Somewhat confined by the urban sprawl of the Chicago area, and trying to adhere to my policy of no driving to a run location, I settled on a paved path that looped around two man-made “lakes” in a business park a block away from the hotel. A strip mall bordered one section, so I cut across behind a car wash rather than follow the sidewalk around the parking lot.
It was not the most natural of riparian settings, but I can appreciate the effort. An algae-laden pond beats asphalt any day. A small flock of geese hung around one end of the southern pond, doing what they do best – shitting. A rather forlorn heavy-set white guy came out and sat on a park bench staring at the still water for ten minutes. A younger, more fit man walked a dog. The traffic from I-80 and nearby rush-hour streets was loud, but I had my headphones on.
I stayed on the grass as much as possible. Make it a ritual. Not a routine, not a habit — a ritual. Running on the grass just off the asphalt is one of my rituals. Listening to music while running, to podcasts while walking, is one of my rituals. Rituals bring meaning to ordinary activity, and they free the mind from making decisions.
Driving around Chicago is not my favorite. It teases a little with pockets of nature and clean hamlets, but it remains the center of commerce and industry that counteracts peace and tranquility. Drivers, in particular, seem to be in a hurry there. Why, I ask? How fast do you need to race toward meaninglessness? Aggressive drivers lead petty lives – that is only a hypothesis, one not worth researching.
A piece of broken glass in the misshape of a heart.
A lot of existing and potential business for us in the Chicago area — hence my 3 days here. Selling product to people selling product to people towing cars of people who drive aggressively. It’s not a Sisyphus gig, but it lacks poetry.
Another lucky find within walking distance of the hotel. I had to navigate some busy city streets at rush hour to get to the school, but it was an oasis. An upscale private high school with beautiful grounds and a new track. There was construction going on, but nothing that impeded my run.
School appeared to be in session. There were quite a few students and what I assume was school personnel, but no one said a thing to me as I ran onto the track, did a few laps, and then peeled off to a perimeter trail.
Why didn’t someone say something? I ran down the main drive entrance to the school, around to the back, through a gated entrance to the track, and started doing laps. There were coaches or school personnel riding all over the place in golf carts. There were soccer teams on the field but no one using the track. A few laps in, the cheerleading squad came out for practice, so that is when I vacated in favor of the trail, where I had seen a couple of kids running.
The trail got a little damp in a few places. There had been a hellacious thunderstorm when I got to the hotel an hour or so earlier. I guess because I am an old white guy who ran right onto the track like he owned the place, nobody felt like challenging it. As I left the track, I noticed some kind of ticket booth on the side of the school I had not run around where they were checking people’s ID, or maybe scanning tickets. If it were important to keep someone out who didn’t belong, they were failing.
I actually tried to think of some fib I could tell if someone asked me who I was or why I was there. My kid was staying late for a study group – I was just killing time till they came out. I’m one-third Native American (there was a bust of a Native American at the entrance to the track), and I figured I should be able to run anywhere on the continent (I’m actually only about one-tenth). Or I thought I could just the truth: I’m a traveling salesman just trying to stay in decent shape.
Of course, no one should have a problem with someone wanting to run on a school track, no matter who they are or where they are from. But some tracks are locked up. It is inevitable – at some point, some patriot is going to try to kick me off some school property. That could be the turning of the tide for the One-Tenth Native Americans.
One thing I found insufficient reason to do in Seymour was to see more of it. I have given up on the idea of driving to a trail or track to run. I don’t like having car keys and a wallet on my person while I am running. I am really not too happy about having a motel key on me, but that is the bare minimum.
So for this run I just did some loops and laps around a multi-block section next to a golf course, off of the main drive. I stayed on grass for most of it. I saw a few golfers straying onto the business properties alongside the course, so I stayed wide of the course. No need to get beaned by a golf ball. There was a church compound – main church with a community center and some kind of outreach facility, which was next to a correctional center. Appears that someone is doing some good work in Seymour. It’s not just Seymour, it’s Domour.
