Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I knew I wanted to do a nice long run today, but I didn't mean to go quite so far. 

I started out heading up the Floodway/RWCD Canal.  I saw three ladies walking my way right before McKellips.  One of them bent down and picked something up.  She took a few steps and bent down and picked something else up.  By that time I could tell that they were dollar bills.  She kindly asked me if I had run by this way before.  I had to be honest and say that I had not.  But I offered to take the money from her.  In hindsight I should have set up a makeshift kissing booth.  $1 a kiss.  Except I hadn't brushed my teeth yet.

I crossed McKellips and there is a fence gate that's usually opened at the 1-3/4 and the Main Canal.  It's dry up season, and they've been doing maintenance work on the Canal.  I could see that there were no workers within the next quarter mile stretch of canal, so I went through the pedestrian opening.  I saw my Strava friend Mike Norberg as he was just starting out his morning bike ride.  We told each other good morning.  Mike lives at 1-1/2 where the barricade is at.  It was still up, so I turned west and ran through his neighborhood.  It's a gated community, but there's an open pedestrian access way.  Right at the gate there was a construction worker flagging dozens of big belly dump trucks into the subdivision that they're working on.  As I approached Val Vista some of them were coming back after dropping their load.  There were signs that said, "Truck Traffic 20 mph."  I thought that if I could run 20 mph (a 3 minute mile), I could hold them off.  But I was running closer to an 11 minute mile, so it didn't happen.

I turned north at Val Vista and headed toward the RWCD Main Pumping Plant.  There's some downhill here right before the turn on to the the dirt road that runs along the SRP Canal.  I figured if I ran along the South Canal Service Road, under the 202 Freeway, and a little bit beyond, I would reach 5 miles and would turn around.  I stopped after running about a quarter mile beyond the freeway.  I was at 4.8 miles.  0.2 miles to go.  But then I had an idea.  Maybe I could keep going and find a bridge to cross and I could take Greenfield back.  I started doing the math and thought that I wouldn't quite make 10 miles, so what would be the point of getting so close to 10 miles and not getting 10 miles???  So I would just do the 0.2 miles and turn around.  I started running and had another idea.  What if I kept going and found a bridge to cross at Higley?  Surely that would get me my 10 miles.  So, that's what I did.  Turns out there wasn't any bridges to cross the canal at Greenfield anyway.  I was now in no man's land, meaning I'd never run this far on this route before.  I stopped a couple of times to take pictures of the canal and to look at the map to make sure my plan would work.  I came upon a bridge and briefly contemplated crossing over it, but I could see a road up ahead and decided to cross it there.  It was a road to a concrete/cement company.  A few trucks passed by me while I was running there and it started to head back uphill.  I finally made it to Higley where there was more uphill to go over the 202 Freeway.  I could see that it was uphill back to McDowell, and having rode my bike by here on numerous occasions, I knew it would be uphill for a half mile past McDowell.  I knew that at Thomas Road I was just over 4 miles away from home.  How far had I run?  7 miles??!!!  Oh crud!  Oh well, I guess I'm doing 11 miles today.

It was also about this time that my left nipple started to get a little irritated.  Dang.  I still have 4 miles to go.  Do I take my shirt off?  Nope.  I'm too fat from eating so much Christmas food and I'm running on a main road.  I guess I'll have to grin and bear it.  Maybe my orange shirt would camouflage the blood.  So I soldiered on.  I would run with my arms close to my body so people wouldn't notice.  Then my right nipple started to bother me, but not as much as my left.  With three miles to go an RWCD truck honked at me.  Not sure who it was.  My legs were feeling it, but other than tired legs and the razer blades in my shirt, I was feeling all right.  With two miles to go I realized that I was still actively sweating.  Does that mean I'm burning calories?  The last mile was a slog fest, but I made it.  I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom and was surprised to see that my right nipple looked like it had exploded!  What was I thinking?  Well, I don't regret it.  It was worth it.  Especially after not running the first day of the year!

I was still sore from Thursday, so I was worried about how I'd do.  It was cold, but not too bad.  When we hopped in Mike's truck, the sensor on his rear view mirror said it was 44º.  It was me, Vickie, Maggie, Mike, and Glen today.  As we got about a mile from the sheriff's station, the temperature gage said 38º.  What the heck?  How did it drop 6º??  From that moment on I kept an eye on it and by the time we pulled into the parking lot it was 35º!!  I didn't bring any gloves like last week, so I would have to tough it out.

Vickie and Maggie left right away.  They had a quarter mile lead before I started.  Mike left next.  I would have gone with him, but I felt a pebble in my shoe.  I shook it out and decided to take a quick tinkle before I left.  Glen was the last to leave. 

Vickie is getting faster each week.  Maggie always stays with her, but if Maggie ever decided to train properly, she would probably be faster than me.  I was caught by Glen at 0.4 miles.  It took me until 1.5 miles before I caught Vickie and Maggie.  I didn't like that they run side by side and Vickie closest to traffic.  I always hug the edge of the road.  Oh, I forgot.  Right before Glen caught me, a big semi truck came rolling down the hill.  If it wasn't cold enough already, the wind that he caused chilled me to the bone.  I yelled, "Whooo!!!"  1 second later Glen yelled, "Whooo!!"

