• One especially special •
[2 MIN READ]
Anyone who attends the Growlers Group Run with any regularity (or even reads the run report in each weekly message) will notice that there is precisely one Dave running with the group these days. So why does he have to get the title ‘Train Dave’ when ‘Dave’ should be all that’s necessary? The answer lies in the discipline of database design.
If you’ve done any work with databases, you’ll know that every entry can have but one ID# and every ID# can have but one entry. ‘Dave’ is a unique name now, but when I started running with the group in 2012, it wasn’t. Then, there were 2 Daves who already had the names ‘Fast Dave’ and ‘Big Dave’. Using ‘Dave’ was a fruitless prospect because there was the constant demand for clarification of ‘which one?’ Hence the name augmentations. The ones before my time—of which there must have been many going back all the way to the club’s inception around the time of the store’s founding in 1981—are irrelevant: There’s been no perseverance of them in any record of any sort since I started with the group.
Each Dave has held a special place in the group. Fast Dave was special because he really was mighty fast. He’s not running like before, but we just saw him when we passed by his house in Jenkintown where he continues to live. Big Dave is still in Abington living in the house that Big Dave built (as an architect). Surely ranking up there in memorability is Spartan athlete Bryan ‘Dave’: A lot was because the ‘Dave’ was his last name. And when he married Heather—who immediately became the first female Dave—well, what’s not special about that? Then they made Bridger Dave between them, who—yes—attended numerous Growlers Group Runs (at least a couple in utero). They’re now in Reading and have yet another Dave, the second female, but she’s yet to come to town to attend her own club run. We really have to work on that one. Train Dave works for Amtrak as a track (not train!) engineer, hence the additional distinction, coupled with the fact that he’s the one who continues to run regularly. And just happened to have a very recent, nice, round-numbered birthday anniversary.
Although TD is the only Dave at the moment, K-Dave has also run a few times with us since the others moved on. Aside from all of them with that name, we’ve also had multiple Andrews and a couple each of Adam, Eric, and Pete, who also got their own designations. Sure, the necessarily augmented names make documenting their presences slightly more demanding, but any database designer who decides to run with the group will surely approve.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe), “Negative split or positive splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text and photos (unless otherwise stated): Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-posted: (1) Facebook JRC Growlers Group Run (2024’08’14’W Run Message), (2) GGR email list, (3) Cerebruns by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Cerebrun with added caption and images.
2025’09’16’T: Edits (punctuation, grammatical corrections and refinements, proofreading edits)
2024’08’22’R: Publication (Belated; with addition and revision [last paragraph]: “Although TD…their own designations.”)
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