Perry Canyon Trail

Run Time: 63:22 + 2-minute kick

A return to Utah, to elevation, to desert sunshine. Felt great to be in the arid heights. I miss seeing the Wasatch Mountains from the back yard, although we enjoy stunning sunsets regularly on our Michigan deck. Utah is probably a better place to visit than to live. They have a shitload of great trails, though.

I had an uncharacteristically messed-up travel day the day before this run. I have been very lucky with all of my work travel. Only one flight cancelled, and very rare delays. This one made up for it. A 6-hour delay for my first flight, from Grand Rapids to Chicago. That made me reschedule my second flight, so I spent 7 hours at O’Hare waiting for my flight to SLC. I got a lot of work done. I got ahead on work. I caught up on non-work projects, and got a little ahead on those.

So I had planned to arrive in SLC around 11:30 am. Instead, I landed there around 11:15 pm. I had to cut out a leg of travel. I had planned to drive all the way down to St. George and back, and I just cut out everything south of Sandy. Actually made the rest of the week more manageable, but 12+ hours in airports is no bueno.

I never made it to the top of Perry Trail. Threemile Creek was too high to cross comfortably about 2/3 of the way up, where the trail probably had a footbridge that needs to be replaced every spring. It really was not a runnable trail in many spots, narrow and inconsistent, crossing slides and sloping sideways. I did my best, and that incline at that elevation was great for clearing gunk out of the lungs. The scenery was the best part, of course. That, and the isolation. I saw one other person on the trail the whole time.

It was a mild weather day for Utah. Warm and sunny, light wind, but not hot. It rained that night, which is always a welcome rinse cycle in the dusty desert. Of the 3 places we have lived since I started running, Utah is my favorite for running. It likely will remain so, until I get bit by a rattlesnake or stung by a scorpion on some remote trail and never get to post about it.

The barefoot shoes held up really well on this tough terrain. It was all rocky, and very uneven. On the way back down, I diverted across a footbridge and found the best section of trail, nearly flat. It took me onto Geneva Rock property, where I was likely trespassing, but there were plenty of other tracks, including ATV and motorcycle tracks. I was glad to not encounter anything motorized. People in Utah love their petroleum-based recreation.

The Phoenix Coyotes just moved to Salt Lake City, and they are changing mascot names, although I do not know why. The Coyote has got to be as indigenous to Utah as it is to Arizona. And Coyotes are bad-ass. The coyote is low-key, low-impact, high-performing, and long-enduring. That’s a hell of a combination. Coyotes are lovable outlaws, kind of like Butch and Sundance.

The best thing about looking up at the Wasatch Mountains is you’re not looking down at the valley below, where all the cement has been poured. It’s a lot of cement. There is insufficient reason for a city that large to be where it is. The rivers aren’t really navigable. The Salt Lake isn’t great for commerce or recreation. The land is not the best for agriculture or livestock. It was where the Mormons went to get to safety, and few who cared enough to harm them cared to go there. And from that grew a city.

How beautiful would this place be if our ancestors never came here? How unspoiled would it be if the First Nation had been the only Nation? How pristine would it be if no bovine had ever crapped on it? How quiet would these side canyons be with no ATVs?

We will never know. We will also never know how many loads the Geneva Rock company will take down to the cement plant, or to the crusher, before climate change makes leaving your air-conditioned house virtually impossible from May to October in this region. It will sneak up on us, like a coyote, and pick off the weakest of the herd.

We all wonder how something like the Trump presidency could happen. Just look around. The evidence is everywhere.

West Fargo High School

Run Time: 38:18 + 1-lap kick

These photos refer to places I tried to run between Minot and Fargo that did not work out. No need for photos of West Fargo High School’s track — I shared those 2 weeks ago.

I left Minot around noon with no more sales stops to make for the day, so this was the ideal time and place to find something on All Trails outside of the cities. First try was the Historic Fort Totten Trail, in the Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, a 20-mile out-and-back trail with some mild inclines. It was about forty miles north of Jamestown, 8 miles of gravel road from the highway.

What is historic about the Fort Totten Trail is the community of insects that reside there. I parked in a small parking lot, changed into my commando running shorts, looked at the trail map, and all was well. The trail went north about a mile to a lake, and south about 19 miles along a creek, and I chose the longer section, but rather than run down the road to the south section, I drove down to where the trail left the road and entered through a fence into a field. There wasn’t really a place to park there, but I made one and got out to run.

