Sterling Heights High School

Run Time: 60:00

The map screenshot is from MapQuest, which I downloaded to my phone recently when the Family Chat cancelled Apple. When you finish a route in the MapQuest app, a “Quest Complete” notification pops up, giving it a hint of adventure. As it turns out, using MapQuest can be an adventure, as my lovely wife and I found out last Friday night around Midnight, on our way home from a Red Wings game. It took us off the freeway, then to a closed on-ramp to get back onto the freeway, then 7 or 8 miles of dirt road to find another on-ramp.

It also tried to tell me that my local record store was back in the old location that it moved out of two years ago, and it has had trouble finding some places by name. I enjoy the retro feeling, and the computer voice options are interesting, but… I am not using it on my work trips. I am sticking with Apple Maps on my work phone. I sometimes have time commitments on my visits, and I feel it is wise to remove the Quest feature from my work travel.

I recently shared in the Family Chat that I am struggling with the impulse to care about work. Work is important. For financial reasons, of course, but also for mental health. One of my customers in Montana told me last year to never retire, because I’d be dead within a year. He’s a few years younger than me, so I imagine his perspective will change, but I get the sentiment of the message. Leisure alone, even if you can afford it, is not enough. Throw in self-care, and you have minimally sufficient purpose and meaning. Work adds both purpose and meaning, and increases the value of the leisure and self-care.

Work doesn’t have to be a paid job. Work can be home repair. It can be changing a diaper. It can be writing a blog post. I don’t feel like it’s easily definable. It seems like one of those know-it-when-you-see-it things, but also, perhaps even moreso, one of those know-its-absence-when-you-don’t-see-it things.

Writing, for me, is work. I enjoy it, but in the same way that I enjoy my job, or running. I enjoy checking the “complete” box. I enjoy coming up with a plan and executing it. I enjoy solving problems with freedom and autonomy. Creative work, like writing, is rife with freedom and autonomy. I sometimes think that I would enjoy it if writing were my job, instead of sales. Currently no one is paying me to write, so that is an obstacle, but if they were, how would I adapt to that transition?

As it is now, I don’t like to sit and write for more than about 25 minutes at a time, and rarely do I write more than an hour in a day. I heard a writing instructor recently state on a podcast, that writers should limit themselves to two hours per writing session. I think that’s a good general rule. The work of writing is more than just writing. It’s imagining, researching, thinking, and doing non-writing tasks that allow the sub-conscious to do a fair amount of the work. Really, the sub-conscious does the writing, and the conscious mind edits.

Currently I am actively working on three long-form writing projects: one memoir and two novels. I could envision writing full-time with a mix of projects. I am doing research for one of the novels, and research takes time. I could see myself writing one fiction and one non-fiction work simultaneously, with one-third of the total work time devoted to research. I don’t think I’d want to sit in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for nine hours a day reading Presidential papers like Robert Caro does, but three hours, maybe.

My regular job is simply not that fulfilling, and the impulse to care more than I need to is strong. My responsibilities are minor compared to other positions I’ve held, and I fight the impulse to try to control more than I do now. I see where our company leadership goes astray, and I know I could help with course correction, and I have years of experience executing simple strategies that they seem incapable of devising, discovering, or deploying, but they don’t ask for my help. They have siloed me, and I’ve let myself be siloed, and I’m kind of happy and content in my silo. The trick is to not care. The challenge is to find the way to contribute positively in the siloed role, to lead by example, to influence indirectly, even if no one is paying attention.

What I care about in my work — really care about — is the plot of the novel that I’m outlining. It’s the chord pattern of the song I am writing. It’s the curating of the old work journals that I’m converting to a memoir. It’s even the layout of the pavers that I’m going to arrange below our rear deck. It’s NOT the shortsightedness of the component availability restrictions set by our upper management. It’s NOT the failure of our New Product Development department. It’s NOT the self-congratulatory vacuity of our Marketing team. It’s NOT the reactionary philosophy of our Customer Service and Sales procedures.

It’s not that it’s all above my pay-grade, or outside the scope of my responsibility. It doesn’t matter that much anymore. Someone else is handling all of that. Poorly. Will I look back with regret in 20 years that I didn’t muscle in and try to take over? I doubt it. If I were 20 years younger, I think I’d feel there was more at stake, that it mattered more. I won’t die within a year of retirement. I won’t stop working. I’ll be doing the work that matters to me. If anything, that will prolong my life.