I kept it nice and slow because I didn't want to risk a stupid injury from having two long distance runs so close to each other.  I saw Mike coming back downhill and figured he must be a mile ahead of me.  I got to the top and could see Glen's headlamp coming back up from the other side of the hill.  He has been going down to the Usery Park entrance the last few weeks, so I figured if he did that again, then he's a mile and a half ahead of me!  Turns out, he only went 8 miles (turned around at the shooting range entrance).  So he was probaly 0.6 miles ahead of me.  He had run 5 miles yesterday evening, so he was playing it safe, too.

It wasn't long before I saw Vickie and Maggie.  As the sun was slowly coming up, I spent the rest of the time trying to spot wild horses.  I didn't see any!  It's been a while since we've seen them, but I know they're around because I see some of my friends post pictures of them on social media.  Oh well.  I finished up, and realized that I had sprung a couple of leaks on my nipples again.  Apparently they hadn't healed up from Thursday.  We waited for Vickie and Maggie to finish, and I hid my breasts from them until I got home, because I know how it makes Vickie cringe.

I woke up early.  Which is good, because school is back in session and I would need to get my kids ready.  It was dark out.  As I approached the Floodway I saw a man and his little dog leaving it.  As soon as I got in I could hear a coyote yipping not too far ahead.  I pulled my phone out and started to record some video.  I could hear that I was getting closer and closer, but it was too dark to see.  I knew it must be on the path or very close to it.  I barked and then yelled to try and scare it.  Then I finally saw it about 10 feet away from me.  It was too dark for the video to capture it, and I tried to turn my flashlight on, but for some reason it wouldn't.  Maybe it doesn't work while you have the camera going? (I ask myself.)  I stayed there for a bit, and then ran a little bit ahead.  I watched the video back.  At one point I could have swore I saw someone shine a light, maybe from the other side of the Floodway.  I turned and looked, but didn't see anyone.  So I started running again and after about 4 minutes I thought I saw another light.  I turned around and looked and caught the tail end of a shooting star.  That was cool, but I don't think it was the shooting star that flashed the light.  I guess that will remain a mystery.

I continued on my run and thought about how I never see Jeff anymore.  He had moved down the Floodway closer to University, but who knows where he is now.  As I was getting closer to where I used to see him all the time, I could see an older couple and a dog ahead.  It was still dark, but light enough to where I could see them.  I tried to holler good morning at them so they knew I was coming, but I don't think they heard me.  I said it again as I passed them, and their little dog started yapping at me.  By this time I could see a bunch of stuff where Jeff used to hang out, and wondered if he was there.   I felt bad if the dog's barking had woken him up.

I woke up before 5am, but I couldn't get out the door.  We've got a sickness going through our house, and I might have caught a bit of it.  I had to sit on the potty twice.  I finally got out right after 7am.  It was lighter outside than yesterday.  It said it was 49º, but it felt colder because of the breeze.  I mean, because of the wind chill.  My body feels like I should be running more.  All except for my knees.  They don't want to.  So I might take tomorrow off.  I saw someone coming towards me when I was half way between Adobe and University.  I knew it must be Vickie.  We stopped for our customary smooch and I kept going.  As I approached University, I saw two other ladies running north.  I ran to the other side of the Floodway and thought that if they have to wait for a bit for traffic, we could be entering the Floodway at the exact same time.  Sure enough, we did.  It was on now.  Who would make it to Adobe first?  Actually, I thought for sure they would.  For one, I'm slow.  For two, the Floodway path that I was on winds and turns and goes up and down.  But I noticed I was keeping up with them.  When I got to the half way point I noticed I was slightly ahead of them.  Kudos for me.  I can still outrun people!

Emily came and crawled into bed with us at 4am.  She had another "bad dream."  I think she just wakes up and uses that as an excuse.  I went to the bathroom and then couldn't get back to sleep, so I went running.  But I was in the bathroom for a longgggg time, so it was 5:41am when I started. 

It was dark, and there's not much to say about it.  The moon was bright and lit the way.  I looked at my pace when I was done and was surprised to see that it was about a minute per mile slower than what I have been running.  My first thought was maybe it was because of how dark it was.  But then I remembered that I've been sick the last two days.

Our team didn't run on Saturday.  Everyone was sick.  I decided to do a "longer" run today.  It felt like work, but I'm happy with my pace.
 

I woke up at 5am and got out the door at 7am.  It felt cold today, but it said it was 40º.  Sometimes you just got to trust that you'll warm up while you're running. 

