Mud

David Hudson of Westville discovered an interest in mountain bike racing from reading the glossy magazines that the sport had spawned. "It looked like a really fun and exciting thing to do - jumping over logs, going up and down hills and over rocks and all at high speeds," said Hudson, 28, a successful amateur road racing cyclist. And of course there is the mud. Last summer, Hudson and other members of the Pursuit Cycle Club, whose road team he raced for the last three years, checked out mountain bike racing up close: They entered the Mud and Guts Mountain Bike Race in Revere, Pa. "It was an eight-mile race, and seven miles of it were basically running because it was so muddy you just couldn't ride," said Hudson, a cartographer for Environmental Resolutions Inc. in Mount Laurel.

At the heart of an operation that has shoveled 360 tons of mud, rock, and foliage off the Schuylkill Expressway this hot week in August, Joe Hopson squinted through a muddy grate yesterday to see how much more there was to do. The answer, in a race to beat the next rain, is many more tons of muck from Sunday's flood. As if traffic was not already bad enough, add clogged plumbing to the road-slowing equation. "Mud's harder to move than most things, truthfully," Hopson, 52, a vacuum-truck operator, was saying at the brim of a just-opened drainpipe beneath the road, "unless you use a lot of water, and that fills my truck up too fast.

On a day when residents should've been trying to beat the heat, some Northeast Philadelphia home owners found themselves trying to beat water and mud instead. A 12-inch water main blew about 4:15 a.m. yesterday, transforming Willits Road near Ashton Road into a mini river and leaving a massive chasm at one of the corners. "There was a wall of water down the street," said Kevin Gregory, as he and Jim Scism hosed, shoveled and swept mud out of their buckled driveway. "Most of it pooled into the driveways as it hit them.

Between the 20-yard lines at Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium, even before the football game started yesterday, there was no grass. Only mud, which covered the ankles and coated the hands and dripped from the football in great gooey globs. So it didn't take a genius to figure out that when Massachusetts and Villanova slipped tentatively onto the field in a crucial Yankee Conference game, there would be little scoring. There wasn't. A wobbly 24-yard field goal by Massachusetts' Marco Gabrielli with 1 minute, 6 seconds left in the first half provided all the scoring and gave the Minutemen a 3-0 win over Villanova.

If you recall, last Sunday wasn't exactly the ideal day to venture out of doors. First of all, it was chilly. Second, it was rainy. Third, it was dreary. None of which stopped three hearty members of the Springfield Trail Club from hiking the "scenic" Darby Creek trail. That's "scenic" as in discarded appliances, hubcaps, rotting lumber and other assorted man-made debris that lines portions of the trail. "This is the trashiest hike I've ever been on," said Muril Sims to no one in particular as she sloshed through the mud, umbrella in hand.

Here's how to have fun, Woodstock style: Take one surly sun. Set it in a humid sky. Add about 150,000 people, some who started their day with the four basic booze groups: beer, wine, liquor and their various combinations. Shovel them into a rolling tract. Add 100,000 or so more people. Then add rain - light showers and heavy downpours. For spice, toss in the threat of lightning. Yield: Nearly 4,000 injuries, including one death, two heart attacks and all sorts of fractures and scratches.

I don't understand why people are complaining about all the dirty politics in this campaign," Slats Grobnik said. Because many Americans are turned off by vicious politics. They want a reasoned presentation and discussion of the issues. "Not me. I think all this is truth-slinging. " Truth-slinging? You mean mud-slinging. "Well, you call it mud-slinging. But to me, all the rotten stuff they say about each other sounds true, so I call it truth-slinging. " You believe the reckless and unfair allegations they are making about each other?

In Stonington, Maine, Peter Kinney watched as the setting sun lit up the summer sky in a pink glow. Even the moon appeared pink as it rose that evening. In Utah, the Haverford School art teacher waited as darkness, and the coolness of the moon, evaporated the red-hot heat from sun-baked rocks. Kinney, who's always loved the moon and has a deep affinity with nature, captured those images in his paintings, using crushed shells and sand of pink granite from Maine, red clay from Utah, mud, and earth.

Quick action by police saved a 9-year-old Gloucester County boy with autism who was found submerged up to his neck in the thick mud of Mantua Creek during an incoming tide. The unidentified child from the Mount Royal section of East Greenwich was reported missing by his parents at 3:45 p.m. Saturday after he wandered away from his Billows Drive home. About 90 minutes later, three K-9 units, from East Greenwich, Logan, and Deptford Townships, tracked the child's scent to the bank of the creek near his home where they found his shoes, East Greenwich Police Chief Barry Jenkins said.

Quick action by police saved a nine-year-old Gloucester County boy with autism who was found submerged up to his neck in the thick mud of the Mantua Creek during an incoming tide. The unidentified child from the Mount Royal section of East Greenwich was reported missing by his parents at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday after he wandered away from his Billows Drive home. Three K-9 units, from East Greenwich, Logan, and Deptford Townships, tracked the child's scent to the banks of the creek near his home where they found his shoes, said Chief Barry Jenkins, East Greenwich Police Department.