City Loop Trail

Run Time: 65:22 + 2-minute kick

Brandon is a pleasant small city. The night before I stayed in downtown Winnipeg, which was not pleasant. I was on the 10th floor of the Holiday Inn Express, which felt relatively safe, compared to the lobby, but when I got in the elevator to go get some McDonald’s, a woman asked me if I was traveling with my wife. I answered, “Yes!” I am pretty sure she was a prostitute. Sorry, not trying to profile anyone. It was just a hunch.

Doing business with our Canadian distributors is currently difficult, because they are paying a 25% tariff on much of what we sell, a reciprocal tariff to counter our tariff on Canadian imports. We are the best source for what they need to sell, but we also increased our prices in June to cover the added costs of all the tariffs we are now paying to import items and components, including a lot of stuff from China. That’s a double whammy for our Canadian distributors.

All of this tariff BS is a legitimate killer for business, especially anything that imports items for resale or components for manufacturing. If it is helping the economy in any way, it’s a mystery to me how that is happening. We are not going to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. I know I’m not the only one who knows this. We cannot afford to pay what it costs to make something in the U.S. from scratch, and we don’t have the infrastructure to do it.

The world is the way we designed it. We are the consumers. We off-shored manufacturing so that we could buy more. The jobs that were lost to off-shore manufacturing were not sustainable. Tariffs are not the answer to anything other than how can we fuck everything up in the name of shock politics?

It was actually kind of nice to find a few kindred spirits to talk to about the horrendous joke we have played upon ourselves by electing this clown. I normally avoid discussing politics with customers, but some of my Canadian customers align with my views quite well, and I want them to know that not all U.S. citizens are toxically self-destructive.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of last week were three of the eight lowest sales booking days of the year so far for my sales region. That is not an anomaly. That is scary. That is look-for-a-life-boat numbers. There is no reason to think it is going to get much better. The industry we serve already wasn’t doing well before all of this nonsense. End users will just move to something else rather than continue to spend money on what they need to keep their current business afloat.

Pardon me if my faith in humanity is lacking. As I’ve written before, I eschew belief in favor of evidence. It makes no sense to me to have faith in humanity. The evidence I have seen shows me that the powerful are seeking to increase their power, and worse yet, the systems are doing that all on their own, almost like machine learning systems figure out how to do something better. I think we’ve lost control. And that’s why, I think, we are seeing more civil disobedience and violent protest. It might be the appropriate response.

As of today, I have a job. I am confident of the value of what I do. However, the pattern of last week’s bookings is not sustainable. I am pretty clever at pivoting my sales tactics and focus, but I’m not sure I can produce miracles.

But it sure was beautiful in Brandon.

Sterling Heights High School

Run Time: 65:11 + 2-minute kick

I wasn’t sure I was going to get a run in. Thunderstorms were on the horizon, so to speak. I was glad I did. It was the only run of the week. Canada sent all of their wildfire smoke across the border in retaliation for tariffs. It was warm and muggy, but a nice breeze made for a good run. Most of the run was on the way to and back from the school. I will remember that track, though. It will be a good spot for future trips.

It was a nice, older neighborhood, with cracked and uneven sidewalks and well-manicured lawns. Probably an HOA community. You never know when you are in an unfamiliar city, and the Detroit area in particular. I ran by two schools on the way to the high school, and schools are always a safe option. Even the bad guys generally don’t mess with the schools. As long as the students aren’t hoodlums, you’re safe.

Not ten minutes from the hotel earlier that day, I had hesitated to stop for gas until the neighborhood looked more friendly, basically a few blocks before I got to the hotel. You wonder what some of these strange buildings contain, with trash and debris strewn all around, and some old guy sitting on an old dining room chair in an open doorway, smoking. Whatever is going on there, I don’t know the password.

The business climate seems a little rough here in the Mideast as well. I had a record sales month in April, mostly due to impending price changes due to tariffs, and then May was a high dive into hell. There may just be a disconnect somewhere between the powers that be and the power-free. We’re all just riding the same wave together, which is sloshing back into the backwater right now.