Fish Creek Provincial Park

Run Time: 60:00

The night before, in Moose Jaw, SK, the day after the mosquito scare in North Battleford, I was again besieged at sundown. This time I was just out for a walk, in my jeans, so running to safety was a problematic option. I walked down the middle of the road, as far from vegetation as possible.

This day, in Calgary, I got to the hotel a little earlier, so I knew I could get the run in before the hour of doom. I got a little nervous descending into the Fish Creek swampage, but all was safe. I encountered no mosquitos.

Earlier in the day, on the long drive from Moose Jaw, I listened to an interview with Teri Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air. This one was unique: she was being interviewed. It was the 50th anniversary of Fresh Air, and the interview was done by another podcaster who will remain nameless, because I’m going to roast him. The episode was from 2025, only a few months after her husband of nearly 50 years passed away. Teri Gross so rarely shares any of her personal life. It was poignant to hear her talk about losing her husband, and the trials of caring for someone with a long illness.

The interviewer kept restating what Teri had said, in his own words, usually shorter, like he was summarizing or condensing what she said. He didn’t interrupt her, but it bugged me. It was like he was confirming his understanding of what she said, which, in a normal conversation, is not necessarily bad, but in the context of the interview, seemed intrusive. It was almost like he felt there was a superiority in both his listening skills and his ability to edit what she was saying, and he wanted that superiority reinforced.

Teri didn’t seem to mind. The irony is, of course, that she does not engage in this type of behavior when she interviews people. Her signature technique is to pause and allow silence after a person finishes a thought, presumably to allow them to continue if they want. And often they do. When she does speak, it’s another question. After all, is it important that she demonstrates that she understands what the person just said, and that she can restate it or summarize it? If she does not understand, she asks a question to gather more information.

In the movie “Greyhound,” which takes place on a battleship during World War II, everything that is said from one sailor to another is repeated, verbatim, to ensure that the message is passed along accurately. In that context, I loved the technique. It made me wish that work communication in all work could be similarly enacted. There was a rhythm and a clarity to it. This interviewer came across as engaging in a form of man-splaining. It wasn’t particularly egregious, other than that he was giving Teri Gross the man-version of what she just said. I wish that she had had Dave Davies, her longtime co-host for Fresh Air, interview her instead. That would have been perfect.

Teri Gross has conducted over 10,000 interviews for Fresh Air. She met her husband at WHYY in Philadelphia, where she started, and where Fresh Air started. He was a jazz critic and writer. She said in the interview that there is more vinyl in their apartment than in most record stores. She has kept most of his records and CDs, and his ashes are on a shelf with some of the records, where she can see it from the dining room table. She got emotional a few times during the interview, something you never would hear in her Fresh Air interviews (other than laughter), especially when they replayed part of her interview with Maurice Sendak shortly before he died of a long illness. At the time, she hadn’t known he was ill, and Sendak hadn’t told the public, so she conducted the interview with questions about what he was going to write or do next, and he seemed to want to talk about dying and being heartbroken about leaving this world. At the end of the interview, he said to her, “Live your life, live your life, live your life.” This contrasted with her saying, in this interview, that she tried to talk to her husband about death as his illness got worse, but he couldn’t talk about it.

She says she has no plans to retire, and thank goodness for that. She is healthy and is at the top of her game. I have so much respect for her, especially for how she has kept her personal life private, but it was special to get a small glimpse of her life growing up, her long and happy marriage, and even the pain and loss she has suffered. May other interviewers listen to her and model her technique and professionalism.

North Battleford Comprehensive High School

Run Time 60:00

North Battleford is a waypoint on the long drive between Edmonton and Saskatoon. It’s not unlike many such towns along major freeways in the U.S. prairie states, except, perhaps, moreso. I had low expectations — for the hotel, for the run, for dinner. I’m happy to report that all were above average.

The run started out with a gravel road. I saw the school track on the map, but it was a 44-minute walk, so I wasn’t sure that it was close enough to run there and have enough time to get in a few track laps in the middle of the run, but it turned out to be about the same as my weekday home track, so it worked out fine. There were a lot of walkers and a few runners at the track, which is always encouraging in these rural towns.

