Four ... three ... two ... one ... GO!"A starter's pistol cracked, and both Mike and Mark yelled "HIKE! HIKE! HIKE! HIKE! HIKE! to their teams.A cheer...arose that they could barely hear through their heavy parkas as the dogs took off with a wild acceleration. They hadn't been driven down, but brought down in the dog box, just so their starting mad rush would look better for the crowd, and they came through with one of the wildest rushes that Mike and Mark had experienced. The crowd got to them,. While thenumber of customers remained the same, the cost was growing steadily,and the margin was going down. Something was off, but it wasn'tpossible to find the reason by just looking at the figures.The next day I come to the hotel early in the morning, put on my maid'suniform and go through the hotel. An elderly Japanese couple comes outof a room. They smiled at me and walked downstairs. The old man droppedthe keycard, and I followed them. It was a bit awkward to step outsidedressed as a. My lungs are two loaves of agony in my heaving chest, screaming curses at me with every gasp of air. My legs pump me forward even though they are full of lead and liquefied packing peanuts.Faster, Val.My toes and the balls of my feet fight for purchase on the moss-covered, uneven ground.Run!My heart is pounding in my head so hard that my skull seems to be pulsing like the Yellowstone volcano, and boy, I won’t be surprised if I slip on this slippery goddamn ground and hit my head and my brain. We’ve always had a close, flirty friendship. I wanted it to develop into something more, but he’d always knock me back and say he ‘didn’t want to ruin our friendship’. That was fair enough, I could handle that. But what I couldn’t handle was the fact that at every single party we were at, he’d flirt outrageously and end up all over me, only to apologise the following day and ask if we could remain ‘best friends’. Recently he’d been flirting more than usual and said he was thinking about.