My Canadian customers are particularly miffed about paying tariffs on our products. They seem to be taking it personally, and I guess it’s okay for them to be generally angry that we elected a clown to hold our highest office. Immediately after our price hike, we sent one shipment to a customer in Alberta and mistakenly listed the U.S. as the country-of-origin for the items we imported from Taiwan on the customs forms, which led to a 25% tariff they had to pay that they shouldn’t have had to pay, because Canada has no tariffs on items from Taiwan. There was stern language and genuine vehemence in the emails I received, more than is warranted for simple incompetence.

The work travel has been wearing on me lately. For this trip, I abandoned podcasts while driving and listened only to music, which was helpful. Also, on this evening, after the run and dinner and a shower, I fell asleep at 9 pm, which is extremely rare. Kind of a kung pao coma. I had strange dreams that I could not remember.

Going through my photos for this post, I can tell I was a little off my game. No screenshots of the compass or the sky tonight apps. Rituals disrupted. No bueno. But the music and the run and the smokeless air was good. I’ll get back on track next trip.

Diagonal Trail

Run Time: 64:57 + 2-minute kick

Creative name for this trail. The elevation gain data seems a little exaggerated. Partly that is the width of the graphic, but also, I ran this trail from one end to the other and it felt pretty flat. The approaches from the street were the most pronounced elevation changes I encountered, and those kind of worked the other way, so I cannot account for these climbs at each end.

An uninteresting run for the most part, but a good find, because it was only a few minutes from the hotel that I usually stay in when I fly into MSP for a trip through Minnesota/North Dakota, or Minnesota/Wisconsin. Other than when there are three feet of dirty snow on the sidewalks, now I know a run route that requires no driving, which I prefer.

On one side of the trail was a golf course. On the other, a graveyard. Not sure what the metaphor is in that description. The beginning of a tiring week of watching Stanley Cup playoff games till midnight or later. Turned out to be my only run of the week. Coincidence.

In past years, when I would watch games after the fact, I would try to watch all of the playoff games. This led to asking extended family members at mid-summer events to not tell me who won the Cup, because I was still watching old games a month after the Cup was raised. I am less completist about it now, but if I’m in a hotel doing late work after a day on the road, I will have a game on if a game is being played, and if there’s another game after that one, I will stay up and try to catch a nap the next day at a rest area. That’s why it’s called a rest area.

What is a completist? A completist is someone who listens to entire catalogs of a musical artist to see if there are any songs they have recorded that should be added to their playlist. A completist is someone who finds on YouTube a classically-trained harpist who does rock song reactions and analyses, and after watching a few recent ones, goes back to their original posts from 3 years ago to watch them all in chronological order.

I am subscribed to 25 podcasts, and I listen to them from oldest-to-newest. 5 of the feeds cycle out episodes when they get old, so I start each day with one of each of those (so I don’t lose any). If I listen to one each of those in any particular day, then I move onto the next in a rotation of all feeds, followed by one of the episodes of the podcast feed that has the most episodes in the queue (first place currently held by This American Life, with 717 episodes, the oldest unlistened episode from 9/4/98 (no need for 4 digits in the year, because that was pre-Y2K); “unlistened” means unlistened to as a podcast episode, because I probably listened to it live on NPR when it aired). There are more rules to tell me where to go from there, if I have a long day of driving that exceeds 7 podcast episodes.

I think it’s almost as fun for me to design these systems of completion as it is to do the actual activity requiring the system. I have given up on the goal of reading an author’s entire bibliography, because I don’t read fast enough. I know I’m not alone — what, after all, is binge-watching all about? I might finish those This American Lifes, though, before my American Life is over.

The important quality in the pursuit of completism is endurance. Endurance, as Chinaski says, is more important than truth. One reason why I have confidence in my sales work is that I know I have endurance. I will outlast my competition. It’s inevitable. That is a comforting thought. I recently had a prospect email me in a response to a visit request that I was welcome to stop in, that he appreciated my follow-up, and that he had a feeling that my perseverance would be rewarded eventually. I love that.

This is another example of what I call “do what you like to do.” This does not mean the conventional message of magically find a lucrative career that matches your interests. It means find a way to do what you like to do in the things you choose to do. Make it fit you. I like to complete things. I like to write. In my work, in my life, even in my yardwork, I find a way to complete things (or work toward it). I find reasons to write (the yardwork example doesn’t apply here). I managed a towing company for 7 years. I wrote a newsletter each pay period, because I like to write. Nobody asked me to write a newsletter. I just did it.