On the last leg of the drive, I listened to a Rationally Speaking podcast from 2017 with Jason Brennan, who wrote a book called Against Democracy, and the discussion of the book’s main points was interesting. I gathered that a large part of the book consists of reasoning why democracy does not work. I’m inclined to agree with most of his points, and even if I were to assert that democracy is the best political system we’ve come up with so far, I’d have to admit that it doesn’t work well enough.

I was hoping that Brennan would offer up a few truly innovative options that have not been put into practice, but he puts forward only one alternative to democracy: epistocracy, which basically means government by the knowledgeable. In his examples, voters would have to pass a basic political knowledge test to qualify to vote, or voters who knew more about government and economics might be given extra votes. I was disappointed in this option, and also disappointed that there was not more than one untried system put forward.

It’s possible that Brennan discusses other alternatives to democracy in the book, and they did not have time to discuss them on the podcast. What worries me about epistocracy is that knowledge is not enough to make someone trustworthy. Ever heard of the evil genius? Or the greedy one? I would rather, at this point, that all political candidates were women. How about taking it one step further: all candidates are women, and only women can vote.

I think it’s worth trying for, oh, say a few thousand years. Then we can reassess and compare it to the current state of our planet. Also, how about we lower the voting age to 8? I think you could take almost any block of 8-year-old girls and ask them to vote for the last group of candidates, and we’d see better outcomes. If you let a girl vote at age 8, just imagine how savvy she’d be at age 18. In a way, this would be a form of epistocracy: just substitute wisdom for knowledge. One good thing about wisdom? It has ethics embedded in it. And I happen to think that, in general, women are wiser than men. You wouldn’t even need a test.

As soon as the sun went down during my run, I noticed mosquitos landing on my arms and legs. I had just finished my last lap on the track and the third block of 10 minutes of running, and I had started 5 minutes of walking before the last stretch of 10 minutes of running. And then there were 5 more minutes of walking after that. There were still a lot of other people on the track and walking on the sidewalks. Were they all sprayed up? Do the Canadians vaccinate to repel mosquitos? I didn’t notice anyone else swatting their arms and thighs.

I reasoned that the mosquitos could not get a fix on me while I was running, which is why I was be targeted as I walked. Before I completed the 5 minutes of walking, I decided to hell with it, and I started running again. Mosquito bites are no bueno. And I kept right on running after the final 10 minute stretch, all the way to the hotel. Sometimes you have to change your pattern to escape peril.

Iowa River Corridor Trail

Run Time: 66:51 + 2:30 kick

I just finished reading Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad for our family book club. I have notes in my phone to share with the chat members as soon as some of them read Part 1, so I don’t want to share too many details of the book, other than what we have done to women in the past 150 years is beyond the pale, to understate matters exponentially. And the past 150 years is the best we’ve come up with so far, tragically.

A lot of what I read dovetails with a story idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for a year or so. Actually, it started when I realized that no one has written a sci-fi novel titled 2084. I know I’m risking losing that idea to another writer by mentioning this in a blog post, but I’m hoping my 13 subscribers won’t sell my idea to a better writer.

That idea entered my radar, and I started trying to create an outline, mostly around climate change. The challenge with science fiction, especially now, is predicting what might happen. Accuracy is not that important. Uniqueness is. If you read science fiction written in the 20th century, not many writers were predicting the advent of the smart phone. What keeps those works in the public consciousness is not how well the writer predicted the future, but how interesting the story is to the reader.

I was doubting my ability to come up with a clever take on the future. It’s tempting to take the post-apocalyptic approach. It’s also tempting now to take the world-too-hot approach. One of my outline segments had people living on islands off the Southern Alaska coast, which were now moderate in terms of weather but problematic due to sea level rise.

And then I started thinking about a scheme that I used to write a short novel that I’m just now finishing up, about a girl who starts playing high school baseball in the early 2000s. That project started with me thinking, when we moved to Utah in 2021, that it might be fun to get a job coaching high school baseball. That idea morphed into a much better idea: write about coaching high school baseball. When you write a story, you literally control the narrative. What happens is what you want to happen, which is nothing like real youth sports.