As I entered the field, I heard a loud hum that I actually thought might be the hum of an electric fence. We had electric fences in the rural area where I lived as a kid. It was a little loud for that, but I could not have imagined it was the hum of the hordes of bugs which quickly found me and welcomed me to their home. I quickly fled back to the Edge, which is not just where the bugs were pursuing me to but also was the kind of rental car I had.

Onto Plan Y — the Jamestown Overlook Trail, which was much closer to town but also not in an urban setting. There were families down by the water in bathing suits, splashing in the water. The trail was kind of a flat loop trail snaking through some nice trees and shrubberies.

Started out okay, a few bugs, but nothing alarming. Then I rounded the first bush, and a cloud of insects emerged. I sped up. Next bush, same thing. Then there was a grove of bushes, and I thought I might not make it through. Decided to give it up a quarter-mile in — cut up to the upper section to get away from vegetation. Made it back to the parking lot with minor emotional trauma.

Okay, so how does anyone enjoy the outdoors in North Dakota? How were those people down by the water’s edge surviving with open skin? Do the bugs just pester but not bite? Were the locals doused in insecticide? I have been reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and feeling kind of bad for the bugs, but Jesus.

So, since I was already in my running attire, I just drove to Fargo and stopped at the high school before I went to the hotel and got in a partial run. It was hot, and I was tired, and my left calf kept threatening to tighten up on me, but it was great to run without fear of something buzzing loud enough by my headphones to drown out The Who.

It might be the time of the year. Maybe if you head out to Fort T in late November, right before the first late fall blizzard, you can lope across the prairie unmolested. But right now, in May, with grasses and shrubberies and bushes and trees in full bloom, this part of the country is the insects’ domain. Beautiful and unrunnable.

Esterhazy High School

Run Time: 63:18 + 2-minute kick

Esterhazy is a small Canadian town where one of our distributors has a two-person outpost. It is near the western border of Manitoba, where I had spent most of the day in Winnipeg and Brandon, on my way over to Saskatoon and Regina. My stopover in Esterhazy was pleasant. There are potash mines near Esterhazy, and our distributor sells various fittings and tools to the contractors working at the mines. I stayed at the Canalta Hotel, which was delightful — clean, quiet, friendly staff (the hotel clean and quiet, the staff friendly). The high school was just a half-mile away or so, with sort of a cinder mud track that was soft but kept me mostly above ground as I lumbered through a full run.

It is a little known geological fact that much of the interior of North America is about 1 centimeter from being underwater. You might be driving through Illinois or Wisconsin or North Dakota, through dry grasslands or farmlands, and if you step off the pavement you will sink into the hidden bog. Manitoba is like that. It’s one big bog. So when I hopped onto the cinder track to harken back to the days of Chariots of Fire and jog triumphantly in the cool, fresh Canadian air, my barefoot shoes sank two inches toward potash deposits. I found the less moist path and persevered.

Winnipeg continues to unimpress. My second time there. Winnipeg is a good place for the antifragile, which I would imagine you have to be to “thrive” there. They have a drainage problem which is likely related to the groundwater effect. A medium rainstorm hit while I was there, and giant lakes appeared in the right lanes and shoulders of all roads almost immediately. The heat in my hotel did not work. I thought about requesting another room, but then I thought, what would a Winnipegian do, and I endured without it. The people I drove by as I navigated around potholes seemed to have the same look, a combination of determination and apathy, with a tinge of unawareness that conditions might be better elsewhere.

One sometimes wonders how humanity managed to collect in some of the places where cities now stand. Usually it is bodies of water — rivers, lake, oceans — that allowed us to move goods into and out of a strategic location. I suppose we are stuck with those locations now. The Assinboine and Red Rivers meet in Winnipeg, and it might have been the hub of progress at some point. It might be now, and I am just missing the vital facts. Esterhazy would likely not exist now without the need for potash to make fertilizer, and it was founded only because some Hungarian dude who falsely claimed to belong to the wealthy Esterhazy family moved there with 35 other Hungarian families and picked that spot to pitch a tent. Maybe it was just because no one else wanted that spot, and even the First Nation didn’t object to the squatters. Who knows?

I will choose Esterhazy over Winnipeg any day. The heat in the hotel worked flawlessly, and the Papa Burger from the A & W that closed at 8 pm was divine.

City Streets and Sidewalks

Run Time: 48:13 + 2-minute kick

Doesn’t Willow Lake look like a perfect body of water around which to run? On Street view you could see a path going all the way around the lake, even cutting across one section on some sort of bridge, which you can see in the photo. Mere blocks from my hotel — what luck!