My legs felt heavy today.  My pace was much slower than yesterday.  When I crossed University heading south, I spotted a coyote ahead of me on the Canal road.  I immediately grabbed my camera.  I zoomed it all the way out because I was afraid I would scare it away and wouldn't get a good picture.  I took a couple of pictures and it spotted me, but then it started coming towards me.  I thought, "How close is this guy gonna get?"  Then it finally went down in to the Floodway.  I got about 15 feet away from it and beckoned it to come to me so I could pet it.  There were two other runners coming towards me.  I recognized them as the two ladies I raced last week.  All of the sudden there went another coyote speeding down the middle of the Floodway.  As soon as it passed the first coyote, they both took off.  I yelled at the ladies, "You scared them away!"  They laughed and said they thought it was my dog until they saw me taking pictures of it.

It appears my Strava glitched slightly today, so, I'm entering in my distance from yesterday since I ran the same route.  It felt like work again today, but that's a good thing.  I was heading north along the Floodway path and I spotted a coyote in the bottom of the Floodway.  I stopped and took a picture and watched as it went to the other side of the Floodway where I would be shortly.  I ran to the other side and watched it some more and all of the sudden I saw another one running right by where I was just moments ago on the other side of the Floodway.  How did I miss it?  I  watched them both run south down the middle of the Floodway while I continued running myself.  Then I saw a third coyote.  I wasn't able to get a picture with all of them together.  I saw a guy walking his dog and asked him if he sawa the three coyotes.  He said he only saw two. 

Right before getting back to Adobe I noticed the Canal was filled with water.  I was so preoccupied with the coyotes that I failed to realize they were putting water back into the Canal after having it dry for about a month.  I continued south down the Canal road and I spotted my forth coyote sitting on top of the bank on the other side of the Floodway.  So that's the four I usually see.  I guess.  I wonder how far up and down the Canal they go.  Like, I wonder if that day that I saw 5 of them, if any of the 5 were the same ones I saw today.  Or is there just a bunch of coyotes haning around the Canal.

I should go check on my chickens now and make sure they're all right.

It was 49º this morning.  But it was also completely overcast and dark.  It made for a beautiful run even though I couldn't see anything.  My legs are sore still, so I took it nice and slow.  I have done the same route for the last three days; three loops on the RWCD/Floodway roads.  When I was heading north and crossed University, I saw that the vehicular gate was open.  I looked ahead and could see the tail lights of a truck.  As I kept running, the truck turned around.  Now its headlights were shining at me.  When I got real close it was hard to see due to the glare.  I came about 20 feet from running into this couple.  I had to swerve around them.  I got home and my wife had just finished her run, too.

Just two loops today.  I want to feel fresh for tomorrow.

Two more weeks until Ragnar.  It was me, Vickie, Maggie, Alyssa, and Mike this morning.  I hope Glen is all right.  This is two weeks in a row that he's missed.  He came and paid me for the race last week and told me he might have tweaked his knee.

It was cold again, but I was just wearing shorts and a T-shirt.  I was having to adjust my new reflective straps the entire run as they kept falling off my shoulders.  Luckily I only have one night run during Ragnar.  Or unluckily, depending on how you look at it.  But from a strap adjusting viewpoint, it's luckily. 

We all kind of left pretty close to the same time with Alyssa being the last to leave.  I'm always worried about her because she is diabetic.  But she's pushing through.  My legs have been sore all week.  I haven't given them a rest.  So my pace was a bit on the slow side, but not as bad as last week.  I warmed up and wasn't that cold until I turned around and discovered a nice breeze in my face.  But it warmed up again the further downhill I went.  Mike had gone 8 miles, which meant he had passed my going downhill right before I got to the top.  I tried to keep him in sight on the way down, but he's too fast, and he finished just over a half mile ahead of me.  No horses again today.  But I did hear coyotes yipping when we first got there.

Everyone pretty much went to the top and back.  Alyssa was the last to finish.  She wasn't too far behind Vickie and Maggie, which is good.  Then we all chatted for about 10 minutes before we decided we were too cold and went home.

MLK Day.  No school.  My wife and I went to Hilltop and just did one climb.  On the way down I was following this Native American lady and there was this old man on the trail in front of us.  When he saw us coming he moved over and said to the lady, "I'm watching out for.  There's Indians around.  I've spotted a few."

Just two nice and easy loops today.  It had been raining, but it was mostly done by 7am when I went running.

This might be long, depending on how many details I decide to share.

So yesterday we bought a house.  It's the house we've currently been renting for the last 6 years.  The recession hit us hard and we lost our last house, so we've been renting ever since.  To celebrate we went to Buca di Beppo.  But before we did that I had to take Herbie on his daily walk.  It had been lightly raining for most of the day.  Sometimes Herbie likes to pull real hard on his leash.  Well, a lot of the time.  I always have to be real careful when he walk down into the Floodway because it's steep and he tries to go so fast.  But because of the rain, it was slick and he pulled hard which caused me to slip.  I scratched up my arm some, but I was more mad than anything.  He kept wanting to pull hard, and I just wanted to kick him, buy you know, animal cruelty and stuff.