That approach worked well. What happens in the story is what I want to happen. Not what I think would have happened. Not what should have happened. I didn’t try to capture reality. Well, what type of story is more ripe for that approach than science fiction?

Instead of writing what I think the world will be like in 2084, I can write what I want the world to be like in 2084. Obviously, that is a Utopic novel (because I want the world to be amazing in 2084), but it seems like most novels about “Utopia” end up being cautionary tales, like 1984, for instance. Or Brave New World. It’s a theme often repeated: be careful what you wish for; you might get it. You think it’s Utopia, but it’s Dystopia.

Why not write about a real Utopia? Like one where climate change gets solved, and reparations are made, and optimal health is achieved, and humans live in equilibrium with all other life. It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. Instead of predicting the future, why not imagine what we want? Or what I want, at least. We’re not crowd-sourcing this work. Not at this point anyway.

I swear I came up with all of this before I read Good and Mad. If so many of our problems as a species can be attributed to Patriarchy, what would be one of the most effective ways to fix those problems? How about eliminating the male gender? It’s only 2026, so I think we can let those of us alive now go peacefully (most of us anyway — there are some candidates for immediate termination). And I swear, in this story, there’s not going to be a conclave of evil men who somehow survive and emerge to wreak retribution. The project is to imagine what the world would look like in 2084 with no men.

One of my favorite writers, Lyz Lenz, lives in Iowa, not far from Coralville, I think. She’s also a runner. I was kind of hoping I would bump into her along Corridors of the Iowa River, and I could share this story idea with her. She could be a key advisor. She could point out the irony of this story being written by a man. Maybe she could help me figure out how to weave some humor into this narrative. Maybe she would remark that this all sounds like a way for me to reconcile my awakening to the horror of how women are treated in this world by trying to control it, which is a key flaw in Patriarchal reasoning.

This is actually my favorite part of writing: coming up with the idea. The writing itself tends toward drudgery for me. I am much more comfortable when I have a lot of things going on, like my crappy job, so that I can pop in and “write” for 15 minutes and feel like I’m justified not hunkering down to write 3000 words.

I have plenty of time to write 2084 without hunkering. Orwell published 1984 in 1949. But… he was only 46 years old when it was published. And he died the next year. The clock ticking for me now is not the clock of finishing the novel before someone else publishes a science fiction novel with the same title. It’s the clock of my mortality, when I vacate this world and contribute to the dream of a world without men.

Bridgewood Trail

Run Time: 66:44 + 2:30 kick

It was convenient that this sidewalk encircled the hotel property and the adjacent housing development and luxury apartments. I think there was a golf course tucked in there somewhere at one time, but the additional luxury apartments under construction might have replaced it.

I appreciated that the scenery included the Neenah Foundry on the east side of the property, which looked abandoned, but I could hear machinery operating inside. There were strange piles of refuse, where old scraps and relics had apparently been tossed out for years. I’m not sure what the attraction is, but I find it comforting to run on the edges of industrial wasteland.

My wife and I spent the night in Stratford, Ontario, recently. We were on our way to Toronto and Kingston, and we lucked into a quaint hotel in Stratford that was a delight. Out one of the windows you could see a large abandoned structure. Turned out it was an old locomotive repair facility.

I read online that someone local had advocated to the City of Stratford to develop the property into some kind of public space, perhaps a farmers market facility, and that there had been public hearings and some reclamation done. If so, I applaud that effort, especially if it retains the integrity of the old building, which looked like a giant skeleton of some sort, with rusty steel beams criss-crossing every-which-way over the top and on the sides.

These old industrial buildings are the ruins of our continent. Why not bestow ruin status on them, the way that Europe, Asia, and Africa does on theirs? Better yet, why not convert them to public spaces, perhaps even centers of learning? Hell, put a brewpub in there. We don’t have to cater to crass commercialism, but this old industrial architecture is begging to be useful.

Some of these facilities actually did ruin the health of workers, the local ecosystem, and, ultimately, the financial well-being of the community when it ceased operation. What better way to remember that? I see these structures all over my sales region. They are never going to be resurrected for industrial use. Let’s make them urban parks, open-air performing arts centers, and workout facilities.