It wasn’t extremely hot, but it felt hot. No wind, muggy, greater gravitational pull because Indiana is the Crossroads of America. It wasn’t the most enjoyable run I’ve ever had. When you’ve run along the Snake River in Twin Falls, ID, a side street in Seymour is inevitably going to promote just going through the motions.
The was a low-budget sales trip. I drove my own car, so no rental car. I drove from home, so no flights. I brought leftover, so only two dinners, one coffee + cookie, and one slice of pie. Four hotel rooms. Had some good sales visits, made some important connections, got a few decent leads, and hopefully added some value to the distributors I visited. Efficient and cost-effective.
I actually did not find George Rogers Clark Middle School until late in the run, and it was unintentional. There was a different school not far away, and I risked a half-mile down a country-ish road with no sidewalks to be blocked by a train just shy of the school. The lack of road shoulders took me across a ditch and along the edge of a cornfield, which resulted in a lot of seeds and field debris stuck to my shoes and socks. I thought about squeezing between the railroad cars, but then the cars might be moving when I came back, and I did not want to risk any additional delays. There were some thunderclouds in the distance.
So I ran back to the main road, which had sidewalks, and headed away from the highway, and lo and behold, there was a middle school only a half-mile or so in that direction. There was time enough to run a few laps around the track and to do my new lunge-squat-pushup workout before running back to the hotel. The thunderstorm missed us, but it was close.
I did not see much of Vincennes. It was a mid-point between sales stops, and it had hotels. There is a fair amount of rurality in Illinois/Indiana. Our family chat currently includes a weekly album pick by one person, and this week’s pick was Isaiah Rashad’s “The House Is Burning,” chosen by my son Alex. It is entirely possible that I was the only person in Indiana spinning that stream. I actually found pockets without cell coverage, which you expect in Wyoming, but no so much in Indiana.
I got some good podcast time in this trip. I added the This Week in MicroBiology, This Week in Parasitism, and Immune podcasts to the This Week in Virology podcast I have been listening to since I added it this past winter when Malcolm Gladwell recommended it. They all come from the same operation, so to speak. Good stuff. I unsubscribed from a few I had grown bored of.
Sometimes you just have good luck. I chose the Microtel Inn for its location just off the highway, and for its relatively low cost. There was nothing around it but fields, a single service station, and this upper-middle-class high school with a little-used running track. Serendipity.
A windy day, felt hotter than it was. My energy was low. But, as Arnold will tell you, one way to raise your energy level is to just start moving. So I moved. I changed into my shorts and running shirt and running shoes and headed down the grass-covered sidewalk, navigated a tenth-mile of country road traffic, and started circling the oval. There were bleachers, so I got some good stair work in too.
I subscribed to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s weekdaily email newsletter last year sometime. I also read his biography. He has some good, solid, simple advice in almost every newsletter, and his staff adds some good exercise and eating guidance, as well as interesting reports on health studies. In a recent email, one of Adam’s Workouts included a program involving deep lunges, body squats, and pushups, so I decided to incorporate it into my runs.
My current run/walk routine is 7 minutes walk, 10 minutes run, 7 minutes walk, 10 minutes run, 7 minutes walk, 10 minutes run, 7 minutes walk, 5+ minutes run with the kick included. I added this short workout in after the third 7-minute walk. The first iteration of the workout is 10 deep lunges, 5-second pause, 3 deep lunges, 5-second pause, 3 deep lunges, 5-second pause, 3 deep lunges, 5-second pause, 10 body squats, 5-second pause, 3 body squats, 5-second pause, 3 body squats, 5-second pause, 3 body squats, 5-second pause, 10 pushups, 5-second pause, 3 pushups, 5-second pause, 3 pushups, 5-second pause, 3 pushups. Over time, I will work the initial 10 to 20 (and maybe beyond), the follow-up 3 to 5, and the 5-second pause down to 3 seconds.