After a little bit he started to pull real hard.  Now I know he only does this when he sees a coyote, so I started looking for one, but it was dark out.  Then I saw it near the bottom of the west bank of the Floodway.  It trotted over toward the middle and stopped on the trail in the middle.  We got pretty close to it before it ran off.  We chased it a little bit.  I figured I was going to have to change my shirt anyway since I slipped in the mud.  If I start to sweat a little, what's the harm?  We chased it to the east side of the Floodway where it ran up the bank, went about 10 feet north and then came back down.  We followed it a little more and then we saw another coyote.  So we chased that one, too.  They weren't running away to try and get away.  They were just running enough so we couldn't catch them.  But then I noticed that once we stopped chasing one, I would turn around and the other one would be right behind us.  Not only that, but now there was a third one. 

They say coyotes aren't pack animals, but they certainly do hang out together.  But what I noticed is that they separate from each other instead of hanging together to fight together.  So we'd chase one and then we'd turn around and see the other two surrounding us.  It was like they were velociraptoring us.  I finally convinced Herbie to just walk away, but they were following us.  So we'd chase them off, but they still stayed close by.  I think the closest we got to one was about 8 feet away.  I tried to take some video, but it was too dark.

Fast forward to this morning.  I had gotten dressed to go on my run.  Vickie had already left for hers.  She texted me to say that it was foggy out and it was kind of eerie.  I immediately took Herbie out back for his morning pee, but it wasn't foggy out.  I figured it was probably only real foggy out near the Floodway where the fog likes to settle in the channel.  So I rushed Herbie back inside and fed him.  I didn't want to miss the fog before it lifted.  I didn't even stretch today, which I always do before I run.  I got to the Floodway and sure enough, there was fog.  I snapped a picture.

Up ahead on the path you can see a couple and their dog.  As I got nearer to them, I saw a coyote run out in front of them on the path.  I asked them if they saw it when I passed them and they did not.  I ran to where I had seen it and it was still there on the top of the bank.  Plus, there was another coyote with it.

I pointed them out to the couple and then I saw another one on the opposite side of the Floodway.  I titled my run on Strava - Coyotes in the Mist.  I ran up to Brown, crossed the Floodway, and headed back south.  I had seen the coyotes at the half way point between Adobe and Brown, so I kept my eyes open to see them again.  They had all moved down about an eight of a mile south towards Adobe.  Now they were all on the west bank together.  I took some more pictures.

You can see all three of them in this picture.

There are two of them in this picture.

I couldn't stay much longer because my glasses started to fog up and I couldn't see anymore.  I'm guessing they were the same three from last night, but who knows?

I crossed Adobe and saw a group of old men walking towards me.  I told them about the coyotes.  Then I saw Vickie running towards me.  We stopped and kissed and I showed her my pictures.

The End.

It was a nice morning out.  A tiny bit of fog.  No coyotes.  There were a bunch of people out today.  I saw the two old ladies that I've been seeing a lot lately.  They run together and I'm slightly faster than they are.  Then I saw another lady running towards me.  I don't think I've seen her before.  Then I could see someone sitting on the Floodway path from the other side.  I thought it was Jeff.  I haven't seen him very much.  The last time I saw him was Saturday when I drove by there.  I ran further and saw Jeff near University.  Yesterday there was a huge accident right here as a car hit a city bus.  The police had it taped off.  But it was open this morning.  So the person sitting on the path was not Jeff.  Turned out it was some guy with a skateboard and a hoodie playing a game on his phone.  After that there was a gaggle of old people on their walk.  I saw them yesterday, too.  Anyway, it was a nice day to be outside.
 

I've just been doing two loops all week because I want to be able to run a 10 miler tomorrow.  But my legs felt like lead today.  Is it weather?  Old age?
 

Next Friday is the last Del Sol Ragnar Relay.  I wanted to have a confidence booster so I asked Mike to drop me off at the top of Usery so I could run home.  Glen finally rejoined us to test out his knee.  He and Mike ran 8 miles together at a slower pace than normal.  I'm worried I might have to switch legs with him for Ragnar.  We'll see.  But that's why I wanted to make sure I could do a 10+ run without a problem.

They dropped me off and I briefly stretched out.  I took a quick tinkle and headed down.  I started to think about whether or not they would drive by me when they were done.  But I realized that I would probably be a mile in to it by the time they even started.  And if my wife runs the 7.4 miles, which she did, I would probably be over 9 miles by that point.  It would take them another 20 or 25 minutes to drive back, so I should easily be able to get home before they did.

I started thinking about coyotes, but for some reason my mind switched to javelinas.  I was running on the west side of the road which was with traffic.  I knew it would be about 2.5 miles before the road split and I could run on a sidewalk.  Since there's so much less traffic that comes this way (everyone is either heading to the lake or out of town) I hoped I might even be able to get there before someone drove past me.  I got about a quarter of a mile away before a car finally did.  And as evidence by the fact that I'm writing this entry, I did not die. 