In the Oregon Coast Range, there are the remains of a railroad line that ran from the Tualatin Valley to the Oregon Coast. We used the hear the trains running through when we were hunting elk in the hills above. There was one logging road that crossed the tracks midway through.

One year there was a lot of flooding, and it took out some of the tracks, and the railroad company never attempted to rebuild. When my kids were old enough, we made a couple of trips down the logging road to the tracks and hiked several miles on both directions, through old railroad tunnels, across giant trestles, through washouts where the timbers had washed away, and rails lay twisted by the forces of nature. It was now a glorious trail. It felt almost sacred, like you were walking through a post-apocalyptic landscape no human had visited in years.

Maybe the best part of humanity is what we leave behind when we’re gone, when we’ve failed, when we’ve abandoned something monumental that we built, when we’ve given up and nature has reclaimed, or rather, claimed what we tried to impose on her. Maybe someday our descendants will live among these ruins and celebrate the death of industry and capitalism.

Oak Creek Line Trail

Run Time: 66:43 + 2:30 kick

This runs started out moderately promising. The cement was no bueno, but the grass was mowed short enough to facilitate off-trail running. It led away from streets and traffic, which is always a bonus. I passed walkers and dog-walkers early on, so I had every reason to think that I would be able to run out-and-back for the full run.

Alas, it was not to be. I was quickly reminded that much of the Great Lakes region is right at groundwater level, and with the recent thunderstorms, the lakes extended onto the trail system. I tiptoed around the first water hazard, but the second one was not navigable. Time to pivot.

I have had some poor luck recently with informed choices, including choosing which book to read. I started The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, and I could not get into it at all. I moved it to the bathroom for my bathroom reader, and even that didn’t work. Looking for anything else to read, I visited the bookshelf just outside the bathroom and grabbed my old copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It’s been a few decades since I read it, and within a few pages, I realized that much of it was probably lost on the younger me. While this is a book for all ages, it has a depth that probably increases with life experience. Early on in the book, the main character describes a philosophical conundrum that his previous self (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means) discovers involving scientific method.

He reasons that the number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite, and then he concludes that this law is completely nihilistic, because it is a disproof of the general validity of all scientific method. “If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.”

This is just part of the problem with scientific method that he reasons out. And the primary philosophical conundrum that he discovers, or develops, has to do with the the flaws of logic and reason themselves. But the idea that scientific development is producing hypotheses at an increasing rate that shortens the length of scientific truths and therefore prevents us from reaching ultimate scientific truths is, to me, a metaphor for the self-induced chaos that we are now living with every potential piece of information, misinformation, and disinformation at our swiping fingertip.

But, we continue on into the chaos, because what else can we do? At least in the field of scientific inquiry, we can comfort ourselves with the fact that we are advancing… something. We’re not just scrolling through endless shit. The fact that scientific method might be internally flawed is easier to ignore (I’m hypothesizing). I’m not going to give the mess we are in now the same benefit of the doubt. We’ve passed multiple points of diminishing return beyond a point of no return.

The information morass, like the trail lake that blocked my progress, is shallow but not worth crossing. I diverted to a sidewalk for the middle half of the run, returning to the beginning section of the trail to finish up. I breathed in a little more carbon monoxide than I would have otherwise, and the scenery was less attractive, but I checked off the calendar item.

We ignore conundrums and inconsistencies and paradoxes all the time, all our lives. We keep reading books that we don’t enjoy or learn from. We stay on the path despite the shallow morasses. We don’t stop and question why. We don’t inspect the foundation of reason and logic, and maybe we should, because look where they’ve brought us.

I’m looking forward to finishing Zen. I don’t remember all of the story. I know that I’m going to get more out of it now than I did when I was 20, 25, 30. Will I get enough to figure out solutions to climate change? To political chaos? To existential threats? Probably. I’ll make a calendar item, like the Grinch: “Solve world hunger. Tell no one.”

Hanson-Larsen Park Trail System

Run Time: 33:56 (weather-abbreviated)

Thought I could squeeze in this run before the thunder and lightning arrived, but not quite. Too bad. This is a great trail run venue. All of the mountain bike tracks had me a little nervous, but my new friend Brody told me all he ever sees up on the hill is runners. I was having a great time until I heard the first thunder clap.

