ODDLY ENOUGH
ODDLY ENOUGH
Neighbors sue to block home modeled on stadium
IOWA CITY, Iowa
Fitting tribute to Iowa football or Hawk-eyesore? That’s what a judge must decide.
Angry neighbors have filed a lawsuit against the Iowa City Board of Adjustment for allowing a couple to proceed with their plan to build a 7,500-square-foot home that will resemble the University of Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium.
Cedar Rapids television station KCRG reports that the lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Neighbors of Manville Heights Association requests an injunction to block construction of the home and for the repeal of the city’s building permit allowing it.
The house Reed and Sandy Carlson plan to build would look like the Hawkeyes’ 87-year-old stadium, complete with brick siding and a replica of the press box.
The association has expressed concern about the home’s size, the potential for big parties, as well as drainage, fire safety and traffic issues. The board said the home met all of the city’s guidelines.
Couple wins beer, cash in wife-carrying competition
NEWRY, Maine
Carrying your wife over the threshold means good luck in your new marriage.
Carrying your wife over the threshold of an obstacle course featuring log hurdles, sand traps and water hazards means beer and cash prizes.
A husband and wife from Maine are this year’s winners of the North American Wife Carrying Championship that took place Saturday in Newry, Maine, and will compete in the world championship in Finland next year.
Elliot and Giana Storey, of Westbrook, will bring home 11 cases of Goose Island Octoberfest beer and $665. They bested 43 other couples to win the 17th annual competition.
The Storeys completed the 278-yard course in 59.18 seconds. Their prizes were the weight of Giana in beer and five times her weight in cash.
The legend behind the event is based on Finland’s “Ronkainen the Robber,” whose 19th-century gang was known to pillage villages and take the women. Other accounts suggest Ronkainen required gang members to prove with toughness by completing a course with a heavy sack – or a woman.
The modern version features teams racing through a regulation length obstacle course dry and wet hazards.
These days, men usually carry a woman – they don’t have to be married and the couple can choose who carries whom – in styles including piggyback, the over-the-shoulder fireman’s carry and the “Estonian carry,” which features the woman upside down and dangling behind her partner.
Associated Press