Now I was starting to get into a more rural area, so I was starting to see more people out.  That was nice.  Also, there were street lights and I could have taken off my headlamp, but I kept it on for a while.  I got to Brown Rd. and knew I was at the 4 mile mark and was pretty confident none of the other runners had reached the top yet.  I contemplated texting them to let them know, but I didn't.  I ran by Hilltop and remembered that out of the 4 times I've attempted this run (this being the 4th) I've only completed it once.  One time I had to call my wife right here because my knee started to bother me.  To be honest, my legs weren't feeling great, but I was confident that if I kept running nice and easy, I could get home without a problem. 

Now came basically the only extended amount of uphill climb.  It doesn't even show up on Strava as uphill because it's artificial uphill in that it's a bridge over the 202 Freeway.  I reminded myself that if I felt tired, it was because I was running uphill.  But it wasn't bad at all.  I also knew that this was the half way point.  Now is where things got exciting.

There's a steep downhill after the freeway.  I was cruising down and I looked in the median of the road and spotted a javelina.  I immediately recognized it as one because they were already on my brain.  Now, javelinas are not like coyotes in that they can be aggressive.  Coyotes will pretty much leave you alone unless they're rabid.  But javelinas will charge you although they have poor eyesight.  So I stopped to take a picture, but was cautious and kept my distance.  I figured if it started chasing me I would run out in the street and hope a car came by so I could flag it down or something.  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and it was soaking wet with sweat.  All the sweat on the screen was making it hard to turn the camera mode on.  I finally found a dry spot to wipe it off and was able to snap a picture.

My glasses started fogging up a little, too.  I noticed that when I would move a little, the javelina would get nervous and start to go away in the opposite direction.  It seemed to be eating something.  It was just starting to get light out and I couldn't make out what it was.  Was it a bush?  Was it another javelina?  I didn't want to scare it out into traffic so I waited until it was clear.  Then I stepped toward it and it scampered off across the street.  Now I could go out into the median to see what the lump was.  It was in fact another javelina.  Dead.  Most likely hit by a vehicle and it's buddy had no choice but to eat him.

I sent the rest of the team the pictures.  My wife texted me back to show me that this was her fastest run going uphill.  She had probably just gotten to the top at that point.  I started running again and reached my daughter's high school.  The track team was out doing an early morning run.  They were all very friendly as they ran by.  Power Road is 3.1 miles from my house.  Just a 5k to go.  I was feeling good.  I had taken off my headlamp at this point so I had my phone in my left pocket and my water bottle and headlamp in my right pocket. 

It looks like Mike and Glen finished when I got half way between Power and Recker.  So I still had 2.6, maybe 2.7 miles to go.  I got to Higley and took a picture of the intersection.  I texted it to the team and tried to say "1 mile to go", but again my screen was so wet that I couldn't get the 1 to work.  It kept recognizing 2.  So I just texted the picture so they could figure it out for themselves.  According to Strava, Vickie finished when I had 0.6 miles to go.  I took my gloves off and stuffed them in my right pocket.  I took another swig of water and had just a little bit left, so I crumpled up the water bottle as much as I could, put the lid back on and stuffed it in my right pocket, too.   It must've fallen out shortly thereafter.  I turned on 48th and ran the last 0.6 miles and texted Vickie to see where she was at.  She responded saying that they were waiting for Alyssa still.  Alyssa ran 8 miles real slow.  So I ended up beating them home by 30+ minutes.  I went inside to find Emily watching Peppa Pig, eating an ice cream sandwich for her breakfast.

So Monday afternoon I was taking Herbie on a walk.  We came across three coyotes.  I think we woke them up because they all got startled and scampered up the bank.  And they looked tired.  Naturally Herbie wanted to play with them.  We chased them for a little bit.  I took some cool pictures and video.  Then I was ready to leave.  I started to walk Herbie further down the Floodway, but I stepped in a hole.  Right as I did it, Herbie yanked on the chain.  My ankle just buckled right underneath me.  I somehow managed to hold on to the leash, but I was writhing in agony.  Man it hurt so bad!  When I was able to gather myself, I called my wife and told her to come get me.  So, here I am surrounded by coyotes with a dog that wants to run off, and my wife so worried she's about to cry, and I can do nothing but lay there and hold the leash.

She finally got there and took Herbie from me.  I hobbled a quarter of a mile to the van and we drove the 0.15 miles home.  I've been babying it for the last couple of days.  I really really really still want to run Ragnar, but I don't know if I'll be able to.  It's looking like I won't.  Today's the first day I'm able to put pressure on it and walk on it.  It sucks.

Ragnar #33

So this is the last Del Sol race.  I was so excited to do it.  I had done all 13 of them up to this point.  They weren't all pretty, but I did them.  Then this happened.  I tried so hard to baby it all week so that it would be better.  I crawled around for two days.  By Wednesday evening I could finally put pressure on it and hobble around.  It never really got super swollen or discolored, but I had no idea if it was broken or sprained.  I still don't, but I think it's just sprained.  Well, we decided to pick up a last minute runner.  She was Maggie's best friend.  Luckily it worked out that she could join us, and she's super fast.