Speaking of loud noises, July 4th. Ah, yes, nothing more patriotic than blowing half of your paycheck on ways to annoy your neighbor. There have been times, when I was young, that I partook. I have enjoyed many Fourth of July Fireworks Celebrations. But now I would rather just have another quiet night with the fireflies flickering around the yard.

I think it’s not so much the noise and the smoke that bothers me as it is the people creating the noise and the smoke. Shooting off neighborhood fireworks and lighting firecrackers in the street sends a message, something along the lines of, “I don’t care what you like or don’t like. I’m entitled to be an asshole.” Yes, you are, and unfortunately, that is the American Dream for many of our national citizens, as we can see by the state of the union.

Maybe we can use the occasion of the nation’s birthday to dig into the causes of the national epidemic of assholiness. I think we won’t have to dig far beneath the surface. Let’s take a look at the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The part of that statement I challenge is the “endowed by their Creator” part. I’ve written in this blog before about the contradiction between Reason and Religious Belief. How does one reconcile holding a core belief, one upon which their other beliefs are sometimes based, with the reality of insufficient evidence. Faith is not evidence. Faith is a hope, a wish. It might be a strong one, it might even turn out to be warranted, but it is not scientific, logical, or derived from Reason.

It’s dangerous, I propose, to let people think that a higher power endowed them with any rights. It leads them to think they are favored, entitled. Even if there is a higher power who created us, and even if she endowed us with unalienable rights, let’s keep that on the down-low, okay? If we want to talk about what binds us together as a country, or a tribe, let’s say we endow each other with unalienable rights. I give you the right to be an asshole, and you give it right back to me. Even that concession still means that we are placing ourselves above non-humans, plant life, the planet, and the universe. What’s so special about us? If anything endowed us with anything, it was a lightning strike into a pool of enzymes, followed by billions of years of evolution.

Can we just skip ahead in this story to the part where monotheism is just a myth? I have known many religious people, and I know that religious belief is often a good thing and helps people, but can we just give it a little less power? Let’s make it something like a favorite sports team. Let’s not make it the basis of the founding of a country. You know they just put that part in to get the buy-in of the masses.

When that first thunder clap announced the presence of not God, but weather, I headed down the draw. The raindrops started soon after, and by the time I got to the apartment complex parking lot below, it was coming down hard. I ran to the stairs and sat down at the first landing and waited it out. The rental car was a half-mile or so away. The weather app said rain for the next hour. You can get real wet in a half-mile.

Then my new friend Brody showed up. He parked in the lot, came up the stairs and asked me if I got caught out in the storm. We talked for a minute, and then he continued on up the stairs. Then he stopped and offered to give me a ride to my rental car. In the car, he told me he just got promoted to a Sales position, and he was trying to learn how to be more outgoing and talk to people he didn’t know. I told him he was going to do just fine.

Central Cass High School

Run Time: 66:31 + 2:30 kick

No locked gates at Central Cass. I’ve run on this track before. It’s wide open for community use. There were two softball games going on over at the ballfields — young players, all wearing pink uniform shirts with differentiating shorts. The snack shack appeared to be doing a brisk business. Two high school girls were on the track field, practicing their hammer throws.

Two nights earlier, in Winnipeg, I opted for the fitness center over running outside. It was rainy and sketchy outside. I have yet to find a hotel in a neighborhood in Winnipeg that isn’t sketchy. Winnipeg must be the First-Nation word for watch your back. Even driving through and around Winnipeg, I haven’t felt comfortable anywhere outside of the industrial districts, mostly because people there are generally working, rather than trying to score meth.

I was mildly amazed that the hotel had a fitness center. Then I went to the fitness center. One elliptical machine, one treadmill that was broken, a set of dumbbells with a bench. No water cooler even.

There is no way you can call an elliptical exercise. It’s just sliding your feet backward and forward, and moving your arms correspondingly in a way that makes attaining a rhythm impossible. I chose the interval setting, and when the incline went up to 10, it still just felt like I was pretending to exercise. It’s definitely not resistance training. It’s assistance training.

