On a blustery walk to dinner with my daughter, her husband, our granddaughter, and my wife, we passed a trail that led toward the river to the north of their house, and Kevin, my son-in-law, suggested that I could take that route on my run and get to Lake Ontario. My daughter challenged the assertion, but later I looked on the phone map and saw that it followed the river south and might be a good running route regardless.
This was my route for the final two runs of our visit to Rochester. Tracks suggested that it was primarily a bike trail, but I saw only hikers and dog walkers. It connected the lakefront district with Seneca Park and provided access to the river. On the west side of the river you could see a fancier trail, with a bridge that crossed a bend in the river.
The trail ran behind some houses in our daughter’s neighborhood, then along some larger properties with old houses that overlooked the river. It is quite possible, given the straight, raised pathway, that it was once a railroad line. Converted railroad lines make excellent running trails. It had rained a little that week, and there were some soft spots.
The first day I stayed on the main trail, which got a little ragged as I passed the north entrance to Seneca Park. The second day I took the route closer to the river bank, which took me into the Park and onto wider trails. There is a zoo in Seneca Park, which we visited with Sophie the day before we drove home to Michigan. It was pretty lame, as zoos go, but Sophie liked it.
The second day I saw a 3-point whitetail buck bounce across the trail on my way back to home base. There were deer all over in the neighborhoods, which all have wooded spaces into which wildlife could escape if needed. On Thursday, after a cool and breezy outdoor photo shoot, we dropped Kevin off at the airport – he was flying out west to hunt deer in Utah, where he had drawn a tag before the decision was made to move.
I could live in Rochester. The older houses are beautiful. The landscape is beautiful. The restaurants we visited were excellent. The beer store where I filled my new Co2 growler for the first time was more than adequate, even if I did make a poor choice of beers, and even if I forgot the Co2 canisters in Michigan. I cannot live in Rochester if I want to keep my current job, because it is not in my sales region, but I would love to be where I can walk or drive to see Sophie and Samantha whenever the inclination arises.
It is a 7+ hour drive from our house to theirs. We can also drive 11+ hours to visit our son Alex in NC. Both of those distances are shorter than the Portland to Salt Lake City drive we made a half-dozen times when we lived in Oregon and S, K, & S lived in Utah, so they are not unreasonable. Still, it would make me feel better to have the ducklings closer to the nest. Maybe this is okay, though. It will make the time we are together a little more special.
I appreciate that our kids have their own dreams, their own pursuits, and their own goals, and how much they diverge from ours. Barb and I even have a rich diversity of interests. I feel that we cover a lot of ground as a family, just as we are spread around the U.S. map – one in Oregon, two in Michigan, three in NY, and two in NC. We are divided not to conquer, but to scout and to learn the terrain, and to spread the gospel of free spirithood.
Or maybe I am just looking at it that way so that I won’t miss them all so much.
With no local knowledge, I ran first on neighborhood sidewalks. I left my daughter’s house on Smugglers Lane, headed east on Eaton, then south on St Paul, then east on Pinecrest, and then turned around when my time was halfway done. The homes were old and beautiful. Lawns were well-tended. Halloween decorations were up.
Most importantly, I was reunited that morning with my Sophie. She had moved away to Rochester. It had been two months since we parted, and my broken heart had been slowly emptying, and it was filled again with one hug. My wife arrived first Friday afternoon, driving from Grand Rapids, and I flew in from Minneapolis lat that night. In the morning, I was last in bed, and Sophie saw my shoes by the couch. She remembered my shoes.
It was as if we had never parted. We picked right up where we left off. You wonder how a 1-year-old processes time and place. 2 months was nearly 10% of her life at this point. She has navigated moving to a new house and a new neighborhood, going to daycare for the first time, separating from familiar cohabitants, all while growing and expanding vocabulary and creating neural pathways.
She is a mischief-maker extraordinaire. If there is something in the vicinity that she cannot have, she will create a diversion to attract your attention, and within seconds she is climbing onto something to get the something she cannot have, smiling all the while. Sometimes she gets it, and she will smile at you and wait to be discovered, so that she can squeal with delight in an attempt to escape. Life is going to be a game to this one.