How can you apply your obsessions constructively to your life? All of them, not just a few.

City Streets and Sidewalks

Run Time: 64:55 + 2-minute kick

A one-day diversion north of the border. Found this resort town in the Okanagan Valley, amidst a large collection of rather northern vineyards. Very picturesque, with mountains to the east and west, which created a south-wind tunnel in the afternoon for my run, but a warm sun mitigated.

I stayed close to the lake for most of the run. Everything was paved, and most of the run was on sidewalks, not trails, so not ideal but workable. They really could use a lakefront trail here. The lake extended down into the States — the border was actually not far away, which makes one wonder what restriction boaters have. I do not remember seeing any boats, now that I think of it, so maybe it is a boatless lake.

After reading tips for returning safely without detention into the U.S. the week before, it felt like a small act of bravery to wander out of the compound. No issues, though. I am, after all, an old white guy with a valid passport, so no one asked to look at my devices. I have devices, so that was a relief. Apparently I am not flagged in the system as a Lib.

I visited five potential new distributors in South Central BC, and it was refreshingly positive. Not one comment about tariffs or trade wars. Let’s give it up for the friendliness of our Canadian neighbors. I did see some F&#*k Trudeau signs, evidence that the conservative messaging is universal, but we knew that. This vineyard/winery region needs tourists, and many Pacific NW wine drinkers are old liberals with money, so probably there is a little less brazen apocalyptism is this consumer region.

I stumbled into this locale because it was between sales visits to Castlegar and Penticton, and I didn’t want to drive till 6:30 to get to the motel. I had not heard of Osoyoos or the lake, so when our travel app pulled up 20+ hotels in one town, it was a pleasant surprise. The view from the hotel room was beautiful, with a small balcony. Seems like a nice place to visit, but I did see clouds of gnats near vegetation when I went for my run, so that is disturbing.

Bugs are one reason why wind is not always bad, although these gnats seemed to be holding their position. They were clearly working in unison, finding pockets where their collective proximity reduced the effects. There is a metaphor in their somewhere, but I just don’t like to think of myself as a gnat, so I will stay out on my own in the wind.

Visiting new regions in my sales territory is rare at this point, so I enjoyed seeing some different country, especially the Canadian mountains. I crossed over a few high passes, with a fair amount of snow still roadside, and the grasses and plants hadn’t really greened up yet, but the rocky crags were majestic. Especially as I got closer to the Pacific, where the steep inclines reminded me of Oregon’s Coast Range.

The long drive back through Seattle Friday afternoon was kind of a downer, and the red-eye flight home through Minneapolis was unfun. I could not have made that loop up to Kelowna without the extra time, however. I have targets in Kamloops as well, which is even farther north, but that will have to wait till the next trip.

I actually would like to drive all the way up to Prince George, and cross over from BC to AB or vice versa, but it would just be too time-consuming for a work trip, with too little potential return. Heck, I’d like to drive as far north as the road goes. I think it’s fun to get on a map app and find the most remote settlement at the very tip top of a continent and wonder just what the hell the residents are doing there.

I’d like to think they are living lives of quiet isolation, but my guess is they are gaming and watching Severance like everybody else.

Mill Creek Trail

Run Time: 64:54

A drizzly, windy day in Eastern Washington, but warm enough to run in shorts and a long sleeve t. A great week in the Western mountains, with a fair amount of sunshine and even some early spring greenery.

Found a trail along old Mill Creek, actually just flat tops of dikes constructed on both sides of the creek. A couple of miles long on each side, so some back-tracking and lapping required to get the full run in, but plenty of squalor variety. This squalor was at least interesting, with classic cars and old cement mixers and barrels of waste.

On Apple Maps, the photos showed weird lines in the creek that I thought might be some glitch of satellite imagery, like repeated water sections taking the place of actual location-specific imaging. But it was real, some kind of artificial water break every fifty feet or so, all the way through town. No idea what purpose they served. The creek itself seemed man-made, or at least curated from its original path and shape, no doubt to suit the Mill.