We were Van #2.  Alyssa was our first runner.  You may remember that she's the one that discovered she has diabetes during a Ragnar, and had to be taken to the hospital.  She ran with us two years ago as her "comeback" race, and she was able to run with us again for the last Del Sol.  I'm glad she could do it.  She was supposed to hand off to me, but since I wasn't running, she handed off to Maggie's BFF, Chelsie.  Chelsie looked like she was sprinting.  I guess I'm not used to seeing people run 7:15 paces anymore.  After Chelsie ran, it was Vickie's turn.  It was warming up, but Vickie runs at such a nice steady pace, she didn't have any problems.  But she was tired afterward.  Vickie handed off to Glen, who had the most overall miles in our van.  In both vans for that matter.  He complained about not having enough last year, so he got them all this year.  His knee had been bothering him for the weeks leading up to Ragnar, but he did fine.  Maybe a little slower than normal, but perfect for us.  Glen was supposed to hand off to Maggie.  Maggie had to work and was having her stepdad drive her out to meet us on the course.  It looked like she might make it just in time, but they got caught in rush hour traffic, so Chelise ran her leg.  She got there just in time to see Chelsie finish.  Then Rochelle ran.  She was running the "Ragnar" leg.  11.5 miles.  She did great.

After handing off to Van #1, we went to the AirBnB that we had rented.  It was nice and a great location.  We were only 8 minutes away from where we needed to start running again.  Actually we stopped and got some food first.  Then everyone showered up and slept.  I neither showered nor slept.  At most I would have only gotten an hour and a half, if I'd tried.  Then we were off again.  Alyssa really struggled because the Chipotle she ate didn't sit well.  Then Chelsie and Maggie ran together their next leg.  Then it was Vickie's turn.  I had told Glen, and only Glen, that I was going to run with her.  I didn't want anyone else to know because if someone spilled the beans, she would be mad at me and wouldn't let me.  After walking around so much, my ankle had loosened up some, and I felt confident that I could do 2.7 miles.  For sure I would know within the first 100 yards if I could or couldn't.  So, Vickie started to run, I switched on my headlamp and followed her.  The first thing she had to do was cross a street and turn right.  As she turned she looked at me, but I wasn't sure if she recognized me behind the glow of my headlamp.  About 5 seconds later she turned around again and said, "What are you doing???"  I said, "I can run 2.7 miles.  How am I not going to run any of the very last Del Sol?"  She was mad, but I think she was happy, too.

She was trying to get settled in to her pace and I was trying to get settled in to mine.  She starts out slow and I start out fast, so I actually started to pass her and she got mad at me for passing her with a sprained ankle.  I slowed down and that was the actual pace I needed to be running at.  We got passed about 6 or 7 times.  Each time I saw someone coming I would grab her hand and make a bridge and have the runner go underneath us.  There was only one runner that didn't, and he was like 6'7", so he wouldn't have fit.  At one point Vickie started to pull away from me.  I tried to keep up with her, but she was going faster, and I couldn't go any faster.  I noticed that both of my ankles hurt the same.  The reason is that I had been compensating with my other leg for the last week, that now they were both sore.  I figured I'd be super sore after we were done, but it would be worth it.

Luckily we came upon a stop light and I caught back up and was able to stay with her the rest of the way.  This was my wife's first Ragnar, and I'm glad I was able to run with her.  Next was Glen, who took it nice and steady again.  Then Maggie ran her leg by herself.  Then Rochelle ran and we were off to the AirBnB again. 

This time I got some sleep.  We had timed it perfectly to get everything packed up, lock up the place, and get back out on the course.  Except Alyssa was still putting her shoes on when Bryan came in, so she was a little late making the exchange.  No biggie.  We're just doing it for fun.  Alyssa had to wear night time gear again, but it was getting light out.  After a mile we stopped along the course, and I took her headlamp from her.  There was no need for it.  She got her last leg done and did great!  Then it was Chelsie who torched through her final leg.  Then it was Vickie again.  She had to do 5.2 miles.  We stopped at 3 miles to wait for her and once again I told Glen I would run the final 2.2 with her.  I crossed the intersection and waited.  She made it there and we were off.  I forgot to start my Strava for a half mile, but I knew it was 2.2 miles to the exchange.  We had maybe 5 people pass us.  Vickie was struggling, but stayed constant and steady.  She did so well, and I'm so pround of her!  My ankle held up, and we'll see how it does within the next few weeks.  I will be resting it.

After Vickie was Glen again.  He had to do 9 miles.  That's just torture to do 9 miles on your last leg.  Also, Chelsie had left some time while I was running.  She had a friend pick her up.  So Glen pretty much had no choice but to do the entire run himself.  He was able to do it.  He said his leg was starting to get sore, and he had to walk about 4 times until they loosened up.  Alyssa made him wear her sunglasses, and we teased him about being a Hollywood movie star.  After Glen was Maggie.  She only had 2 miles.  I teased her about the small distance and asked her what was the point of 2 miles???  I mean, she could just step out of the van and step back in and that's pretty much 2 miles.  We drove to this little parking lot where the exchange was and the we saw her running down the street.  We kind of panicked that she had gotten there so fast, but it turns out she had to make two big loops around the park before the exchange.  Then Rochelle was off.  Our final runner on her final leg.  We drove straight to the finish line where the other van was already there waiting for us.  It wasn't long before Rochelle got there and we all ran in together.  I let everyone run in front of me so I could soak it in.  The last Del Sol.  It's been such a big part of my life these last 14 years.  I guess I'm off to find new and exciting things.