This is one reason why I run – to stay healthy, to live long, to witness my kids and my grandkids embrace the world. I know that I will leave the world a better place. I see the evidence every day.
The first run of the Fall for which I felt compelled to don the stocking cap and gloves. Comforting. Yes, body temperature does seems to rise when you run, but I prefer to feel warm before I start the run. Putting on the hoodie and the stocking cap was like crawling under a quilt, which is what I felt like doing when I got to the hotel.
Redwood Falls is a remote hamlet in Southern Minnesota. Redwood Falls Lodge is not a lodge per se but just an older motel that has been kept clean and welcoming. There were signs at each entrance reminding patrons to clean their boots before entering, with a little box of boot booties to pull on over said boots. I would say that the blue collar market is their primary customer base. It was quaint, the staff was nice, and the antler chandelier was spectacular.
There was a school with a track within walking distance, so that is where I headed. However, it was still fairly early, so there appeared to be students on the track – that is, they were on the track, they were running, and they appeared to be students. Possibly an athletic practice of some sort. So I followed a paved path to the south and planned to run alongside County Ditch 52.
A short distance down the path there was a bridge crossing the ditch. On the other side was a field. I was hoping for a walking path of some sort. The field appeared to be public or school property. What I got was much better.
It was a path, but it was a mown path that circumnavigated the outside edges of the field, with occasional curves. I can only guess it was a cross country track. It was beautiful. The grass was wide leaf and trodden down. The ground was mostly flat but uneven enough to make it interesting. At one corner there was a farmhouse with dogs that barked but wagged their tails. Three were behind a fence, but one was outside the fence and would run toward me until I got close, then would back away as he continued to bark and wag tail.
This is the running path I love. This is the running path every community needs. It was like running through the Shire. No vehicles anywhere near, trees and fields all around, barking dogs, a County Ditch, a cool breeze, and a sunset. I was crestfallen when it was over – Redwood Falls will not likely be a regular stop for me, if ever again.
That is the nature of Place, I suppose. There are so many of them, and so many are unique and sublime, and we must choose the few we can visit, usually without foreknowledge of what we will find there. And there are also many that are toxic and barren, and we must try to avoid those. The Places we settle will never be ideal, and the people we love will not always be in those Places to share it with us.
When we are alone and find a Place like the field track by County Ditch 52, or the trail along the Snake River in Twin Falls, ID, or the hundreds of places I have found in the Tillamook Forest of Oregon while hunting elk, it is our duty to soak them up and breathe them in, so that they become a part of us, and we can bring the beauty with us to share it with the people we love.
I spent 2 nights in Grand Forks – a rare 2-night hotel stay. It was nice to get up the next morning, eat some breakfast, send some emails, and then grab a few items and a coffee and hit the road. I have become efficient at packing the suitcase and backpack, but still, it was nice to leave clothes on the bed, toiletries on the bathroom counter, and laptops on the desk.
There were only 2 prospects to visit in Grand Forks, but I had to drive to Winnipeg, and Grand Forks is the ideal launch point. I hit 1 prospect in GF first thing, drove across the border, visited 5 distributors and prospects in Winnipeg, and made it back to GF in time to hit the second prospect before the end of the business day. And I did not have to spend the night in a Canadian hotel with no HBO Max West Wing episodes.
It was windy all week as I drove through Minnesota, Manitoba, and the eastern edges of North Dakota and South Dakota. It was windy on this run. I followed some edge-of-town streets away from the hotel and came across a gravel road that was perfect for running. It was a public road, but I could not help scanning all directions for the pickup truck with wayward teens and shotguns. Fortunately, I was alone on the prairie with the exception of a couple of fairly hip-looking dog walkers.
Grand Forks was about what I expected: a small, gray, windy prairie town. Winnipeg was disappointing: rundown, dirty, cold. It reminded me of that time of year when the winter snowpack has all just melted, and there is the soot and gravel residue on everything. This problem is, this is Fall, when the fair Summer weather should have provided ample opportunity to clean the place up. Houses get painted in Summer. In Winnipeg, the primary house paint color is “peeling.”