Visiting distributors and prospects this week, talking about the chaos of tariffs, wondering about job security. More artificial constructs, like those creek breaks and dikes, taking us all away from our original path, tricking and trapping us with the illusion of importance.

It would be important if I lost my job. It would be important if tariffs caused some business to fail. It would be important if I jumped up into BC for a couple of prospecting visits and then border patrol wanted to take a look at my devices upon return. It would be important if our retirement savings expire before we do.

But we have built our own traps of importance, and tariffs are actually a very appropriate symbol of the mechanism of entrapment. Tariffs are taxes on the import of goods (an ironic term). Stuff. The commodity of consumerism.

Initially, I suppose, paid labor was a relatively innocent social and economic development, much better than forced or coerced labor. It sure feels coerced now. Yes, I get it, there are a billion paths to economic freedom, and you can always live in a hut with a firepit and a straw bed, but we can say we were born into this, right? Reversing or radically altering the current system is a multi-generational project at this point, and keeping the planet livable probably has to take priority.

At least we should be able to all agree that it is a farce, a tragically unfunny shitshow designed and crafted by the worst of the rich, white men, not unlike politics, and we’re all just forced to deal with it and navigate through it and hey, let’s just work through any problems that come up without getting all emotional about it and treat each other with a little grace, and tell me again about what your grandkid said the other day.

I have a feeling that, if my job ever were in serious jeopardy, that I would be given no heads-up whatsoever. Up to the moment that the axe fell, it would all be “sales is the most important thing we are spending money on right now.” It would suddenly become the most important thing to stop spending money on right now. There is a reason for this deception: they need me to produce, and if I feel secure, I should produce more. It all makes business sense. Business sense.

Isn’t it romantic, this cut-throat world of competition and pretend testosterone warfare? We’re all Knights, riding to uphold the honor of King and Kingdom. Before the first proto-worker accepted payment for labor, there certainly was competition – to survive, to live as long and as well as possible. Somehow I don’t think we traded that for economic competition, but we sure muddied the waters.

Seven or so years of this, possibly, then who knows what? Somehow, though, we’ve designed a system where our retirement incomes are tied to the stock market, so there are multiple levels of fuckery at play. I am waiting for the app that shows me who all has been enriched by my efforts, and to what extent.

Red Cedar State Trail

Run Time: 64:46 + 2-minute kick

Only one decent running day in a week-long work driving trip through Wisconsin. Weather not cooperating. One afternoon of snow flurries, but mostly it is wind that discourages leaving the warm hotel room. Wind is the dominant meteorological feature of my sales region.

The opportunity comes between Roberts (near the Minnesota border) and Eau Claire. All Trails gives me the Red Cedar State Trial, which turns out to be nearly ideal. The surface is dirt/fine gravel, my favorite. The trail follows the Chippewa River, which actually has some rapids. Not much elevation change. The trailhead is only a few miles off I-94, so access is easy.

The only issue is that the Central Northern glaciers have not yet fully receded, so my progress is halted a couple of miles in. The packed snow crosses the trail, right to the cliff’s edge, and footing is treacherous. The top of the snowpack has a level of slipperiness difficult to express in words. Frightening comes to mind. I judge that it cannot be crossed safely, and I turn around.

The trail extended beyond the trailhead to the north via an asphalt path. I used that section to complete my run, taking me to an old railroad trestle no longer in use, and blocked to keep wanderers safe, just before the river met Lake Menomin. An old factory unnamed on Apple Maps sat across the river, possibly still in use, probably near the river for chemical disposal. A pleasant, if cold, run.

I tried writing a novel a few years back that included a sub-theme of elites gaming systems for personal benefit — power, mostly. I shelved the novel, but thinking about systems gaming made me wonder what disincentives there are to attempting to game a system. Why shouldn’t we try to orchestrate advantage and control? Are there buried disadvantages?

It seems like systems gaming might have given humans an evolutionary advantage, if expanding our size, scope, and influence as a species is advantageous. Isn’t controlling animals and plants to cultivate food some form of gaming the system? I often wonder if we would not have been better off staying in the nomadic hunter/gatherer phase, so I am not going to concede that agriculture and livestocking were meritorious developments, but systems gaming seems ethically dubious, so that fits.