Not so fast, Cochise. To get to the path, you have to cross private property — a parking lot belonging to HB Fuller Company, an adhesives manufacturer which has likely been dumping chemicals into Willow Lake for a century or more. I’m reading Silent Spring right now — I know how this works. You make it look like a pristine wildlife refuge from aerial view, but then you pump byproduct underground into the water rather than pay millions to have it disposed of properly and legally. Despite the signs indicating surveillance cameras, I trotted across the parking lot to the path, which was accessible through a gate being guarded by two humongous Tom turkeys, who gobbled warningly and pointed to the No Trespassing signs.

It actually was some kind of wildlife sanctuary or aviary or protected wetlands, though I am still suspicious of the Fuller family. Fuller rhymes with Sackler. The lake was fenced in, or I was fenced out. I ran along the fence till I got to a sidewalk dead end and finally gave up and ran on residential streets. It was fine — nice little homes between industrial and office properties. The dark skies never turned to rain, and no wildlife was disturbed, and no laws were broken. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, some of which cannot be run around, even if there is a nicely manicured path encircling it.

I had driven from Fargo to Duluth to St. Paul that day, so I got to see quite a few lakes along the way. I crossed the great North Country Trail, or near to it, where I stopped to take a leak in the trees. The North Country Trail is 4800 miles long and doesn’t get near the attention that the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide Trail get. CDT is 3100 miles, PCT is 2650, and App is 2190. And the NCT skirts Cleveland, so it ain’t for sissies. Maybe I’ll run it when I retire.

West Fargo High School

Run Time: 63:12 + 2-minute kick

Got to the hotel early enough, and felt good enough, and got weather nice enough to do a full run. What a godsend! Not that gods had anything to do with it. It’s all random, but random works out sometimes. I had a feeling that I have run at this school before, but this time I got there on foot. The hotel was 2 miles away, so this was similar to my home routine: 1/3 to the track, 1/3 on the track, 1/3 back to home. The track was surprisingly empty, given that it was right after school, and it is spring school sports season. The gate on 7th Avenue was unlocked.

The day before I had tried to find a place to run between my last sales stop in Oakes, ND, and my hotel in Jamestown, ND. You would think there would be a runnable trail somewhere in that 80-mile span. I checked All Trails, and it gave me one trail in the Fort Ransom State Park, but it was just a mown snowmobile trail in a field by the river, and it was raining hard and winding harder, so I bagged the idea. Nice area, though. The Dakotas are beautiful, IMHO. Even in a foggy rain.

This was the middle leg of my 3-trip run up the center of the centralest mid-center North America. Last trip was Nebraska/South Dakota, this one North Dakota/Minnesota, and next one will be ND/Manitoba/Saskatchewan. North Dakota has signs on I-94 indicating the “Continental Divide” at elevations in the 1300s. That seems like a stretch. The Continental Divide is the high point, the point on the Continent at which water on either side can’t ever meet. Water on the west side of the NDCD could easily make it into the Missouri River, which runs into the Mississippi River, where it would meet water from the east side of the NDCD. Let’s call that high point in ND the State Divide, okay? You could see nearby hills higher than the signs when you passed them. In multiple directions.

I have started saving Rest Area locations as favorites in the Apple map on my work phone. I am building a database. They kind of are my favorites — I stop at most of them, even when I am not saving favorites in Apple Maps, either to take a leak or check emails or fill up my water bottle or take a quick catnap or to stretch. Yes, Fragilistas, I drink rest area water. Some even have the fancy water bottle faucets now. If I can’t stomach the water that comes out of a rest area drinking fountain, I’m not going to survive long in places like Fort Ransom State Park or Death Rattle, Wyoming.

The route from the hotel to the school was not the most picturesque neighborhood. A lot of angry dogs behind fences. How far does one have to go to find a pile of curbside trash in Fargo? Not far.

But the school track and grandstands were nice. Solid aluminum stands that did not shake or rattle as I ran the steps. No trash on the school grounds. Polite school kids who smiled at me as I passed them on the sidewalk. It can’t be easy to grow up in Fargo.

I will be back in Fargo in 2 weeks. It’s my launch point for the Manitoba/Saskatchewan swing. I will be staying at the same hotel at the end of the week — maybe I can get back on this track. God willing.

Unnamed Trail

Run Time: 38:05 + 2-minute kick

If Wall Drug thinks I am going to cave to the thousand-billboard marketing ploy, they are wrong. I have no desire to find out if they really still have 5-cent coffee. I do not want to check out the giant Jackelope sculpture. I took a photo of the dinosaur by the off-ramp only because my run took me right past it. I can get 86-cent coffee in Midland, thank you very much, without feeling like a tourist. I can see hundreds of antelope right by the highway all through Wyoming and western SD. Jackelopes aren’t real, and they aren’t interesting.

