponentially — from 4 or 5 people at the beginning, to over 40 last week. I’ve blogged about some of the more recent ones.
This past weekend (on 10/11/25) Pelagic had a block party, and I had these shirts made, which we wore to the party.
“We own the red house!”
It was so much fun watching people glance at our shirts and see their faces light up when they realized what it was.
We met and chatted with many of the runners attending the party, and everyone was so appreciative. It was an incredibly affirming afternoon.
Not that it’s a competition, but our previous attendance record for happy hour in our front yard to cheer on a local run club was 32 people. Today, we had 40!
This week’s signs:
Special guests this week were my sister, Vivian, and her husband, Jeff, who helped us set up.
We broke another record with the number of friends and neighbors — 32! — who joined our happy hour to cheer on the Pelagic Run Club runners. We used to call it a front-porch happy hour, but it has spilled over into a front-yard happy hour!
The weather was absolutely fantastic today, and our sign was a message of gratitude to the runners! 😂 😂 😂
Our tools of cacophony, along with our whooping and hollering, to cheer on the runners:
Cow bells
Mini cow bells
Clown horn & whistle
“Ratings”
Pom poms
And this is how we sound:
More whoopin’ and hollerin’:
Front-porch revelers:
I sent a message to Pelagic to let them know we had this new blog entry posted, and their heartwarming response was:
Thanks to all our friends and neighbors who came out to enjoy this glorious day! Cheers!
Many thanks to our good friend Dana for the photos and videos!
Another successful, well-attended front-yard happy hour to cheer on the Pelagic Run Club runners!
I was up by the road taking pictures at one point, and one of the runners came close by for a high five as he ran by, which was a first — and cool. Some shots of the runners, who were a big crowd today, because the weather was gorgeous (i.e., in the low 80s instead of the recent mid- to high-90s):
We host a neighborhood happy hour on Mondays to cheer on the runners of Pelagic’s run club. Pelagic Beer & Wine is a bottle shop about a mile from our house, and our neighborhood is on their run club’s route.
Click images to enlarge.
We open our bar at 5:30 and neighbors begin to gather on our front porch and sometimes they spill over into the yard. The runners usually pass by between 6:20 and 6:30. It’s kind of like the Kentucky Derby in that it’s over in just a few minutes, but that doesn’t stop us from continuing to drink once all the runners have passed by.
The activity has evolved over the almost-a-year we’ve been doing it, starting off with just screaming and yelling encouragement. Over time, though, we’ve kicked it up a notch with various visuals and noisemakers:
A couple of previous yard signs:
And other accoutrement:
“Ratings”
Pom poms
Clown horn & whistle
Cow bells
Mini cow bells
Here’s an Instagram “story” they posted about this week’s happy hour:
I commented on their posting and we had this short exchange:
And, of course, some of the people who make it all worthwhile!
What fun! Thanks to all our friends and neighbors who participate!
