Omaha is not what I would call the most beautiful city, but it has a benign pleasantness. Coming from Portland, Oregon, I am struck by the absence of homeless encampments in all of these cities I have been visiting. There is a lot of construction going on in the downtown area of Omaha.
The Blackburn Alternative High School turned out to be a good choice. It was only a mile or so from my hotel. There was a Boys and Girl Club right next door, and a bunch of kids spilled out of there for football practice just as I was arriving. It’s always nice to be around some activity when running in a new locale.
A long drive up from northern Missouri to Des Moines for a couple of sales calls, then over to Omaha – felt good to get out and stretch out the legs. First time on a track in awhile – been trail running at home in Utah for a couple of weeks since moving there.
This is my plug for safety. I sometimes run on sidewalks or pavement when a track or trail is not available. No more. Pavement is hard. If you fall, there is no give to it. It is hard on your feet, legs, hips, and core when you run on it. If pavement is all there is available forthwith, I will walk, not run.
I started out just down the road behind the Westgate Resort, where I was staying for a trade show, headed south to UNLV. It took me half of my running time to get to UNLV, so I just headed back. It had been a long day of walking a trade show floor surrounded by half-masked fools. I was most of the way back when, boom, I was down and bleeding.
I think I turned to look at something on my right, and I did not see a construction mat lying across the sidewalk. I landed on my left shoulder, and my left eyebrow struck the pavement. It opened up 3 large cuts, possibly aided by my sunglasses, which cracked. I also lost one of my earbuds.
I made it about a block before I realized that the blood loss was a problem, mostly to my appearance. My shirt was covered in blood. I had to somehow get into the hotel and up to the 27th floor looking like I just fought Mike Tyson. As I pondered this, I saw an ambulance getting gas at the 7/11 across the street.
I walked over there and they patched me up. They cleaned the wound, put a loose bandage over the wound, and wrapped gauze around my head to keep it in place. Now I looked like a triage patient. The paramedics told me I needed stitches and suggested I got to Elite Medical.
I managed to get into my hotel room largely unnoticed. Those that I did see didn’t seem much phased by my appearance. I took a cab to Elite Medical, paid a grand + to get my stitches, then took another cab back to the hotel. I took some ibuprofen and went to bed. I hadn’t eaten since 8 am.
So it is track or trail running from here on out for me. Pavement is for walking, if I have use it. And Vegas is not my town.
Long drive through Billings and Butte and up to Great Falls, with stops in each. Made it to the outskirts of Great Falls at 4:54 pm, stopping at a trailer dealer who is listed an authorized repair center on an auto transport trailer website, but they have not been for 5 years. They did point me to an auto transport company next door. Chatted with the mechanic, who told me that I-15 is a main route for bringing cars into and out of Canada. Four auto transport companies in Great Falls, so an ideal place for a distributor.
Great Falls High School is right in the middle of the city – an old school with a stadium, so stairs again in the run tonight. No Trespassing signs, but the gate was open. I made a small attempt to locate the Falls, but could see nothing prominent on the map app, so I did no reconnaissance. I had a longer drive in the morning, after one quick visit to a trailer parts joint.
Going through Butte, I saw the famous abandoned Anaconda Copper Mine pit, though I could not see the water level from the highway. Also, there is a creepy white statue way up on the ridge above town. I was relieved to later find out it is of a woman, the Lady of the Rockies. That made it seem less menacing.
The sections of Montana that have timbered mountain ranges are beautiful. It’s a shame that there have to be any highways there.
Sheridan is a beautiful small town near the Wyoming-Montana border. I chose it for my hotel stay because it is midway between Casper and Billings, adding equal amounts of extra driving time to the end of one day and the beginning of another. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice, although most of the restaurants were closed by the time I finished my run.
My running buddies were several deer and a rabbit. Sheridan Junior High School has a beautiful track with six lanes, situated on a bluff overlooking the town. A picturesque walkway runs along the southeast side of the school. Half a dozen couples strolled past while I ran.
I somehow crossed the Continental Divide three times on my drive across Wyoming, twice on I-80 eastbound, and once on the 2-lane highway north to Casper. I was thinking maybe the sign guys did not understand the concept, but then my wife sent me an image with maps of the continental divide, and there appears to be an oval in the middle of Wyoming that drains to no major body of water. Whatever water accumulates there apparently just soaks in or dries up.
Shortly before reaching Sheridan, I cross the South Fork Crazy Woman River, which gave me fair warning to get the phone camera ready for the Middle Fork Crazy Woman River just a few miles later.
It was also interesting to cross a Continental Divide at 7,000 feet above sea level and to be on extremely flat terrain. Utah and Colorado love to market how close to the heavens they are, but the whole state of Wyoming is uphill from them and seems to think not much of it.
Just finding a place to run on the way back to my daughter’s house, after a day of visiting account in the SLC area. We are moving here in a month, and my road trip has multiple purposes. 1 – I am on a full week sales trip through Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. 2 – I am driving my wife’s car, and I will leave it at my daughter’s and fly home at the end of the week. 3 – I transported most of my wife’s houseplants, along with most of my vinyl, and a few other boxes that would fit into the Accord.
On the way from Oregon to Utah, through Idaho, I came up behind a tractor/trailer that had an open roof trailer with tall sides. I could see the hooves of a dead cow handing over the top edge of one of the sides. The trailer, which was probably 30′ long, was full of dead cows, and it smelled like it. That can’t be an acceptable way to transport cow corpses, even in Idaho.