No weights involved other than body weight. Guess what? Deep lunges and body squats use different muscles than running. I was a little bit sore the following morning. Plus, deep lunges require pretty good balance, which also works muscles differently than walking. This little workout is a good addition.
Home of the Sabers. Typical Catholic warmongering. Was Sir Thomas More a saber-wielder? Doubtful. He could pay others to do the dirty work.
I chose this hotel location for its proximity to the airport, but the neighborhood was a strange combination of new construction, open fields, people sleeping in cars, and construction sites. The hotels were all new. Behind the hotels were new houses and houses still being built. A new school sat between those houses and a resort. Some sidewalks ended in the middle of nothing.
The school did not have a track, unfortunately. I didn’t even look at All Trails. It was the end of a long week. I normally fly home Friday afternoon, but I had customer appreciation event to attend at a new distributor branch in Scottsbluff, NE, and I did not want to rush the trip from there to Denver, so I flew home Saturday instead. This allowed me to get four runs in, all at high altitude (well, maybe Alliance, NE, wasn’t that high).
Rain threatened a few times during the run. There were some nasty looking thunderclouds on the periphery. I saw jets taking off with a very low dark cloud on the opposite side of the airport – it looked dicey. And then the sun would come out and it would get hot real quick.
I ran down an access road that I thought might turn into a dirt road heading off into the sage, but it ended at some kind of electrical building, so I turned around. On my way back to the main street, I almost stepped on a very large snake, which either had just crawled out onto the asphalt, or I had somehow not seen it one minute before.
I also saw more of those killer red ant hills near the street, and hordes of grasshoppers, most of them green. On the street behind the hotel, there were more than a half dozen cars, vans, RVs, and truck trailers that were obviously primary domiciles for local residents who can’t afford the housing prices. They looked out of place, but I guess they were in a location where they weren’t bothering anyone, though they were only a half-mile or so from the new houses.
After the run I showered and drove about 5 miles for some takeout, and the traffic was just heavy enough that the monsoon hit before I could get back into the safety of the hotel room. One of those low dark cloud banks came right at me, and I got drenched in about 45 seconds trying to get into the hotel. The winds were scary.
You can see how flash floods happen with weather like that. And why snakes take advantage of the dry periods to get a little asphalt time.
At first glance Alliance did not impress. A light drizzle and dark clouds greeted me at the end of a long drive from Ft. Pierre, SD. The hotel was old and somewhat rundown, and when the clerk told me the WiFi was out, that further dampened my spirits.
But a run can be a cure for anything, even in a light drizzle. It can take you to a place you wouldn’t otherwise find. This run started out dubiously. I cut across a field next to the hotel that turned out to be an organic mosquito farm. It got better from there. I took a path that dove under the railroad tracks and into an older neighborhood, on my way to a bike path that might get me off the sidewalks.
Which it did. And it took me past some beautiful old homes and parks and streams and ballfields and old buildings. Alliance, it turns out, is delightful, if you can avoid the mosquitos. The bit around my hotel was not so delightful, and I might never have seen the good part without the run.
The state bird of Nebraska appears to be the fly, which is not particularly large or troublesome there, just abundant. I stopped in the middle of nowhere an hour or so before Alliance to take a leak by the side of the road and made the mistake of leaving the car door open while I did so. I was still shooing flies out of the car the next afternoon as I drove into Denver. I got really good at calmly lowering the windows at 75 mph with my left hand and nudging flies out with my right.
My big victory for the day was yet to come. When I finished my run, I prepared to head across the street to McDonalds to use their WiFi for as long as I could stand to sit in McDonalds. I had forgotten to plug my laptop in the night before when I used it, however, so the battery was low, so I plugged it in to let it charge while I showered. I then called my wife for our evening chat, and as we talked I decided to check the hotel WiFi to make sure it really wasn’t working. When I looked at my WiFi settings on my phone, I saw the button for the Auto-Join Hotspot function.
