I knew it would be an odd Crim when electric lines caught fire underground the day before the festival, sending manhole covers flying.

Seems a worker, driving a tent stake, sank it into a buried cable. Down went power. Up went 50-pound lids like tiddlywinks. Out came race head Sherlynn Everly, with visions of the power-grid failure that blacked out half of America Aug. 14 dancing like sewer pumps in her head. Within hours, she and her crew had rented and hooked up five giant generators, restoring downtown to "normal."

Riley McClincha would "drubble" three basketballs 10 miles the next day, as usual. Cashew Point, "where the nuts hang out," would again tempt runners with beer and insults.

Crim -- with its 15,000 runners, dozen races, expo, festival and other fun stretching barriers of "normalcy" -- would go on.

I hadn't crossed the state to run Crim in seven years. That was six too many. City names heading east rang musical: Cascade, Alto, Ionia, Saranac, Muir, Owosso.

You can go everywhere in Michigan: Hell and Paradise, travel to Gulliver, Climax, Bliss. Or you can rock in a hard place, Flint.

Downtown had changed. The old Hyatt Regency -- 15 stories with fountains, ballrooms and lobby bass pond -- was bought in Y2K by a religious group, renamed Riverfront Character Inn and did not allow alcohol: a character-building move hailed by nearby taverns.

I stayed there (the Inn, not taverns) and got as high as my ninth-floor room, riding elevators with soft-spoken, smooth-striding Kenyans bound for top floors. With their altitude edge, no way I was going to beat them.

I felt like God peering down from my window on the festival grounds, transforming. Crews painted blue "Start" and "Finish" strips on the bricks of Saginaw Street, put barrels in place and bolted together fencing. Swarms of runners entered the expo hall, exited laden with gear and goodies.

Shadows stretched, lights came on and streets emptied. In an eyeblink it was morning. Time to lace up the chip, pin the bib on and join the mortals, milling and mingling. To go and see.

Few moments match the start of the Crim 10-miler. Runners prance, stretch and try to stay loose, at the same time compressing in a mob, while assorted mucky-mucks give speeches about how great this is -- Of course it is! Get on with it! A hot-air balloon rises, towing the stars-and-stripes toward heaven, the national anthem is sung and BANG, the gun. Crim's begun!

Run through the birthplace of the world's largest corporation and you grow aware of its absence. General Motors has closed huge plants here, yet streets are living. People of Flint seem to have their own generating power.

Encouragement, cheers and efforts of other runners, each on an odyssey, remind you of flint in arrowheads.

A direct hit cuts through hide, tissue to the heart. MR