Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I woke up around 4am.  Figured it wouldn't be worth trying to go back to sleep since the rooster would be waking me up any moment.  I was right.  I started running at 6:28am.  It's warm. 

I've been seeing kittens for the last few nights when I take Herbie on a walk.  They live in the front yard five houses down from me.  I paused real quick to see if I could spot them this morning.  They were there nursing.

There was a lot of people out.  I thought we were supposed to be under curfew or something.  As I approached University, I saw a vehicle pull up to park by the fence.  A lady and her little dog got out.  The dog was so excited to be out and sniff the fence that I don't think it noticed me.  So I said, "Hello, puppy!"  When it heard me it looked like it was excited to see me, so I bent down to pet it.  When I reached for it, it started yelping like it was hurt.  I think I overstepped my boundaries.

I felt sluggish today.  I think it's because I took Herbie on an extra long walk last night.  We went about 3 times the distance that we usually go.  On the way home I saw the kittens again.  I also saw Jacie and Julie.  They're Emily's age.  They're twins.  They were walking their dog.  I pointed at the first one and said, "Hi Jacie."  Then I pointed at the next one and said, "Hi Julie."  The way they smiled made me think I had guessed wrong who was who.  I had a 50/50 shot.

I wanted to do three loops this morning because I didn't get a long run in last week.  But I also had to leave the house at 7:30ish to make it to my job site meeting on time.  I took a solid nap yesterday, and didn't sleep too well last night.  Often when I take naps I get sleep paralysis.  I try to wake up, but I can't.  But over the years I've managed to train my arm to move a little.  Sometimes it's just enough to get it over the side of the bed so that once my arm falls down, it wakes me up.  Or sometimes it's enough to reach over to my wife and shake the bed so that she wakes me up.  I remember doing that last night and she tried to wake me up, but I just wasn't coming out of it.  She would shake my arm and tell me to wake up, but it wasn't happening.  So I just kept shaking the bed until finally I woke up.  I don't like it.  Maybe I shouldn't take naps.  Anyway, that was around 3am, and I slept restlesly after that until 5am.  Also the darn rooster keeps cockledoodledoing.

Well, I didn't get out early enough to do 3 loops.  I barely had time for 2.  I jumped in the shower and got ready as fast as I could.  We loaded up the van with the survey equipment and headed out.  Google maps said we would be 4 minutes late, so I tried to drive a little over the speed limit.  We got there right at 4 minutes after the hour.  But we got there right before the city inspector, so it was all good. 

The run was nice.  Lots of familiar faces.  Weather wasn't too bad today.  My legs felt good.  But it's 4pm now, and after walking around all morning at the job site, my legs are sore.  We'll see how I do tomorrow.

It's Friday.  I haven't been keeping up with blogging.  Oh well.  Here goes.  This morning (Tuesday) I thought, "Let's try bringing the dog with me for 1 loop."  Why not?  What could go wrong?  Besides the fact that a few nights ago as we were walking, and as we were going down the steep bank of the Floodway, Herbie spotted a coyote.  After watching it a few seconds, he decided to lunge after it.  Knowing I would fall down for sure, I just let go.  It was dark out, and I couldn't see exactly where he went after he got on the other side of the Floodway.  But I could see another coyote that started following them.  I tried to run after them, but I would have to stop and listen to try and figure out where they were.  I couldn't hear anything.  I kept going south until I almost got to the well site.  That's when I called my wife and said, "I can't find Herbie."  It had only been about three or four minutes.  I figured maybe he chased it all the way down to University or something.  So, my wife said, "Do you want me to come help you look?  Wait a minute.  I hear a dog barking."  Herbie had found his way back home.  He must not have chased very long.  Such a dumb dog.  And a smart dog, too, I guess.

Back to today (Tuesday.)  I leashed him up and started running.  He was like, "Okay.  We're doing this?"  He tried to run too fast, but I reined him in.  He still wanted to sniff and pee on every bush, but I wouldn't let him.  He wanted to check out every person we went by, but I wouldn't let him.  But then he wanted to poop, and I couldn't stop him.  Luckily I had brought a baggie with me for just such an occasion.  But that ended the loop.  I immediately turned around and ran back home.  It was 1.14 miles. 

I wasn't satisfied with just 1.14 miles, so that night after dinner I went back out and did another loop by myself.

Last night's run was nice and slow, so even though it had only been 9 or so hours since then, I felt good.  I don't remember much about this run other than seeing two guys in the bottom of the Floodway letting their dogs play together.  When I looped around the one guy was leaving towards the north and the other guy was going south.  The southern guy was actually jogging while wearing jeans and a cowboy hat.
 