One question that arises is: is it unfair to game a system? If you have the intelligence, the courage, and the means, why should it be unfair? Is fairness even a justification for not doing it? I think you might be able to break down most components of economic systems into gaming ventures. For instance, slavery was one way to game the system, and we can all agree that slavery is unfair, because it takes advantage of another. But bribing an employee to do the work is not? Sure, it is less unfair, but does it not take advantage in some way?

And if gaming the system is unfair, are fairness and honor even valid independent ethical measures that should guide behavior? They seem to be, but why? I am not sure we have shared consensus on that.

One thing that allows systems gaming to happen is that those who engage are not held to account. Why do we not hold the gamers to account? For one thing, we might not even know who all are pulling the strings, or what exactly is happening that is impacting ourselves or others unfairly. If we do know, and we try to hold the gamers to account, there might be personal risk to us. We might want to reserve the moral justification to do a little gaming of our own. We might think it’s not our place or our responsibility.

I personally would like to see a little more of enticing the evil genius to come over from the dark side to help the greater good. Like using hackers to create secure systems. How do we make it worth their while? But wait, isn’t that a form of systems gaming, to incentivize gamers to contribute to the greater good? If it helps most people, is it bad? It doesn’t seem like it. So it’s not really the act of gaming the system that is bad in itself, is it?

Opportunity to game a complex system for substantial personal profit does not seem to be available to all. But it also does not seem to be randomly gained or stolen. It tends to require skill, intelligence, and knowledge. We want to think that we all have agreed to not do it, or to do it only for the greater good, but there is ample evidence to the contrary.

If you want to encourage a behavior, put it in one’s interest. As complicated and innovative as it might be to do that, there must be a way to encourage systems gaming exclusively for the greater good. The overlapping and intersecting of systems would seem to require a fluid and malleable strategy. Promoting a desired behavior often receives less emphasis than punishing or deterring undesired behavior. This seems like a rather tragic flaw.

I enjoy running. I enjoy the physical, mental, and emotional benefits I gain from running. If I could somehow simulate those effects with less effort, or if weather prevented me from running, would I do that? It would be tempting. For now, I will resist any attempt to game a system out of respect to my personal integrity, in part because I will feel better about myself. That form of personal happiness has more value to me than ill-gotten gains. I put it in my own interest. The long road is more scenic.

Owyhee Elementary School

Run Time: 64:35 + 2-minute kick

Another revisit to a favored locale. Same hotel, same school a few blocks away. The track is short, the elevation flat, the scenery not particularly spectacular, but it is a safe and known route, and elementary schools are nostalgic places. They remind you of a time in your life when the field off the playground seemed expansive and endless, when being outside happened every day, when threats and thrills were physical, not conceptual.

This schoolyard has become a defacto dog park, and the dogs came out in droves as I ran, at least 10 different dogs, with around 7 different humans. The dogs were all remarkably well-behaved. I heard no barking, and no dog interrupted my run, and I witnessed no tense dog-to-dog encounters. Some were clearly elated to be in an open space, with frisbees and balls to chase. The sun was out, and spirits were high.

When the sun is out, and spirits are high, and nostalgia is brewing, my thoughts wander to topics like usury. Usury is currently defined as the practice of making loans that unfairly enrich the lender. Payday loans and high-interest credit cards come to mind. I would also lump in the practice of applying penalty fees for overdrafts, or something similar. Now that credit cards can be debit cards attached to a checking account, think of the entrapment philosophy that allows you to make a purchase when insufficient funds exist in your account, just so that a $30 overdraft fee can be charged. Why not just decline the transaction? Why not, indeed.

The original definition of usury, however, included the charging of any interest or any fee for the use of money. The churches regulated such practices at the time, albeit loosely, and Christian, Jewish, and Islamic societies all at least discouraged usury. Charging interest was, at times and in places, a sin. The idea was that loaning money was a partnership. If you loaned money, you were investing in a venture of some kind, for which you might benefit financially IF the venture proved profitable. Also, it meant that you assumed risk. If the venture lost money, you lost money. This system promoted the practices of careful consideration, thoughtful assistance, and shared responsibility, on the part of both lenders and borrowers. A far cry from the selling of mega-batches of mortgages before the ink dries on the 50 pages of title paperwork. And all of this happened with no interest charges or fees.