But the city of Wall is strategically situated just before the turn-off to Pierre, which was my next sales stop, and there are few hotels between Rapid City and Pierre other than in Wall, and the Best Western Plains Hotel in Wall is a delightful throwback with modern conveniences appropriately entwined. A towel folded into the shape of a heart on the bed with a religious recommendation was nice. Quiet and clean, with pleasant staff. I slept well in Wall.

I found a paved trail on the eastern edge of town that was not very long, but I extended my run along the canyon rim, past the trailer park, and down a gravel road that ran by the wastewater treatment pond. This run was a good test of the barefoot shoes, because there were a lot of small pebbles that I could not avoid entirely that would cripple you if you stepped on one in actual bare feet. The shoes held up. I could feel the pebbles, but it did not hurt. Well done, barefoot shoes.

Wind was the weather of the week. This day started with snow flurries north of Cheyenne and ended with bright sunshine in SD, but wind all the way through. A steady 25-30 mph while I ran, with occasional gusts of 40-50. The next day was even worse, but that was all driving, so my only exposures were at rest stops. This run at decent elevation with a constant wind was challenging but refreshing. I felt exfoliated afterward.

Something sad to report from this day of work travel. At a rest area on WY-59, between Douglas and Gillette, a long-hair black cat approached me as soon as I got out of my car. She was clearly abandoned. She meowed to me. She did the same with the next car who stopped. I broke up a meat stick for her. There was a farmhouse about a mile away, so I told myself a story that she had wandered away for whatever reason and would wander back, but cats don’t approach strangers like that if they are not desperate. Later that night, I emailed the Casper Humane Society. They punted to the Laramie Peak Humane Society in Douglas. They punted to the sheriff and suggested I go back and get the cat and bring it to them. I explained that I could not do that and suggested they reach out to the sheriff, or maybe to a local citizen who gives a shit about an abandoned cat. My faith in their follow-through is low, but maybe someone else will save the cat. The rest area coordinates are 43.32120 N 105.35203 W.

I do not believe in hell, but I believe it is possible that someone who abandons a cat at a rest area in Eastern Wyoming might very well manifest one for their self. They might also need to make room for someone who volunteers for a “humane” society and will not make a 30-mile drive out to retrieve a homeless cat that they might take in “if they have room.” Then again, I guess I could have put the cat in my rental car and looked for a shelter in Gillette, if I would have thought harder about it in the moment. So they might have to let me pop in for a guilt session as well. Pets, like children, teach us what it truly means to care, if we care to pay attention.

Sorry, Kitty Cat. I fell short.

Keystone Trail

Run Time: 33:04 + 2-minute kick

Back in Omaha. I believe this is my third run here, maybe fourth. I tried to get away from Downtown and the Airport for this hotel stay. I got lucky that there was a cement trail about a mile away. It was no picnic, but picnics are overrated sometimes.

It was unnaturally hot. And windy. Not unnaturally windy, because Omaha is often windy, at least when I am there. The temp in my rental car said 90 degrees when I left the Airport. It was a little lower by the time I hit the pavement, but arid and windy is not my preferred running condition. You know what? Nature doesn’t care, so I don’t either. I just ran. I ran slower into the wind, and faster away from it.

I subscribe to Arnold’s e-newsletter (no last name necessary, right?), and his email this morning was about just doing it without thinking about it. Mostly he means exercise, but anything that you should do will qualify. I love this sentiment. It’s one reason why I run rather than go to a health club, and it’s one reason why I now run from the hotel unless there is nowhere to run and I can drive a short distance to find somewhere to run. It’s easier. Running is not always fun. Running from a hotel is even less fun sometimes. But I can, as Arnold says, say f*ck it and just do it. I don’t have to think about it.

This is a rare next-day publication. I am writing and posting this the day after I was in Omaha. I am now in North Platte, where I spent a fitful night in May, 2022, with Covid, after I tested positive in Waterloo, IA, the day before, and before I drove home to Santaquin, UT, the day after. There are high wind warnings in North Platte today, so I will be treadmilling later rather than getting gusted all over. Because I had the extra time when I got to the hotel, I actually got every calendar item done with a medium or high priority on both phone calendars, and it’s still light out. Now I am on to the low priority items, which include writing this blog post. I might be cresting a wave, or turning a corner, or moving into gravity assist, or some other metaphor.