What do I remember about this run?  Not much.  It was only yesterday so I should remember something.  Oh well.  If I do, I'll come back.
 

Yesterday and today are supposed to be 108º.  It was warm.  Oh, now I do remember something about yesterday.  I was wearing a black shirt, and I was extra warm.  Hmmm, I'm not going to go back and edit that one in.  Anyway, our dryer broke, and I don't have a lot of clean running clothes right now.  I wore a pair of shorts that I don't usually wear.  They were kind of loose and I couldn't untie the draw string to tighten them up.  But they stayed up.  Mostly.  There was a lot more people out this morning.  At one point I saw two walkers in front of me.   One was about 100 feet in front of the other.  Right before catching the first one, two cyclists passed us up.  The right when I caught the first walker, two other walkers were coming towards us.  I had to run right in the middle of all of them.  I said in a loud voice, "It's like Grand Central Station here!"  They all looked at me bewildered.  I looped around and saw this tall all lady that I see a lot.  Usually she's jogging, but today she was walking with a friend.  Also I was following the cowboy jogger from Tuesday.  He was once again running and wearing regular clothes.  I looped around at University and saw Jeff laying down up against the wall.  I barely make eye contact with him anymore.  Then I saw a lady (looked like a high school aged girl, except for her forearm covered in tattoos.)  She looked like she was about to start running, but then she saw me, so she casually walked back to the park entrance, sat down and pretended to tie her shoe.  That's when my shorts started to sag and felt like they were going to fall off.  So I took my phone out of my pocket and carried it the rest of the way.  I saw the Grand Station Central couple again, and the man said, "You're doing good today."
 

This was actually a hike. Perhaps for purposes of Mileage Board I should apply some sort of equivalent conversion factor from hiking to running.  But for now, I'll let it be.

My wife wants to hike the Grand Canyon Rim 2 Rim in a few months with a group of girls she knows from our hometown of Kingman.  She's gone on a handful of hikes with them to prepare.  Since tomorrow is our anniversary, she was torn about going on this particular hike with them because it would technically be over our anniversary weekend.  So she talked me in to doing it with them.

The hike was Mount Baldy, near Greer Arizona.  We drove up Saturday to Pinetop-Lakeside.  That's where we rented a cabin last year during Spring Break.  Vickie's friends' names were Daylene, Heidi, and Labrae.  They rented rooms at the Best Western.  Vickie checked that morning on-line and saw that there was vacancy, so she didn't bother booking a room.  We got there and of course by then there was no vacancy.  So we went down the street to the Quality Inn and no vacancy there either, but they told us their sister company, the Comfort Inn, had vacancy.  We booked a room there, a little more expensive than I would have liked, but what are you going to do?

We met for dinner at 7:30pm.  Of course, nobody bothered to get reservations, so we had to wait a good 30 minutes.  What's with these people??  After dinner I stopped to top of the gas tank at Circle K and got a breakfast burrito, a chocolate milk, and a cup of glazed donut holes for breakfast.  I set my alarm for 3:30 am so that we could pick up the girls at 4am and drive to the trail head.  I didn't end up eating any of the donut holes.  Also, it was entirely too early for a bowel movement.

We drove out towards the Mount Baldy trail head.  On the way there I saw a group of what I can only assume were wild horses.  They weren't fenced in or anything.  About 10 miles later I saw another large animal on the side of the road.  It was just barely getting light out.  The sun had still not broken the horizon.  I thought it was a cow.  I slowed down and I could see more figures, including one in the road.  We realized it was a large herd of elk.  It was amazing!  There were babies and everything.

We got to the trail head, and there were a handful of cars there, even though it was not even 5am yet.  Apparently people like to do this hike in two days.  They hike up a ways, set up camp, and finish it up the next day.  We were doing the whole thing in one day.  We got our packs on and headed out, taking a couple of pictures to prove we were doing this.

It's a looped trail.  There's a gravel trail from the parking lot to the fork where the loop starts.  Daylene said we would be going clockwise.  I had to teach her what clockwise meant because indeed we would be going counterclockwise.  We talked about it the night before at dinner.  I told them it would be nice to go this way because there were three little hills to go up and down before getting to the big long climb.  Once we got to the top, it would be downhill the rest of the way.