I decided it was time.  I'm  just getting too fat and lazy.  Having not being able to run due to my ankle, I've gotten even fatter and lazier.  A couple of weeks ago I picked something up that was heavy, but nothing I haven't picked up before.  Well, because I'm so out of shape, my back started to hurt.  So, even though my ankle was just about ready to run on again, now I couldn't run because of my back.  I'm getting old. 

Fast forward to today.  I didn't feel great, but you have to start somewhere.  I got dressed and went outside to stretch.  My legs are so tight, and my ankle snapped, crackled, and popped every time I would rotate it in a circle.  I ran as slow as humanly possible.  I was barely catching up to the walkers.  But over all, it was okay.

It's been nice not running for a while.  I've really gotten a lot more work done.  I've been able to do other things.  But I can't just get fat for the rest of my life.  There's always a trade off.

Surprisingly my pace today was a lot faster than Friday.  It didn't feel like it.  I feel so sore.  And old.

Today's pace was even faster than yesterday's.  It's not saying much, but it is saying something.  I didn't feel  quite as bad either.

There are a lot of people out.  Our governor has issued a mandatory lockdown starting tonight at 5pm.  Governor, you can shut down our economy, but you can't shut down our American spirit!  Just kidding.  Anyway, it is nice to see a lot of people out trying to be active.  I think that's important.
 

Feeling stronger every day.  Still a lot of people out.  No cars.  Just people.  My wife wanted to find a place where she could go do stairs.  So she drove out to the kids' high school.  When I finished running I called her.  I told her that I had twisted my ankle again.  I pretended to cry and told her it her so bad.  She said she would come get me.  Then I called her an April Fool.

Well, today didn't feel great.  Too much chocolate milk last night?  Probably.  Anyway, I've just been doing one loop on my RWCD/Floodway route.  Still lot's of people out.  I saw one couple walking their dog on Adobe.  I wasn't sure if they were going to continue straight or turn on to the Floodway path.  They turned.  No biggie, I would just have to slow down a little and follow them in.  But they stopped right before the gate and things got awkward.  I had to squeeze between them and the gate, getting within the 6 foot radius.  Hope they didn't have the 'rona.  Then I saw another couple that was trying to maintain a 30 foot radius.  They swooped all the way to the edge of the Floodway.  Maybe it's just me.  I saw a girl running pretty quickly on the other side of the Floodway.  I think she was doing fartleks or something.  She stopped at the fence and turned around.  She passed me, but then she stopped as another family with a dog was coming towards her and the dog run up to her.  It was probably her family.  I keep seeing this Asian guy walking two beautiful dogs.  Not sure what kind they are, but they look like German Sheppards, only they're white.  Or cream.  Maybe some day I'll ask what their names are.  But the most interesting thing I saw this morning was this tattooed hippie looking guy running and wearing flip flops.  I'm not judging him for being tattooed or for being a hippie.  But I am judging him for wearing flip flops while running!  That does not seem safe!

I felt good enough to do two loops today.  I've been seeing pictures of snow up in Utah.  It's hot down here in the Phoenix Metropolitan area!  Maybe that's why it didn't seem like there was as much people out today.  Also, I didn't get out the door until after 8am.  My wife left about a minute before me.  I could see her running west on Adobe when I turned to go up the Floodway path.  I figured I might catch her near University.  She was running too fast.  I saw her and texted her, but she didn't see my text 'til later.  When we were home I asked if she saw my text and she said no.  She read it and said she didn't seem me even though she looked.  So I pulled up Strava and showed her on Flyby's where I had seen her.  That's when I realized I was being followed by another runner and I had no idea.  I hope I didn't do anything embarassing.
 

I was about to head out the door when my daughter reminded me to look for the two turtles she had seen in the Floodway the last couple of days.  I ran to the place where she said she had seen them.  Up near Brown Rd, there is some standing water in the bottom of the Floodway right at the outlet of a culvert pipe.  I stopped and looked, but didn't see any turtles.  I did see a dollar bill down on the bottom underneath about a foot of water.  I would have to step in the muck and mud to get it, so I just let it be.  I texted my daughter to say that I didn't see the turtles.  She texted back and said - keep looking.  She then said - I see.  I'm really far away.  So I waited for her, but she never came.  I texted and said - where the heck are you, slowpoke!?  She said she had seen my from Adobe (almost a half mile away), but she kept walking down Adobe.  So I waited for nothing.  I tell that story because my Strava was on autopause.  However it said my overall distance was 2.86 miles.  And my pace was 40 seconds faster than yesterday.  Well, if you back track out the pace based off the known mileage of 2.54 miles for this route, the pace seems more comparable to yesterday's.