I have a good feeling about the next phase of my life. I think the next 20 years are going to be extremely pleasant. I feel myself consciously slowing down to the unitasking that I prefer, and I am locking into contented behavior. I listened to a This American Life podcast last night and this morning, and at one point, Ira is talking to Amy Silverman about a story involving her daughter and some regretful behavior from her past, and Ira asks, “Do you feel like a certain amount of being a parent is realizing what an ass you were before you were a parent?” It is a really poignant question in the context of the episode – I recommend you listen to it (episode 564). Sometimes I feel like being a person is realizing what an ass I was before right now. But all we have is now. The past and the future are only memory and anticipation. This is why now matters so much.

Thunderstorms arrived in the night last night. I heard them once, really loud, then fell back asleep. After I woke up, they started up again, with some good downpours as I sat in the hotel room and worked before hitting the road. Omaha is much nicer after a torrential rainstorm. And when the wind dies down.

Hoping to get a run in tomorrow in Cheyenne, and Thursday in Wall, SD (home of the famous Wall Drug store), and then I’ll be back in Omaha Friday, for a flight home Saturday. Actually, I’ll be staying in a little teardrop of Iowa that hops the river by the Omaha airport. Must be a hotel tax haven, because that’s all there is there. Then next trip is North Dakota and Minnesota, then the trip after that is Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Just moving right up the flyover column. Bound to be windy.

North High School

Run Time 32:53 + 1-lap kick

The first time I have repeated a run. I was here in the fall. My hotel was closer that time. Got to the hotel relatively late, so just a partial run, but I amped up the velocity, so it was good. The sun was just about to go down.

Crazy weather day. Started out in the 60s in Chicago. By the time I got to Cedar Rapids, the wind had picked up considerably, and the temps were dropping. I had to put my coat back on. I had planned on running in shorts, but even sweats and a hoodie felt a little crisp.

To the east above the track, the clouds were gathering. Maybe two raindrops on the short drive from the hotel to the school. Then I looked at my weather app, and a Tornado Watch was in effect. Not a Tornado Warning. I guess the Watch is when they all gather to watch tornadoes in Iowa.

It definitely did not feel like 62 degrees. An arctic wind was blowing in from the north. The next morning, when I carried my crap out to the car, it was like stepping into Antarctica. 16 degrees, a 20 mph wind (steady), felt like 0. What the hell, Iowa? Beautiful skies, though.

Iowa Central Community College Campus

Run Time: 42:47 + 2-minute kick

Windy but unseasonably warm. Earlier, while driving in short sleeves, I had to turn the fan on cool to stay comfortable. The sun was heating up the rental car interior like it was June, not February. It was still upper forties when I got to the hotel. 

Fort Dodge is just north of US 20, the most crossed thoroughfare of my sales territory. US 20 passes within a few blocks of where my youngest son, Christopher, lives in Corvallis, OR. It bisects Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and keeps right on going east. I first tested positive for Covid just a few miles from US 20 in May, 2022, in Waterloo, IA. Some days I cross it multiple times in my work travels.

So US 20 is more of a companion than a thoroughfare. You cannot really say that US 20 is a route of affluence. It is an old route. Old routes in the US do not (or have not yet — maybe there is time) aged into beautiful old relics like the ancient roads of the Old World. Old routes in the US have a lot of houses with peeling paint, old cars, and retired appliances outside. They have strip malls where they snake through small and medium-sized towns. They are generally segmented cement, not smooth asphalt. They are wondering what the hell you are doing there driving on them — haven’t they carried enough toil and trouble?

As I turned on the access road to the hotel, I saw a group of people playing soccer on the college campus, but when I looked at my phone map to plan my run, there was no track around the soccer field. Then I noticed, as you might if you look at the map screenshot above, that there was some kind of facility across the railroad tracks within a short walking distance. The blue dot was where I was at the time, in the hotel.

I could just hop over the tracks and see if there was a trail or sidewalk to run on there. Then I wouldn’t have to cross the busy street to get to the college campus. I could see a baseball field in this “park,” but no track. As I zoomed in for a closer look, it seemed like there might be a fence blocking my access near the water tower, which I could see from my hotel. A closer look — it was a high fence. Little chance of scaling it without harm or attracting attention.

It was only later that I took another look and clicked on the map icon, which I did not recognize, to find out what the “park” really was, which was the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. Well, that clearly would not have panned out. I might have found some running partners, the best US 20 has to offer, but it would have been strangely embarrassing if I had gotten caught trying to scale the fence to get in.

It looked great from the aerial view.