I ran only the first night in Grand Forks. It was a little colder the second night, with some rain, so I considered taking a nap when I got to the hotel. Then I saw the IHOP next door, and I walked over and had a spectacular dinner breakfast of sausage, eggs, hash browns, and pancakes. The restaurant was nearly empty. It was one of the best road meals I have had since starting this job.
Winter is coming. I saw my first light snowflakes of the year a couple of days later in Lake Crystal, MN.
The closest running trail in All Trails was close enough to my hotel to run to, which is a bonus, because it was not planned. I have stopped trying to map out my runs in addition to my flights and sales routes and hotel stays. It is already too complicated. I have adjusted my ritual: if I feel like running when I get to the hotel (and if running is safe), I run. Otherwise, I work or nap.
In this case, the park entrance was about a mile from the hotel. Once I got there, the trail complex was a mix of walking trails and bike trails. The bike trails were mixed use, but narrow, which requires attentiveness. Twice I stepped aside for bikes, which worked only because I was running the wrong way on the trail and saw the bike coming.
I have modified my running ritual in other ways. On a trip back to our former hometown in Oregon, I stayed with our good friends Debbie and Dennis. Sir Dennis, who is an osteopath, voiced his concern about repeated long-distance running after age 50. He explained that studies have shown that keeping your heart rate consistently above 140 bpm at that age can cause cellular damage to arteries, increasing risk of stroke and aneurysm.
He further proposed that running 1-2 miles, and then walking to reduce heart rate, was safer. So I have changed my run from a full 56+ minute run to 10 minutes walking, 10 minutes running, 10 minutes walking, 10 minutes running, 10 minutes walking, 6+ minutes running plus a 2-minute kick. I continue to increase the total 2 seconds per run if I run consecutive days, with a loss of .5 seconds for a missed day.
I like this run structure better. For one, it is easier. Secondly, it allows me to run harder when I run. And finally, I get to stop running, which is my favorite part, 3 times instead of 1. I do not so much mind the restarting, but I love the stopping. It makes the run more enjoyable. Also, walking through some of these locales is better for the mind and spirit, I suspect. You might take in a little more.
If Sir Dennis is right, and I do trust his judgment, maybe this will also allow me to run longer into my twilight years, while better enjoying the long, strange trip it is.
Surrey is not the garden spot of Canada. At least, I hope it isn’t. There were quite a few homeless people on the main road I took from my last sales visit of the day to the hotel. Also, parts of the town remind me of the car you haven’t washed since before winter even though it is now well into spring. This is in contrast to Regina, which I visited earlier in the month, and I genuinely didn’t recognize the same area I had stayed at when I was there in January. It was sparkly clean and picturesque.
I needed to go for a run. We have been working on the new house on weekends, so my running at home has been restricted. I have also done some random travel, in addition to my normal work travel, and I have more scheduled in the near future, which removes more days from the running calendar, so I just got on the nearest sidewalk and ran the direction opposite of the homeless people, and I came across a school track. There was soccer practice going on, and some kind of running practice, but I kept to the outside lane and it was glorious.
The problem with traveling to Canada is the disruption of ritual. I have been rewatching “The West Wing” on HBO Max, and I am currently in Season 4. In the evenings, in the hotel, when I am all caught up for the night on work, I will watch an episode or two. EXCEPT when I am in Canada, where I can finish the partial episode I started in the U.S. the night before, and then I am banned from watching more episodes. It is, after all, a show about the U.S. Capitol. Canada is clearly jealous that they have no corresponding award-winning show, maybe called, “The North Hallway.”
The other problem is not having a safe data plan for my cell phones, so I shut down the data when I cross over, which disables the mapping app. So now I am navigating like we did back in the day, by signage and compass. On one trip I printed out mapquest directions. Now I screenshot detailed map directions ahead of time. That seems to work okay, until you pass a turn or think you did. Occasionally I will turn on the data on my work phone to recalibrate. And finally, I like to listen to podcasts and music, switching back and forth in the car, but without data, no Apple Music, so it’s all podcasts, all the time. No balance. No bueno.