I had never used my iPhone as a hotspot. I had never tried. It was an Epiphany. It worked better than any hotel WiFi I remember. I didn’t have to go to McDonalds! I could do all of my end-of-day work AND watch some West Wing. The next morning, when I got an unexpected call from a prospect and wanted to send him some follow-up documents, I opened my laptop and connected to my iPhone and sent him the documents right there in the Dollar Store parking lot. Game changed.
I know. You’re laughing at my boomer ignorance. I don’t care. I’m already twice as efficient and effective as a regular human – when something like this happens, it’s just icing on the cake for me, Bubba. When I need it, the spot will be hot.
Dry, windy, high-altitude, hot, dusty – felt like I was running in a Sergio Leone film. I should have played just Morricone soundtrack music in my headphones. Plus I was on an old railroad grade between I-25 and Hwy 20/26, so it was the antithesis of picturesque and sublime.
But, I run. It doesn’t have to be idyllic. It doesn’t have to be pleasant. It can be uncomfortable and unsettling and unfun. I had to weave through tall weeds and thistles and through a hail of grasshoppers, but I will tell you this – there was no one else on the trail, and that is the way I like it. In fact, no one might have ever run on this trail, and people driving by might have seen me and said to themselves, “No one in their right mind would be running on that trail right now,” and that, also, is the way I like it.
I do not want to call Casper the Unfriendly Ghost-Town, but it is not the garden spot of Wyoming. I had driven through some beautiful, unseasonably green mountainous country all day, from Rock Springs to Riverton to Casper, and now my outside-the-car time was running back-and-forth through terrain reminiscent of a vacant lot next to the truck stop.
You can tell Casper is a harsh environment, because the primary wildlife are red ants that look like they were stunt-ants in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I sped up a little each time I passed one of their giant anthill knolls, which are easy to spot due to the absence of vegetation and the piles of bones around them.
This aerial photo of the killer ants does not do it justice. They were lightning quick and appeared to be reenacting a scene from Mad Max: Fury Road.
After the run I picked thorns out of my socks, dumped sharp mineral bits out of my shoes, took a cool shower, and drove to the local Panda Express for a plate with fried rice, orange chicken, and kung pao chicken. The orange was all the sweeter, the kung pao all the spicier, and the rice all the frieder because I had got my run in, in conditions less than ideal, and I felt great.
Hello, Altitude, my old friend. The first of four runs in Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The high altitude applies mostly to Wyoming. This was also the hottest of the runs, but some clouds moved in and made it rather pleasant.
The school was less than a mile from the hotel, and less windy as well. A brand new track surface – no lane lines, markings, or numbers. It definitely added spring to the step. A few locals were out working on their soccer skills. The artificial surface football field looked new too. The neighborhood looked a little weatherbeaten, as does much of Wyoming.
The drive from Denver to Cheyenne to Rock Springs was surprisingly green. A resident of Casper told me later in the week that there has been more rain in the late spring and early summer than normal. Wyoming is not this green at this point of the summer normally, he said. It was a welcome surprise. The sage green of the grass was stunningly beautiful.
I like the challenge of the altitude. I like the feeling of the lungs being forced into turbo mode. It clears the mind, IMHO. Breathing hard is meditative. And I like the dry high desert air, with some wind, which dries up your sweat almost right after the body releases it. I like the feeling of sun on skin, though I kept my shirt on for this run. No need to subject others to that.
The transition from the gate to the baggage claim to the rental car center at the Denver Airport took much longer than expected, so I missed my planned sales visit in Rock Springs. I had planned to visit one place that afternoon, then two more the following morning. I adjusted and made it 3 the next morning, and it all worked out. Rock Springs looks better in the morning. I felt better in the morning. Summer is for mornings and evenings.
As I walked back to the hotel, I passed a man watering his lawn, with his dog – a puppy – unleashed. The dog followed me. Then the neighbor’s dog followed me. Then we had two Rock Springs citizens trying to corral their dogs who wanted to go for a walk, evidently, because they were not allowing their owners to turn them around. I finally had to stop so that they could catch up with the dogs, who both gave me a disappointed look as they walked away.