For some reason they had me lead the way.  Before we knew it we were through mile 1.  Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.  Daylene can hike!  She stayed right behind me while the other girls lagged a little.  Somewhere around mile 3 we must've walked right by a baby deer.  The laggers saw it because they scared it with all their chatter.  At mile 3.5 we came to a large stream crossing.

They made me cross it first to make sure the logs were steady.  After crossing, we took our first break.  I ate a couple of pieces of beef jerky.  Then I wandered up the hill behind a bush to take care of what I couldn't when I woke up.  The rest wasn't very long, and we were back to hiking.  The trail was following the stream.  Around mile 6 we entered a meadow and the wind really started picking up.  I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be a foreshadowing of things to come.

Although our first break was the start of the long ascent, now we were entering the steepest part (between mile 6 and 9.5.)  They knew from the reviews that there were fallen trees all over the trail.  We started to see them.  Some we had to crawl under, and others we had to scramble over.  We soon realized it wasn't just a few.  There must've been easily 50 trees we had to do this to!  It made the difficulty of the hike double.  Being the man of the group, I felt obligated some times to stop and help the girls over on some of the more hard ones.  Daylene decided we would take our second break at the half way point, 8.5 miles  By this time we were getting tired.  Every tree scramble followed by immediately going uphill was exhausting.  I would have to catch my breath each time.  Anyway, I had already taken my hoodie off and the shirt I had underneath it was sleeveless.  I wasn't chaffing yet with my backpack on my shoulders, but I was afraid I would, so I changed my shirt.  I had another pair of socks, too, but I never changed them.

After our break Daylene and I were putting some serious distance between us and the laggers.  And we weren't even going very fast.  Some times we would stop and wait 'til we saw them before we started again.  At one time we stopped and another hiker came by.  We asked how far back the rest of our group was.  He said about 300 yards.  He also said we were only about a quarter of a mile from the saddlehorn.  So I asked Daylene if we should wait for the girls or go to the top and wait.  We decided to go the top since we were so close.  The other hiker was taking a break with his dog.  He said he hikes this almost every weekend.  He said that we're about three quarters of a mile from the crest of Mount Baldy.  But we weren't supposed to go up there without a permit because it's sacred Indian land.  He told us they spread their Apache ashes up there.  He said that during the monsoon season it really starts to stink once all the rain hits the ashes.  We talked to him for a while until he  was ready to leave.  He also told us that this is one of the few places where we had cell service, so when he left, Daylene called her husband to let him know we had made it to the top.

Once the other girls got there, we took another break.  Vickie took her first and only pee.  She was afraid that she was going to have to completely take off her pants, but I told her just to find a fallen tree.  They were everywhere.  Daylene adequately called that area a tree graveyard.  The wind blows so hard that trees fall down all the time.  I doubt the forrest service can keep up with keeping the trail clear.  Sometimes we would hear a tree creak, and get nervous.  Once I heard what I thought was a round of gun shots.  But now I think it may have been a tree that fell over and rolled down the mountain and was crashing into other trees.

It was all down hill from here.  The sign said it was 6 miles, but it was actually closer to 7 miles.  I would have liked one more rest, but Daylene thought that we would probably not need one with only 6 miles to go.  The master hiker dude had told us that there were still trees that we would need to climb over on the way down.  He also told us where to find the plane wreckage.  Going down felt so much better.  Whenever we climbed a tree, I was no longer gasping for breath.  We were moving along pretty quickly, at least 5 minutes per mile faster than our uphill average.  We wanted to be done.  My feet were starting to hurt.  Now there were no more laggers.  Everyone was scooting along.  I knew it was going to be longer than 6 miles, but I knew I had it in me to finish.  We got back to the trail head, took a couple more pictures, got to the Jeep, and I just wanted to collapse.  We all did.

It was a fun and beautiful hike.  I drove the girls back to Pinetop-Lakeside.  We were going to go out and eat again, but they were exhausted and thought they would just get some fast food for their trip back to Kingman.  Vickie and I stopped at a restaurant in Showlow.  It was good food, but surprisingly, I didn't have much of an appetite.  The drive home sucked eggs.  There was so much traffic between Globe and Superior!!  I was happy to be home.  It was a hard hike, and now I'm not sure I want to do Rim to Rim.  But maybe it won't be so bad if there aren't trees to climb over and under.