These are all minor inconveniences, and I am Canada-friendly, I swear. Hockey is one of my favorite sports, I like the socialist policies they have, and I want the option to move there if Trump is not put in prison soon. I don’t particularly like the real winter they have, but I could deal with it if I had to. I actually would prefer if there were no countries, if it were just one big world government, no borders, HBO Max the same everywhere, one big global data plan. Imagine there’s no countries. It’s easy if you can.
An unplanned bonus run. I made a 3-day trip to Saskatoon for a trade show. I flew into Minot Friday, drove to Saskatoon, attended the trade show on Saturday, stayed in Regina Saturday night, then drove back to Minot Sunday to fly home. Then my flight home was cancelled.
I drove to Minot, found a hotel within walking distance of the airport, dropped off my rental car, and then went for a run. I first tried to find a trail around the airport – no luck. There was a sport complex with 8 ballfields right next to the airport, so I ran around the perimeter of each field, inside the fence.
It made for a nice run. Very flat, and the grass was cut relatively low. It looked like there have been some teams running laps around the perimeter as well – you could see a defined trail along the inside of each outfield fence. I was a fair distance from any traffic – if you can call what Minot has traffic. It was a sunny, breezy, beautiful North Dakota day.
North Dakota makes for nice driving, at least the part from Minot to the North Portal border crossing. Rolling grasslands, two-lane county roads, some rivers and wetlands, sunflower fields – if all of my trips were through that type of country, at this time of year, I would be content.
I enjoy being around ballfields, especially empty ones with no over-involved parents present. After my run, I went into my Dropbox account and found some documents I wrote for a school district baseball program several years ago. I think I will rework the plan and submit it to the local school district where I now live – see if it catches anyone’s attention.
Parents are by far the worst part of a youth sports program. When I was little, of course my parents came to the baseball games I participated in, and parents coached the teams and ran the leagues. When I went to middle school, however, the school had teams, and parents were nowhere to be found. Our games were right after school – all the parents were at work.
Our coach was a local teacher who did not have a kid playing. The only people at the games were a few cute girls from school. It was a dream. Everyone who went out for the team made the team. We had fun, and we got better at the game, and we did not play year-round baseball. When the season was over, we had summer break and went out to the fields to pick strawberries.
My youngest son played organized baseball from kindergarten to seventh grade. He had no opportunity to play school ball. He gave it up before eighth grade season started – it wasn’t fun for him. It hadn’t been since third grade. I told him about my experience playing school ball. His reaction: “It sounds like a dream!” That was about the saddest thing I every heard him say about baseball. It hadn’t been a dream for me, but it was a dream for him that he would never experience.
I might already have an entry for Sioux City, IA. I know I have stayed here before, in the same hotel downtown, and ate at the same hipster restaurant right next door, and I think ordered the same jambalaya both times. I did not run on the Perry Creek Trail the first time I was here – I believe it was late winter and I did not run while in town.
The trail started about four blocks from the hotel, which was just far enough to be asked for help by a homeless couple. I had nothing but my room key, so I was no help. The trail started along railroad tracks – nothing better than the aroma of creosote in your lungs at the start of a long run.
The trail crossed Perry Creek a couple of times, and dove under cross streets at most intersections. I ran along unpaved connecting sections of the dike on either side of the creek to stay off the concrete. This led to unplanned excursions through empty fields and old neighborhoods and fast food parking lots.
When I started running regularly about 5 years ago, I started at 25 minutes and worked my way to longer run times gradually. I had real trouble running in the later afternoons and evenings after work. My late morning weekend runs were always much easier, so I started running longer times on weekends. I can’t remember what the split was – maybe 40-30. Every day that I ran the full time, I would add a few seconds to the next day’s run, but one goal I had was to equalize my weekday and weekend run times. Eventually I settled on adding 4 seconds to my weekday time and 1.5 seconds to my weekend time after a longer weekend run, and adding 3 seconds to my weekday time and 1 second to my weekend time after a weekday run.. Any day that I did not run, I would subtract 0.5 second from both. If I did a run that was less than full time, I would prorate the increase accordingly. If I walked the full run time, I would not subtract the 0.5 second from both times for not running.