Now, I am not a big fan of organized religion, but (or maybe as a result) I am not above aligning myself with their position when it’s convenient, and by convenient I mean when I am in agreement and it helps my argument. Here is a list of great thinkers whom Wikipedia says denounced usury: Moses, Plato, Aristotle, Cato, Cicero, Seneca, Acquinas, Buddha, and Muhammad. Not all religious thinkers, thankfully, but some big ones. I have to think Jesus should be on the list also, given his purported money-lender-table-turning-in-the-temple incident.

I can see how banks were important when gold or cash were the common currency. Not so much anymore, in the digital age. Plus, without banks, how could we ever have had a movie like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Butch: “What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.” Bank Guard: “People kept robbing it.” Butch: “Small price to pay for beauty.”

The modern Financial industry makes nothing. It invents schemes to make money at the expense of another. It adds nothing of value to the economy or to the community. It feeds off manufacturing/technology/service/science and other legitimate industries. It is a cesspool of scheming and system-gaming and deceit and connivance, and we are all in it up to our eyeballs and would have one hell of a time extracting ourselves from it at this point. It is full of good people doing good work and genuinely trying to help other people, built on a zero-sum foundation of gaining an advantage at the expense of another. And it all started with usury, when we first said, “Sure, I’ll help. At a cost.”

I get it. Banks have to make money to operate, but what if all banks were non-profit, and what if all bank employees were paid commensurately to the work they did? What if all investment truly had risk? What if the only way to create a retirement or passive income were to earn money and save it? Or, if we really want consumerism, what if we all received a universal basic income? As technology makes more jobs obsolete, why not just give people money to spend? Are we really okay with robber barons cheating us to become rich, but we don’t want tax money to go to the lonely incel guy with a bad back? Maybe a little spending money will improve his outlook.

Wealth = power. Usury is a tool of the wealthy. With a tool like usury, both wealth and power centralize and increase, like compound interest. It’s a bad thing. We don’t need it, just like we don’t need mortgage-based securities, or credit default swaps, or stock markets, or mixed derivatives. And God help us if we have to rely on religion to save us from ourselves.

Decker Lake Loop

Run Time: 64:34 + 2-minute kick

I had to go to Utah to run. It had been a month without running, mostly due to frigid temperatures in our home state of Michigan, plus a week in the Bahamas with no decent running routes. This was a revisit – I found this loop trail on a previous trip. It was perfect. Mostly dirt/gravel, some elevation changes, close to the hotel, a pastoral setting in spite of I-215 very nearby, and a smooth running surface which allowed me to safely navigate it after darkness fell.

Running in the dark is a risk that I do not endorse. Normally I run only on tracks in the dark, which is relatively safe. Only once have I had an incident running on a track in the dark, years ago at Centennial High School in Oregon. It was winter, and a narrow cover had been placed on the track for the football players to cross it to get to the field in the center. I was leaving the track to run bleacher stairs every time I came around to that section of the track, so I did not see the cover. Plus the wind had rolled the edge of the cover over slightly. As I did my kick at the end of the run, I stayed on the track rather than enter the bleachers, and I hit that rolled up cover at full sprint (or as close to a sprint as I get). Never saw it. Lost some skin.

I do not enjoy risk for risk’s sake. Taking a calculated risk makes sense to me — something with a high potential upside and a low potential downside, when the numbers seem to indicate that the return can actually be greater than the investment. Taking a calculated risk is not gambling, where collective outcomes are controlled to ensure profit for the house.

For a long time, after the Kaepernick controversy, I stopped watching football. I mancotted. Over time, my wife started watching games that started at a reasonable hour, usually playoff games. Now we watch many, if not most playoff games. We do not watch college football generally. We do not watch regular season games. Even Kaepernick is probably watching the playoff games, my wife reasons.

We also watch some hockey. In 2023 I got the MLB package and watched a fair amount of Red Sox games. One thing that you notice when you watch sports on TV now — it’s only mildly irritating, sad more than anything else — is a lot of Kevin Hart and Jamie Foxx and other “cool” celebrities promoting sports betting.

