Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I started to run this morning.  After only a couple of steps I was past the line of sight of my neighbor's house, and I immediately stopped.  The sunrise was gorgeous.  I took a picture, but since I'm so far behind on blogging, and I've taken more pictures and uploaded them to my Strava since then, I can't link it to the blog.  Oh well.  Just imagine it.  Apparently there are some fires going on in California that have brought a lot of smoke our way, and that's why the sun looked so incredibly pink.

I don't remember any details about this run.

I don't remember any details about this run.  It was either today or yesterday that I saw Sis. Porter walking alone with her two dogs.  Usually one of her daughters is with her.  But I saw her post on Facebook that the daughter she is usually with just got married.  So I said, "Looks like that family keeps on growing!"

Vickie and I drove down the road to Hilltop.  There were a lot of people!  Most of them were the ALA (American Leadership Academy) high school football team.  All the young men were wearing white shirts.  So it was like a sea of white.  They only ran about half way up.  I went up and down twice.  Vickie went up only once, but she takes the scenic route, so she got in almost the same amount as distance as I did.

This morning Vickie and I went to hike the Pass Mountain Trail.  I had done this once before with my friend Paul Niccolls.  Vickie and I did a part of it with Herbie a couple of months ago.  We got up early and Emily was already up.  Oh brother.  We were afraid this would happen because we only have one other daughter at home right now to watch her.  But Emily is getting better at being self sufficient.  Anyway, we left and she was fine. 

The first thing we saw when we got there was a couple with some cages and a big red macaw.  They let the macaw loose and it flew in a big circle and landed back on the lady's arm.  Then they let two other birds out of their cages.  I don't know what kind of birds they were.  I think maybe a dove and a colorful pigeon.

We started hiking, and I had told Vickie that I wanted to push the pace.  So we did what we could.  We got passed twice.  We saw other hikers and some mountain bikers.  We stopped once at 4 miles to eat.  We both ran out of water by the time we were done.  So this hike was just about right.  It was warming up.  It's supposed to be over 110 again today.

Today was my first day running since our hike on Sunday.  It kinda wiped me out, and it's been sooo hot here lately.  The high today is supposed to be 115º.  I fell asleep real early last night.  In fact, I woke up at midnight thinking it was probably 4am.  So I went back to sleep and was woken up an hour later by Herbie barking and barking and barking.  He wouldn't shut up.  Finally I got up and saw that there were kittens in the street.  After that I couldn't get back to sleep until 4am.  Then I woke up at 5:30am. 

I wasn't sure I even wanted to run.  I've been keeping the boys busy all week with surveys.  Two days ago they were having trouble surveying a lot even though it was less than a quarter of a mile away from the one they did the day prior.  The problem was that it was surrounded by power lines.  They couldn't go outside of the power lines or the radio connection stopped working.  So they weren't able to go get the control points at the section corners.  I told them to just survey the lot and then we would come back out with the conventional equipment and make the adjustment as needed.  So I went out with them yesterday.  After a couple of hours of walking around, I was exhausted.  If I had been out there any longer, even though I was drinking water, I could've seen myself getting heat exhaustion.

Anyway, I've felt crummy all week, so I decided to just do one loop.  I saw Sis. Porter.  She was running, so I didn't think I'd catch up to her.  But then she stopped so I did catch up to her so that we could have an awkward conversation.  Me: Good morning.  Her:  Morning.  How's it going?  Me:  Oh, pretty good.  Her: giggle.  Me:  It's sooo warm!  The end.

Saturdays used to be reserved for my "long" runs.  Now it's just so hot and I'm so out of shape, that this is just about all I can do.

Today wasn't quite as hot as it has been.  It was in the low 80's.  I felt better.  I tried pushing the pace some.  I ended up going over a minute per mile faster than my last run.  Mind you, both paces were super slow.  But it was nice.

Back to being hot.  I took yesterday off because I couldn't sleep.  I felt awful today.  Not sure if it was the heat, or the day off, or the faster pace Monday.  Probably all of the above.

So yesterday we got a new chicken.  Sis. Lee texted my wife and said they caught one wandering down the street.  She asked if we wanted it.  Vickie said it's up to me, and I said sure.  So she brought it over late in the afternoon, and I brought it out back to integrate it with the others.  She was very nervous.  She didn't like when David would cockle doodle doo.  The other chickens seemed curious.  They would attempt to get close to check her out, but she would just run away.  After a while all the chickens went in their coop and Maria went to the other side of the pool fence.  Then Vickie got home and picked her up and put her in the coop with the others.  I stayed out and watched them for a while to make sure they didn't attack her.  She was still quite nervous and was searching for a way out.  After about 30 minutes I opened the coop to let them all out.  It was starting to get dark, so they would all go back in shortly.  But I'm not sure Maria ever went back in to hunker down for the night. 

So this morning I went out to go check on her.  She was fine.  She was kind of hanging around the others.  I hope they accept her.  Anyway, it felt hot, so I checked my phone and it said it was 93º!  Man!  I went running, and it was slow, but not as slow as yesterday.  It was 91º by the time I finished.  Vickie wondered how it could get cooler, and I told her about my theory of the sun rays pushing the air around which creates a bit of a cooling breeze.  Anyway, I didn't feel terrible.  So that's good.  I saw the old man in the fisher hat coming to the Floodway.  He was on the west side heading north and I was on the east side heading north.  I guess we were racing.  I was worried that he might be faster than me now, but I'm still faster.  Phew!  I got to Brown and I saw a lady walking down the street.  I also saw the tall old lady who had stopped at the gate to stretch out.  I ran by her and she turned and started following me.  Now I was racing her.  I was now on the west side heading south and then I saw the lady that was walking down Brown was on the east side heading south.  So I was racing her, too!  Well, she was definitely faster than me.  I didn't want to look back to see if the tall old lady was catching up to me.  Then the other lady started walking and I caught up to her.  But then she started running again and passed me.  This happened a couple of more times, but before she reached Adobe, she was walking again, and I beat her.  I finally turned around and I had put some distance between me and the tall old lady, too. 