This was a great day all around. I hit all 5 of my sales stops and had quality visits, plus made it to 3 more optional stops. It was one of those perfect summer days in the Northwest – 75 degrees, sunny, light breeze. Rain earlier in the week had left all of the foliage clean and crisp. I drove with the window down for stretches. Glorious.
I stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott, which was clean and beautiful and new, a far cry from the America’s Best Value Inn in Kelso, where I stayed the night before. The Tukwila Interurban Trail ran right behind the hotel. Just what we want. It snaked around and under a freeway, where the smell of urine was strong, but then it met the Green River Trail and stayed away from the rush hour traffic.
I ran past soccer fields and industrial yards and mud banks and blackberry bushes. Ah, blackberry bushes, my old friend. It was good to see you again. I have spent much of my life in close proximity to blackberry bushes. As a kid we used clippers and hockey sticks to slash tunnels in the berry bushes in the field below our house. When the berries ripened, we’d pick them at their sweetest plumpness, and my mom would bake blackberry pies. I got many, many scratches from blackberry bushes. The thorns have some kind of natural defense nastiness to them that reddens the welts and reminds you to take care when you mess with them.
Blackberries are a nuisance plant, and they will grow quickly right where you just cleared some other brush, or where there has been a fire. In the 1930s and 1940s there were 3 major forest fires in the Tillamook Forest in Oregon, and it basically burned 200 square miles of old growth timber to the ground. My dad was a kid then, and they would go up into the mountains after the fire, and he said they were covered in blackberry bushes. By the time I was hunting elk with him in 1976, that forest was mature again and looked like it had been like that for years. One of my favorite places in the world, the Tillamook Forest. Nothing like it.
Maybe the Olympic Peninsula on the other side of the Puget Sound is lot like the Tillamook Forest. I’ve never been there. You can be out walking in the Tillamook Forest for a half-hour, an hour-and-a-half drive from a large city, and you will look around and know that no human being has ever stepped right where you are stepping that moment. Maybe someone from the Chinook Tribe 400 years ago, but even then probably on the trail nearby and not between the cedar and the fir you’re walking between, ducking under the old hemlock log that fell and created a root crater fifteen feet deep.
I just got the email with the link to the drawing results for hunting elk in Michigan (I did not draw a tag). There is a large elk herd in Michigan, maybe 1000 elk, they think. In Oregon, there are probably a 1000 elk harvested by hunters every year. Hunting elk in Michigan is basically a once in a lifetime thing. If you draw an either sex tag and do not shoot a bull, you can apply again 10 years later. If you draw a bull only tag, that’s it for life. No more applying, even if your hunt is unsuccessful. In Western Oregon, most of the hunting units are still wide open, non-draw. I could fly to Oregon the day before elk season, buy an out-of-state license and tag, and hunt elk the next day. And I might.
One of the coolest things about the Tillamook Forest is that the mountains are killers – steep, crumbly, majestic – and yet the highest elevation in the Forest is under 4000 feet above sea level. From the top peaks and ridges on a clear day, you can look west and see the Pacific Ocean. Some of the canyons look like they go below sea level. When you’re in the bottom of one and have to climb your way back out, on a cold, windy, rainy day in November, you find out the true nature of your physical and mental ability and endurance.
The elk can be hard to find in Western Oregon. They are there, but there is ample cover. I have hunted for an entire four-day elk season and not seen a single elk. Multiple times. In nearly 40 years of elk hunting there, I have taken five bulls. I am not culling the herd by any means. The herd is culling me. I hunt alone a lot, which my wife does not like. As I get older, the danger of being out in the woods alone grows. I am aware of that. I am more careful about where I step and how far I wander.
What does all this have to do with the Tukwila Interurban Trail? Not a whole hell of a lot. I could blather on about elk hunting in the Tillamook Forest for 200,000 words if you’re up to it. Let’s go!
Don't Make It a Habit. Make It a Ritual. 