I’ve never enjoyed gambling. My parents used to go to the dog races, and once we (me and my brothers) reached age 12, at which age you could be admitted, they would sometimes take us. We couldn’t bet, but sometimes if we brought a few dollars, the adults would place bets for us. Even if I wasn’t betting, I enjoyed looking at the programs and trying to figure out which dogs would win, based on size, recent race times, where they placed in recent races, what classification that had most recently raced under, and, of course, color and fur patterns. Or which long shots had a decent chance. No one wants to bet on the favorite. There seemed to be more of a wild card aspect because the human element was reduced. It was dogs chasing a fake rabbit, or a fake bone. But it did not remove the fact that the overall payout would be less than the money bet by the humans. One human, or one human corporation, would get most of the money by running the whole operation, and the “investors” would split the rest, or get nothing and somehow be happy enough to give more on the next race.

My parents also used to travel to Reno to gamble. There were not casinos in every state back then. I have been to Reno and Vegas many times for trade shows. I have never even wanted to pull a handle, or push a button. When video poker came to Oregon and Idaho back in the 80’s, I never partook. My decision-making at that point in my life was not particularly sound, yet I managed to stay away from gambling. I had a good friend who played video poker and ended up losing his job and going to jail as a result of his affinity for video poker.

What is the obsession with gambling? Sports betting, lotteries (I have bought lottery tickets for gifts), Super Bowl pools, casinos: I have news for you all. Gambling is rigged. The payout is always less than the intake. That’s how it’s structured. That’s why it exists, for someone to make a profit. It is possible for the gambler to make a profit, but not likely. Yes, you might get lucky, but luck is random. Over time, you are not going to come out ahead.

What is disturbing to me is the embracing of the illogical. Everybody knows the game is rigged, but there is still a chance you’ll win, and you’re so desperate for something good to happen, you’re willing to probably invite more bad to happen. It’s a metaphor for our shortcut/strike it rich/game the system/get away with murder culture. It is risk-taking, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s chance-taking, which is not logical.

Was there an evolutionary advantage to risk-taking in our distant past? Was it strong enough to account for this unfortunate conversion from exploration of one’s environment and dangerous food acquisition to fantasy football? Gambling culture is a scourge. What does it say about you if you like to gamble money? I will leave the other gambling out of it — gambling with your love, with your job, with your life. If you like to gamble money, ask yourself what you value. Do you really value a random reward more than earned desserts?

La Framboise Island Loop

Run Time: 64:25 + 2-minute kick

It might have been the French who colonialized South Dakota. Given the relative remoteness of the region in whatever century they arrived, one might guess that France was not the center of culture, viniculture, and romance tourism that it is now. Elseways, why would its natives invade the Central North American continent?

This island is in the middle of the Missouri River, which by this time feels like an old friend. If not for some unfortunate name-changes in the river, you could say it starts in either the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana or in Yellowstone, and it ends in New Orleans. Yes, the maps say it starts right off I-90 in Central Montana, and it ends in St. Louis, but the water tells a different story. I cross its path in Great Falls, Williston, Bismarck, Pierre, Sioux City, Omaha, and St. Louis. I love that it starts west, then goes north, then east, then south.

And this island is a great find. Another AllTrails recommendation. I was easily able to get my full 5 miles and not retrace any steps. I could have gotten 10 out of the trail system. It is all wild — no cement once you leave the parking lot. A lot of deer tracks. Very beautiful, even in November.

With the time change, I was lucky to have time to run before dark. I just got it in. My last sales stop of the day was in Fort Pierre, on the west side of the river and in the Mountain time zone. The island, and east of the river, is in the Central time zone. My hotel was downstream 80 miles in a small town called Oacoma, so after the run I had my first darkness drive of the season, which was welcome after so many thousands of daylight driving. No streetlights along Route 83 south of Pierre, just starlights.

Turned out to be my only run of the week, though I did 45 minutes on a rowing machine two nights later in a hotel fitness room. First time on a rowing machine in probably 25 years. You don’t see many in the hotels. I might keep my eye out for them in the winter months. I have to be in a very good mood to want to run in the windy cold these days. I am turning into a fair weather fitness fanatic.

I might be entering a phase of my wife in which I focus on mental health (especially the next four years). My daughter recently shared an excerpt from a my granddaughter’s first conference report in her first year of pre-school. The instructor wrote that she “comes to school calm and happy and enjoys her day here.” This is my new mantra: calm and happy. If I can maintain that through most of the rest of my days on this planet, I feel that I will have made the best of them.