I know – complicated. In the week before I left Utah, on my second-to-last run there, my weekday and weekend times coincided. My weekday time caught up with my weekend time. I now have one run time for whatever day it is. If I run my full time, I add 2 seconds to the next day. If I miss a day, I subtract the 0.5 second. The walking and partial run modifications will stay the same. It is still easier for me to run late mornings, but not much more.
I know that adding 2 seconds a day is a very small amount, and that it takes months to increase my run times meaningfully, but hey, I am almost up to an hour, and for me it is quality first, quantity second. I have never thought that running was fun, but it is a ritual for me now. I run the way I want to – no stretching or warm-up. Rest days are good, but I feel restless when I don’t run. When I am outside, it feels strange to walk somewhere and natural to run.
The best part of the run for me is still when I stop, but there are moments when I feel exhilaration at picking up the pace or breathing long, deep breaths. I plan to stick with it as long as my body and brain will let me.
I have been dreading this run for nearly a year – my last run in Santaquin. The blue dot on the photo above was our home for nearly a year. My wife, youngest son, and I moved in with our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter in late September, 2021. We all moved out in August. My son is headed to college in Corvallis, OR. Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter moved to Rochester, NY. And now my wife and I have a house in Wyoming, MI.
It took me awhile to find my “home” run after we moved to Utah. I ran on the neighborhood sidewalks at first. I tried some trails up on the hill above the neighborhood. In the winter I ran at a local high school track. My home track in Oregon had been the middle school near our home. For some reason they chained the gates at the track I was using in Payson, so I settled on a loop around some wetlands across the railroads tracks from our house.
To get to the loop, I would run through the neighborhood, past the church to the main drive, then cut around the north end of the development on an access road that ran to the railroad tracks. I would cut across the tracks where goats and ATVs crossed, and then up and onto a road that ran north-south along the tracks on top of a dike.
At the south end of the wetlands, a road forked off to the east and ran around the south and east end of the wetlands. This was the easiest part of the run, because the ground was soft and relatively rock-free. The dike road had a lot of large rocks that could turn an ankle or bruise the bottom of your foot. The soft road was lower, so the south end was subject to flooding in the spring as the waters in the small lake rose, and my run would get wider and wider to stay out of the mud.
On the east side, the road snaked around a quarry, and then wound through some wonderful trees and bushes that were aromatic and cool. In the spring and early summer, hundreds of dragonflies would come out of the bushes and fly along with me, new ones joining in as others peeled off and returned to their shelter.
At the north end was a gravel road that was hard and dusty and would take me back to the railroad tracks. The loop was about a mile and a quarter. When my running paced peaked in early spring, I could get to the loop and make it three full times around in my 54-56 minute run + kick. I did some Prefontaine circuits on a few runs, with a first loop around 19 minutes, and second loop around 18 minutes, and a third loop around 17 minutes. I had been working my way back to that pace in August.
Occasionally I would have to step aside for a motorcycle or ATV, but I didn’t mind. They kept the loop flat and unfettered by vegetation. There is always room for shared use. A local goat herd sometimes would be feeding, tended by a goatherder in an orange vest. Last fall I saw the same feral cat a few times, with cockleburrs stuck in his fur. I never saw any deer, though I sometimes saw tracks. The geese and ducks were in and around the lake all spring and summer. I saw nests of eggs in spring, followed by families of mother and baby geese. I saw a few snakes, and evidence of more in the dust of the road.
I have been dreading this run because it would be my last, signifying a separation from my daughter and granddaughter. A few nights before this run, my wife and I drove them to the airport, where they embarked on a flight to Rochester, with a connection in Detroit, to meet our son-in-law, who had driven with the dog a few days earlier.
Three generations in one house was not all wine and roses. Some days it was rockier than the dike road. I don’t mind running through the rocks. It teaches you agility and balance. Yes, it can be painful, but you come through it feeling like you just had an adventure, and one with a little bit more variety than a high school track.
I was on the road a lot, and I was never at home for more than two weeks at a time, so I guess I had less opportunity to get on anyone’s nerves, but I loved sharing a house with everyone. I loved seeing my daughter and my granddaughter every day. I knew almost as soon as we moved there that parting from them would be one of the saddest days of my life.