I did start sweating after 30 minutes, but I couldn’t get my heart rate above 100. You never lift your feet off the surface. Keeping the upper and lower body moving is a plus, so I could see an old person might benefit, except that the mount and dismount are awkward and would surely end in life-threatening injury. It was touch and go for me, and I am moderately agile.

To compensate for the lack of exertion, I decided to lift a few weights after my ellipiticism. Sometimes I do this when I run on a treadmill in a hotel fitness center — some bench presses, some shoulder presses, some squats after my run. Arnold says that strength training makes you live longer, and I don’t go to health clubs, so the fitness center is a good, free option.

I chose a set of 25 lb. dumbbells and did a set of bench presses, then a set of shoulder presses. Normally, I put one down and hold just one for the squats — not sure why. Easier to balance with one weight held by both hands in the middle, and even a body weight squat is enough for me to feel it. This time I kept both and did the squats with the weights up at my shoulders. And my thighs said what the HELL was that?

Then I did two sets of each with 30 lbs. weights — fewer reps. And again, my thighs were distressed, this time with indignation. So the elliptical is clearly not resistance training, and running is clearly not strength training. If, when you ran, you did a full single-leg squat with each step, perhaps that might build more strength. But just running does not build strength.

I felt it all the way through my run in Williston the next day, and through this run the day after that. I felt pain in my leg muscles, which, I have to say, feels a hell of a lot better than back or hip or neck pain. It feels like the pain after a hard-fought victory, not the pain of being misaligned or sitting too much. Maybe I can make the weights part of the ritual, even after an outside run.

Williston High School

Run Time: 66:30 + 2:30 kick

A long day of driving. Started in Winnipeg, planned to drive 288 miles to Minot, then 122 miles to Williston. Then a prospect I was scheduled to meet three days later in Fargo emailed to ask if we could meet in Grand Forks instead. So I diverted 146 miles to Grand Forks, then 211 miles to Minot, then 122 miles to Williston. So 410 miles turned into 478 miles, which put me at the hotel after 6:30.

So I didn’t feel like running. I was drowsy and hungry. But it was beautiful out, and I had not run the two previous days, and there was a high school nearby, so I changed into my running attire and drove the rental car to the high school, where I found the track… restricted. The gates were padlocked, and there were actually signs that said stay off the field, because it was for high school athletics only.

Well, fuck you, Williston School District. Here is this beautiful, relatively new running track, sitting unused for the whole summer, with a new housing development right next door, local citizens walking the sidewalks around the school. I would run the sidewalks, more in protest than anything else. I would run around the perimeter of the school, with my rental car with Texas plates parked right in the middle of the big, open, empty parking lot, which was probably meant for students, staff, and parents only.

This is one of the obstacles I come across that burns my ass. Why chain off a public school track? If anything, runners jogging on the track deter vandalism and loitering and unwelcome activity. When school is not in session, school grounds can be community space, where citizens who pay for the schools can exercise and commune and feel welcome and trusted.

So I’m coming around the east side of the building, and I look over at the track, and what’s this? A breach at Gate 7! Some coach left the gate unlocked, probably the football coach. No signs at this gate. I’m in!

I’m just wondering, what is the reason for closing off the track? I have seen a few that are in big cities, in sketchy areas, where you could justify keeping everyone out. I would argue that even those tracks would benefit by allowing runners and walkers. This track is in a small town, with nothing but open prairie on one side, and new housing on the other.

I was waiting for the local sheriff to show up, siren wailing, guns drawn, to escort me off the track, possibly to the hoosegow. One of the walkers would report me, no doubt, for trespassing and scoffing the law. I was ready for a showdown, but no such luck. I ran unbothered and criminally fast, because I was so pumped at finding entry through Gate 7.

A small gesture of protest, ignoring the signs of oppression posted at the main gate. In actuality, probably nobody cares about me, or anyone else, running on the track. It’s probably one person, one ridiculously rules-oriented school board member or school administrator or overinvolved parent, who made a pointless stand because they could. Someone who is unhappy, so they want everyone else to be unhappy. Unfortunately, sometimes one person can do a whole lot of damage.

Hopefully that person will move along, or go away, or be removed from power. We don’t need to be exclusionary. Do you know anyone like that? Anyone who thinks we need to put gates or walls around the field to keep out the outsiders? Maybe the citizens of Williston will rise up and remove that person from power. One can dream.