Like most of us, I try to control too many external factors. Even too many internal factors, such as how I feel about running in the windy cold. I try to check every box on my work schedule when I could trip through more quality work than most of my peers. I get stressed about how many podcast episodes I have in my queue — how meaningless is that? I fall too easily into the trap of thinking others are sometimes not in their own dream.

I have had a good run with the running, and I am not going to give it up by any means. I have noticed, however, that my body appreciates days off more these days. I value resilience and antifragility, but to whom do I have to demonstrate it, and to what extent? Why can I not just coast a little at this point?

But there will not be a blog post for every rowing session. Anything indoors feels like a virtual workout.

Whitehouse Nature Center Trail

Run Time: 62:19 + 2-minute kick

Another All Trails win. I finished my sales visits in Detroit, and I was spending the night in Coldwater, MI, a couple hours west, so I did a map search and came up with this splendid trail system on the grounds of Albion College. It was dirt and gravel, well-maintained, no bikes, away from traffic, and the weather was pleasant and the trail shaded.

It was a good decision to run on the Monday of a driving trip, because I was harboring a virus that knocked me down for the rest of the week. It wasn’t the Covid. I’ll call it the Sophid, after my granddaughter, who gifted it to me when we spent the weekend in Toronto with her and her mom, dad, and brother. We all ended up with it, in one form or another, because, as she explains it, it is transmitted through “kisses and snot.”

Being sick is not my favorite, and this one started with a brutal sore throat, which is my worst anti-favorite, but I can appreciate how it slows you down and makes you care for yourself. You start to appropriately value sleep and breathing and the absence of pain and discomfort, things that we under-appreciate in times of non-sickness. If we would only value these things appropriately at all times, rather than our task lists, how much happier might we be, and how much healthier might our bodies be, and how much readier to fight the microbial inhabitants of kisses and snot?

Albion is a small town in rural Southern Michigan. The University likely has something to do with the abundance of Harris-Walz lawn signs I saw, but nevertheless I found it quite encouraging to see them. In a town that small and that rural, ANY Harris-Walz signs would have been encouraging. Unfortunately, it is an anomaly. Most rural areas I travel through have been infected by a sickness much worse than a corona virus. I grew up in a rural area. It is disheartening.

When I got out to run, there was a small group of school kids on a pumpkin excursion. It appeared that pumpkins had been placed along the trail, and I suppose the kids were each picking one to take home. One might assume this is an activity organized by a teacher, or a group of teachers. Possibly someone from the University spoke to them about nature conservancy and environmental stewardship.

Our granddaughter just started preschool. My daughter shares photos she gets from the teacher showing the kids in their muck boots out in the pastures, wetlands, orchards, and woodlands of NY, having fun, absorbing sunlight, learning directly about nature, and also in their rustic classroom, crafting and creating.

Our educational system certainly has its flaws. Not every teacher is caring, conscientious, and liberal. Organized religion is always trying to push its way into education. But if education isn’t the solution to most of what is wrong with society, I don’t know what is. And if it hasn’t kept the situation from being worse than it is, I don’t know what has.

One of the reasons that childhood and youth is so magical is school. Instead of clocking in every day, it is the job of a child to learn. Would it not be a great idea for 20% of the work week to be dedicated to learning, rather than working? Just one day each week when we sharpen the saw? Sometimes school sucks, and I remember not being thrilled about getting up at 6:00 am to get ready for school, but most of us look back fondly on our time with some of the best friends we will ever have, learning from some of the best teachers and mentors we will ever have.

One of the trails was on an old railroad grade, which you could not tell was an old railroad grade except that it was straight and raised, and that it was named the Railroad Trail. It is amazing to see how quickly landscape can be returned to its natural state, given the opportunity.

Maybe in my retirement, I will go get a teaching degree and teach High School English. Or better yet, I will write a book about an old guy who gets his teaching degree and teaches High School English. This is my strategy now when I get an idea about some new venture I want to undertake. Just write a book about it. That way you control the narrative. Literally.

Maybe it will inspire others, and I can avoid the disillusionment of reality.