Being away from my kids has been the worst part of being a parent, by far. My older son now lives in North Carolina, and when we moved away from Oregon and our old home, we left him to return to college to finish up his final term, and that was heartbreaking. A few weeks before this last move, we drove the youngest back to Oregon to stay with friends until school starts later this month, and that was heartbreaking. And then watching my girl and her girl go through airport security and disappear into the terminal – well, there aren’t enough wetlands loops in the world to erase that memory.
I feel very lucky to have gotten to spend so much time with our granddaughter this past year. Being with her, playing with her, holding her, watching her, laughing with her, fearing for her safety – all of it has flooded me with memories of our daughter as a one-year-old. I was not the type of guy who held babies. Having kids really changed my perspective on life, in the best ways possible. Taking care of a baby and a toddler is hard work, but man is it rewarding.
When you exercise, you get sore. When you lift weights, your muscles grow. How does that happen? I do not know all of the physiological details, but what I have been told is that small fibers in the muscle break and then heal. That is how the muscle grows bigger and stronger. It is painful, but the result makes it worth it.
Maybe heartbreak works in the same way. Why does my heart hurt right now? Because I have been exercising it. What is that exercise doing? It is breaking little fibers in my heart, so that they can heal and make the muscle bigger and stronger. Well, maybe just stronger – we do not need an enlarged heart.
I know I will see my daughter and my granddaughter again someday, probably someday soon. I know I will see my sons again as well. My wife and I are going to have a blast in our new home, in a new city, in a new chapter of our lives together. I am not going to have all of them together in the same home except for a few holidays and maybe some family vacations. That is heartbreaking to me. But I knew this day was coming. I was dreading it, and for good reason.
I just had no idea how much harder it was going to be after I got to be with my granddaughter, day-in day-out, reviving that protective instinct that I’ve been able to relax a little as our kids grew up and became relatively self-sufficient. I really had come to look forward to that early morning greeting in the kitchen, sharing my food with her, making goofy faces, chasing her around the island counter, sitting by her on the floor to read books or watch TV, helping her terrorize the cats, and all the fun stuff we did together all carefree like it was going to last forever.
What a great year we had, Santaquin! I am always going to remember you as the home where I got to live with my first grandchild and where I got to run with the dragonflies.
One last run on the old home turf before we make the long drive back to Utah, to pack up our worldly belongings to move to Michigan. We stayed the last two nights at our good friends’ Debbie and Dennis, where we enjoyed wonderful food, wine, beer, and spirits, as well as fun and invigorating conversation. My wife has been saying that she does not miss the place where we once lived, but she misses the people.
Jenne Butte is one of the several wooded cinder cones between Mt. Hood and Downtown Portland. It has no maintained trails, which means it has less foot traffic than other local buttes, like nearby Rocky Butte. The locals have their own trails, from one street to another, and they made for excellent running on a warm sunny day. I did have a brush with some stinging nettles, though, which gave me a boost.
The slopes were steep, which made for some great uphill running. I tried a few sidetrails, which did not work out. I came across one local who was sitting in some kind of self-designed sanctuary, partaking of the legal weed you can enjoy in Oregon. I suppose I was just part of the trip.
I will miss our friends in Oregon also, although we have been gone nearly a year and it does not feel like I have seen most of them much less than normal, because I have been back to Oregon three times since we moved to Utah. I will miss some things about Oregon – the beer and the Coast Range, mostly – but not our old house. We picked up some kitchen stuff we left there when we moved, and it definitely did not arouse sentimental memories, at least the garage didn’t. I doubt that we are as attached to our places and our possessions as we think we are.
Oregon is certainly picturesque. Having driven so much of the country, as well as some of Western Canada, the past 15 months, I was struck by the beauty of the Columbia Gorge as we left town Saturday morning on our way back to Utah. The Gorge is truly a special place, and I have driven through it many times, but you get a better sense of how majestic it is when you compare it to other regions.
For the next few weeks, we will be packing and moving, which is sheer turmoil. I would just as soon pay someone to do all of it, but that is beyond our budget. We are better prepared for this move than the last one, and we survived that, so we will get through this one as well. My running rituals will be disrupted, but I will fit it in when I can.
Don't Make It a Habit. Make It a Ritual. 