Be the thistle that grows up through the crack in the astroturf. Be the runner who finds the unlocked gate. Resist tyranny. Unseat the despot.

Songbird Creek Trail and other nearby trails

Run Time: 66:25 + 2:30 kick

My hotel in Billings was a relic. The Montana Trailhead Inn: 7 stories high, next to an old Convention Center. It has an open commons area with a piano, couches, and tables that you look down on from all floors — all rooms open onto a balcony. A trellised fountain rises 4 four stories on one wall — dry and apparently retired. The elevators are windowed to that you can watch as you rise or descend. I saw approximately 5 other guests in the time I was there.

The neighborhood is primarily industrial. I thought I could see some trails near the river on the map, so I headed that direction. It was a good choice. The entry trail ran past a large community garden, which was well-tended and full of vegetables and flowers. A few locals were working in their chosen plots.

Songbird Creek isn’t much, but it marks the end of private property and the beginning of green space, so it is useful. I ran west first. The area around the creek is marshy and forested. In one spot, I caught a whiff of death. Something had died down in the trees, probably something big, if I could smell it that strongly up on the trail.

Everything that lives, dies, right? Including each of us. Increasingly, as I move through each day, especially work days, I wonder about the value of what I am doing in each moment in relation to my own date with mortality. I’m definitely over halfway there. Meandering thoughts about what will happen when that time comes are starting to come out of the woods and accost me on the trail more often. I’m getting a whiff of death, and it’s disturbing.

I would love 20 more good years. 25 would be even better, but I’m not banking on it. At this point, it seems like a little blip of time. And yet, can any of us spend each remaining moment of our life in meaningful activity? And what is meaningful? How does the most meaningful experience translate to the afterlife if there is none?

Consciousness is the most blessed gift each of us will ever receive. How cruel that it will be taken away someday. I can feel extreme FOMO about the idea of not being here to witness my children and grandchildren grow after I’m gone, but it’s genuine existential dread to know that I just won’t be anymore. It’s not just the worst possible fear. It’s on a whole other level. I’m not sure it can be adequately expressed through language.

I don’t want life to end. I don’t want consciousness to end. I am not sure what is going to happen to my consciousness, but even if it extends beyond the end of my physical life, I don’t want to go an afterlife. I don’t want my soul to be blended into the collective soul. I want to keep right on loving my loved ones and working my crappy job and feeling the aches of aging and laughing at something funny and reading stories that entrance me and listening to the music I love. I want to go on running four times a week and writing my own stories and learning to play songs on the guitar and kissing my wife and rewatching TV shows that move me. I want to go on scooping cat poop and pulling weeds and doing home repair that I have no idea how to do but now I can just Google it.

I suspect that this world is the only world I’ll ever know, and this world is enough for me. But 80 years is not enough. Who knows? Maybe 800 years would be enough. I get it — our lives wouldn’t be so precious if they went on forever. It’s precisely because they are so short that we resist the end. Think of those lucky goddamned elves in the Lord of the Rings, who live in their 30s and 40s for 3000 years. Now THAT is fantasy.

I can’t bear to think of it, so like many, I try not to. I just pretend it’s not going to happen. And who’s to say that’s not the wisest way to approach it? What else can we do? I can live with intention and still do that. If I think about it too much, intention goes out the window.

Maybe something miraculous will happen. Maybe I’ll just move on to the next simulation, with all of the same loved ones surrounding me. Maybe I’ll relive this life over and over. If my consciousness ends, it ultimately won’t matter for me. That thought I do not find comforting. Maybe all of this is one dream within a larger consciousness. That doesn’t comfort me either.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but death is scary. I just listened to an interview with a Buddhist professor who has received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. His strategy is to lean into it, to look forward to it, to be curious. I find that so brave. Is that the way to approach it? Not, “I’m ready for it,” or “I don’t want to go,” but more like, “This is going to be interesting.”

Can you tell me what’s going to happen, Norm? Can you send me a sign? As I finished my run, in my last 10-minute running segment, my playlist was in the D’s, and the last song for the run was “Death Is Not the End,” by Bob Dylan. How’s that for irony?