My legs have been too sore since Sunday's hike, even to take Herbie on his nightly walk.  Last night I finally felt up to it.  We were walking in the bottom of the Floodway when Herbie started to sniff something.  Last time it was a frog, but I wasn't sure what it was this time.  Maybe a snake?  So I turned my flashlight on and it was a bird.  Something was wrong with it.  It was just shaking.  So I picked it up and carried it for a while until it finally hopped out of my hand.  I called two of my daughters to see if they could come pick me up, but they were both at friends' houses.  So I picked it up again and it finally started flapping its wings.  I gave it a little toss, and it flew away.  Prolly it died as soon as it landed.

So I tried to run this morning.  I was doing pretty good, until I had to stop at Adobe to wait for a car to go by.  When I started running again, my knee started to hurt, so I immediately stopped and walked home.
 

Yesterday was Father's Day.  Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, men, single mothers, etc. out there.  I got breakfast in bed; eggs benedict, corned beef hash, a few mini chocolate donuts, some grapes, a glass of orange juice, and a glass of chocolate milk.  I skipped lunch and for dinner we had tacos and burritos.  We had this yogurt on graham cracker crust for dessert.  So this morning was my first run in a few days and off of some yummy eating the night before.  It was very slow, but nice.  It was a lot earlier than I usually run, 5:37am.  There were thousands and thousands of mosquitos flying around.  I think they were getting in my mouth and slowing building up.  When I looped around and got to Adobe and the RWCD Canal, I could hear David.  David is our rooster that I guess Emily named after my brother?  Anyway, it's got to be over a tenth of a mile as the chicken flies.  How embarrasing.
 

I awoke early again this morning, but didn't start my run until 7:05am.  It was already 80º, so I checked to see what the high is going to be for today.  109º!  The run was decent.   Over a minute faster per mile than yesterday. I saw my fisherman hat friend.

I was reminded by Facebook that a year ago today I ran a route that spelled the letters P O O P.  I remember that day.  It was 9:30am when I finally had my wife drop me off in a neighborhood where I could run around the blocks that would actually allow me to spell my desired word.  It was hot.  Today I woke up early.  Thank you David.  But then I got a message from Paul Niccolls.  Paul was a registered land surveyor that moved back to his home country of England.  When he moved, he sold me all his equipment.  He also gave me CD's containing all the work he had done.  He needed me to find one of his old projects and send it to him.  I went through about a dozen CD's before I found it.  I finally got out the door at 9:07 am.  It was 92º and 94º when I finished.  I was very very slow.  When I looped around and was heading south shortly after passing Adobe I saw an old shirtless man wearing a straw hat running towards me.  The first thing I noticed about him was his bright shoes.  They looked orange at first, but they were probably more pink than orange.  I was wearing an orange shirt and orange shorts.  So I said, "Looks like you're wearing my shoes!  Or I'm wearing your outfit!"  He probably thought I was crazy, but at least I wasn't the one with sagging old man breasts.

Today is actually Monday.  I haven't blogged for a few days.  I can't remember much.  Was this the day I saw Sis. Ray and her daughter Rhoda?  Rhoda is Emily's age, and she's so kind to her.  After that I saw Sis. Porter and her daughter.

Maggie had texted Vickie and I Thursday morning to tell us that she had court and asked that we pray for her like we always do.  She sent us another text that evening to say it went well.  I texted her back and said come running with us Saturday morning and tell us all about it.  So we got up early and went to run Usery.  We picked her up shortly after 5am.  I saw both Debbie and Leanne, my Strava twin friends on the way there.  I can't tell them apart, and I saw Leann on the corner when we got stopped by a red light.  I rolled down my window and started yelling "Debbie" at her.  She couldn't hear me with her headphones on.  Anyway, it embarrassed Vickie and Maggie.

We were able to park at the sherriff's station, so that was nice.  We started running and although I was going slow, I was ahead of the girls.  Since it's smack dab in the middle of summer, I just decided to run 2 miles up and turn around.  There were a lot of cyclists.  I turned around and Maggie and Vickie weren't too far behind me.  I could hear them gabbing most of the way up. 

I didn't see any wild horses today, but I did see some pretty red flowers on top of some of the saguaros that were blooming.  So I stopped and took a picture.

I got out the door before 6am again today.  4 minutes before.  It was 80º, and my legs were sore from Saturday.  I guess. 

Last week I was walking Herbie at night when he saw something in the bottom of the Floodway.  Turns out it was a page to a novel.  I picked it up and read both sides.  It didn't seem to have a whole lot of continuity, but I maybe if I had read the whole book?  Anyway, it was also pretty risque, so I took it home to show my wife.  Hee hee.  A couple of days later I found another page from another book.  Today I found the source of the books.