I crossed  Adobe and continued heading south.  I saw the Ashcroft family on the other side of the Floodway.  This was the second time in as many days that I've seen them out this early.  Apparently my wife saw me here, but I didn't see her.  I turned and headed north again on the east side of the Floodway.  I saw my wife coming.  But I also saw a new hobo who had just woken up and was making his way to the gate.  So I stopped and kissed Vickie, and then waited to make sure she was safe.  Once she passed him, I started running again.  I saw another lady coming.  She was carrying a plastic bag.  Was it a dog poop bag?  I didn't see any dog.  Then I realized it was Amy Spencer.  I waved and she said, "How are you doing?"  I said, "Fine.  What's in the bag?"  She said, "Lunch!"
 

Well, we got a small monsoon last night.  It didn't rain hard, but it did rain.  Our giant pool floaty almost blew away.  The chicken hunkered down by the back door.

I woke up and looked at the temperature.  Low 80's!  Yee haw!  I did my normal 2 loops.  I saw 5 other runners out today.  It started to sprinkle in the last half mile.  Felt good.

I got home and went directly to the pool.  It was a mess!  Full of leaves from the storm.  I thought I would clean it a little.  Just to get most of the leaves out.  Our pool guy is supposed to come today anyway.  I started cleaning, and I didn't stop.  I even scrubbed it.  I'm finally sitting down to work now and it's 9:30am.  Oh well.
 

Vickie asked me if I wanted to go hike Hilltop with her this morning and I said yes. When we got there she said she wasn't feeling great and she was just going to hike around the base.  I ran up as much as I could, but it wasn't much.  At one point I slipped and had to catch myself with my hands.  I decided I would just do one ascent.  I got back down to the van and called Vickie to see what she was doing.  She said she was going to keep hiking around for a while, so I said that I was going to head towards home and she could pick me up on the way.  I started running very slowly towards home.  She finally got to me about 1.25 miles after I started.  She dropped me off and went back because now she was feeling better.

Two loops around the East Maricopa Floodway and the RWCD Canal.  It's been a week and a half, so I don't remember anything.

One loop.

2 loops.

This was a hike with my wife, daughter Katelynn, Daylene, Lebrea, Daylene's brother, Daylene's brother's girlfriend, and Daylene's brother's friend.  We drove out to Anthem.  Anthem was originally designed to be a master planned community.  They had no idea how big it was going to be.  It's located north of Phoenix.  It got so big that it was causing all sorts of traffic jams for people on the I-17.  They had to redo the infrastructure out there with onramps and offramps.  I'm not sure if it's still considered a community or a town.  I think it's just a community.  Anyway, we parked in a residential neighborhood right on a street in front of some random houses.  Seemed weird.  We were running a little behind so everyone was already there except for Daylene's brother's friend.  He told us to go on without him and they would catch up.  So we walked to the end of the block and to the trailhead. 

The mountain we climbed was Daisy Mountain.  It wasn't terrible.  It got kinda steep toward the top.  There was a tattered American flag waving at the peak.  We took some pictures and rested for a bit.  Lebrea was the last to summit.  The other boys had caught up to us and passed us.  There were two other peaks we were going to climb and the third one had another American flag.  By the time I, Vickie and Katelynn got there, everyone had already left because they didn't want to stop anymore.  It was getting very hot, and everyone was sweating sooo much.

We started our way down and Katelynn was afraid she was going to fall, so she was going very slow.  I went on without them, but then I turned around and told them they needed to pick up the pace.  At this rate it was going to get real hot, and then they might get stuck in the heat.  When we got out of the steep part I could see Daylene and Lebrea heading south even though I couldn't see how the trail led to them.  I turned around and could see Vickie and Katelynn.  So I continued onward.  At some point the trail must've split because I can see with Strava that Vickie and Katelynn took a slightly different path than me.  I went up to the crest of another small hill.  They went around it.  That was probably the safer way to go because coming down was very slippery.  I was almost skiing down.  I had to just turn sideways and slip down until I could stop.  It took a while, but I finally got down to the bottom.  Luckily because I saw Daylene and Lebrea earlier I found the correct trail to hike back.  If I hadn't seen them, I wouldn't have seen the trail because at the bottom of the hill was a jeep trail, and the single track trail was somewhat hidden.  So I started hiking and hoped that my wife and daughter would find it, too.  After a while I called Vickie.  I asked where she was.  She said she had just gone through some loop or something.  I was like, that doens't help.  Using the Strava Flyby tool, she must've already found the trail while I was talking to her because she really wasn't that far behind me.  Also, going around the hill probably made it easier for her to see the trail.  I kept going and they started to catch up to me.  That was good because it meant Katelynn finally got over her fear.  They caught me and Katelynn had already gone through her two bottles of water, plus the extra one my wife had.  Luckily I had two extras in my pack.  I gave it to her and they beat me back to the van.  We then drove half a mile south to go get some acai bowls.  I guess we're real fancy now.