Jake at Rocky Mountain Wrecker Sales in SLC had some blunt but fair criticism for us. He is not happy with the way our company has been operating, but that is one of the reasons I was brought on in May – to help turn the ship around. It’s a big ship, though. The turn will be long, wide, and slow.
When we move here next month, we are moving in with our daughter, her husband, and their 10-month old daughter. They have a full basement with 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, so that will be our new home. I’m looking forward to the change, and to the adventure, and to spending time with my daughter and my granddaughter. And flying out of SLC for sales trips will be easier than flying out of Portland.
I drove over to Simley High School before checking in to the hotel, to see if the track had public access. It did, so I drove back later for my run, only to find that the band was practicing on the track. An appalling misuse of resources, but it is their track, and I suppose the band should practice on it if it helps somehow.
They had a of green space at Simley High Schools – fields, ponds, trails, woods. I settled into a perimeter run that gave me some elevation changes, some terrain challenges, and solitude. When I move to Utah next month, I might have to venture into more trail running, so this was valuable experience for that potential.
I actually thought the town was Inner Grove Heights earlier in the day’s travels. My daughter had suggested the day before that if I broadcast my travel plan, family members might be able to scout out dinner options for me. She found B52 Burgers and Brew for me, which happened to share a parking lot with the hotel I was staying at. I recommend the B52 burger – it was spicy and a good value.
Had a nice visit with Joe at Star Equipment in Roberts, WI, earlier in the day. They are an NRC dealer just finishing up a major remodel/addition project that looks spectacular. They are ready to fill a product showroom, so I sent him some recommendations that night.
To offset the nice visit with Joe, I called one of our larger distributors to help assuage their anguish over our recent price increase. For some reason, they thought their old “hot list” pricing was still good, and they claimed they had not seen the price list. I walked them through the product rationalization we went through, the underlying objectives of that and the new pricing, and how our new custom special quote procedure worked. He told me some of the things he had told the Inside Sales Rep for his region – my team member – during a phone rage incident the week before. It reminded me again of how nice the All-Lift Randys (God-Family-Work) of the world are, and how shitty others can be.
Happy to be back on the track after the road/trail run in Oconomowoc. I drove from the hotel in Chippewa Falls to North High School in Eau Claire. The track was empty and shaded – a perfect combination. It also had some unique features, like vegetation and slope. Lane 9 had an outward slope to it, especially at the south end, which felt significant enough to call it an elevation change.
Earlier in the day, I listened to Alan Alda interview Beronda Montgomery on his podcast Science Clear & Vivid, during which she talked about “pioneer plants,” which are the first plants to grow in an abandoned urban landscape, coming up through cracks in pavement or asphalt or… a rubber track. And then I found some examples a few hours later in a place I had never been.
The day started outside of Milwaukee, with a visit to L & M Cargo Control in rural Hortonville, where I met Linda, a 30-year veteran of the industry, who gave me several leads to follow up on. From there I circled around the Green Bay area for a few hours. I had a very pleasant visit with Randy at All-Lift Systems. A genuinely nice person – a delight to visit with. Later I replied to one of his emails and saw his email tagline was, “God Family Work.” I am not a religious person – I am an atheist. But I very much appreciate the gentle kindness of a Christian who truly emulates Jesus.
Headed west across the state, I hit a rainstorm so violent I almost had to pull over and stop. As I emerged into back into the sunlight, I received a tornado warning alert on my phone. Seek shelter, it said. I kept driving. I had to get to Neillsville to see DuWayne and Paul at Irish Iron Wrecker.
The run was a little late – almost 7:00 – but solid and replenishing. I thought about another podcast episode I listened to earlier in the day – How’s Work with Esther Perel, in which she talked about “ambiguous loss.” I run, which I consider “ambiguous gain.”
Drove over to the Oconomowoc High School track, and there was some kind of athletic event or practice going on, so I settled for a rectangular loop near the hotel, Blue Ribbon Circle. I would not say it was circular. Traffic was minimal, and the route was surrounded by fields, so running one day on pavement was not going to kill me.
I cut through a parking lot and down a new dead-end access road, where I saw a deer, and then I found a wood-chip trail around a company called Sentry, and I settled there for most of the run. That is, until the storm hit.
I was about 2/3 of the way into the run when I got a phone notification that violent thunderstorms were in the vicinity. I could see dark clouds, but they did not look menacing.
Earlier in the day, one of my sales stops was a place called DD Sling & Supply. It looked like just a big old house with a small house across the driveway. I tried the small house first, and there was a crew sewing slings inside. Then I solved the labyrinthe of passageways in the big house to find the office, where I talked to Andy, one of the owners.
He showed me around the building. We went through a closet door in the basement, and it opened into a giant room where they made cable slings. Turns out the property was an old fox farm, which is why they could run a business in a rural residential area. There were rooms and stairways and hallways and chutes all through this old house.
About five minutes before the run was scheduled to end, the winds hit. It was strong enough to prompt me to get off the trail and back onto the loop headed back to the hotel. Then the thunder and lightning started. I was a little concerned with a quarter-mile to go. I finished the base time in the parking lot and then did my kick on the stairwell inside.
When the rain hit, it was impressive. And it lasted almost an hour.
Inconsistent run, but it was nice to be outside and feel the wind in my hair, even if there was a danger of being electrocuted.
Don't Make It a Habit. Make It a Ritual. 