When I turned on to Adobe, I saw a girl walking her dog through the park.  She got to the sidewalk and I could see she was wearing a shirt that said STAFF on the back.  It looked like one of my old shirts.  But there are probably a million shirts that say STAFF on the back.  I caught up to her right before the turn into the Floodway.  She apologized because her dog wanted to play with me, and the shirt was from some event that I had never heard of.  She followed me in to the Floodway and I realized my shorts were sagging down on the left side, the side with my phone in my pocket.  After pulling them up a couple of times, I had to stop to retie my drawstring.  That's embarrassing.  I ran up to the "turtle pond" again and looked for turtles.  Again, no turtles.  Just a couple of ducks.  I wasn't there long and I looked and saw the girl was almost caught up to me.  I'm so slow!  So I took back off and ran to the other side of the Floodway.  I saw this couple walking towards me.  I had seen them Saturday, too.  The guy looked like he was wearing a surgical mask, but it was really just a huge white moustache.  Today I told him that I thought he was wearing a face mask.  He probably gets that all the time.  I ran down to University, went back to the other side of the Floodway and headed back up again.  I saw the girl walking her dog still.  Even though she was on the other side of the Floodway, she probably thought I was a stalker.

2 loops again.  I saw a family leaving the Floodway path when I got there.  It was the Porter family.  I have seen Rich many times while running and usually he swoops around and runs with me.  I see his wife and their daughter often walking their dogs.  But I've never seen the entire family together.  It's nice to see families out doing things together.  Rich and I talked for about 5 minutes, and then I took off again.  I saw a lot of the regulars.  I stopped again at the pond to look for turtles.  Nothing.  The dollar bill is gone, too.  But later my daughter sent me a picture of the turtle.  When I turned south on the RWCD road, I could see a lady walking her dog and her daughter on a bike up ahead.  I finally caught up to them at Adobe.  I said good morning and we crossed the road.  They went over to the other side of the Floodway so that I saw them again when I ran back up.  I don't think the mother realized it was me, or maybe she did, but her daughter had gotten out in front and had just pedalled her way up the greenbelt dip and stopped, and the mom must've gotten worried that a man was running towards her.  She called her back.  Then the daughter got out in front again going the other way and before I got to the mom she called her again because she realized I was going to pass her.  So I told her to have a good one.  I wish women didn't have to be worried about men, but I get it.

I was about to go out the door and my grandson yelled at me, "Grandpa!  I wanna go with you!"  Well, it's hard to turn that down.  I made him touch his toes first.  Then he made me stretch my arms out.  Of course grandma was taking pictures and a video as we started.  It wasn't long before we were walking.  I'd say we walked about 70% of it, and ran the other 30%.  But that's not bad.  Everytime we would pass someone Atticus would say, "Look at this stick I found!  Or, "This rock is humongous!"  We went three quarters of a mile to the turtle pond.  Once again, I haven't seen any turtles.  But we threw rocks in the pond for a while, and I taught him how to place your hand in an ant hole without getting bit.  He would've played all day if I'd let him.  But I'm a mean grandpa, and I had work to do.  So we finally made it home and he asked if he could go running with me every day.

Such a beautiful morning in Mesa, AZ!  It's mostly cloudy and the temperature is wonderful.  There was a lot of people out, but I'm surprised I didn't see more.  I ran about a mile when I had to stop because the top of my right foot was hurting.  I thought I might have to call it quits, but I stretched out and was able to run the rest of the way.  I hope I can get back to running longer distances on Saturday mornings again soon.
 

I'm sure I ate too much Easter candy.  I didn't feel great today.

I was feeling rather blah today.  And I have a lot of work to do.  So I just did one loop.  Kissed my wife on the way home.
 

I was feeling a little better today, so I decided to do 3 loops.  It was slow, but I trudged it out.  I saw a lot of people again.  One guy was riding a road bike on the RWCD dirt road.  Crazy.  I saw the face mask moustache man and his wife.  Twice.  I was on my last loop when I looked over and saw a lady on the RWCD road running.  She passed me up.  I was mad.  But then I remembered that I'm slow.  Then she started walking.  Then I passed her up.  I was happy.

Almost half way done with this pair of shoes.  I didn't go running 'til 9am.  Still it was beautiful out.  Lots of walkers.  A few runners.  A few cyclists.  I feel like garbage.  Garbage in.  Garbage out.

I got up and out the door a little earlier than normal.  Still a lot of people out.  I saw an old guy running towards me on Adobe.  I'm sure he was much faster than me.  I turned north on to the Floodway path and saw a group of runners coming my way.  As they got closer I could tell that it was a mother, a daughter, and a son.  Then I recognized them as this fairly new family in the ward, the Bishop's.  I said, "Hi Bishop's!"  It'll get a great 4 to 5 years if their dad ever gets called to be the bishop. When I was heading south on the RWCD road, I saw a couple walking toward me.  It was Bruce and Carol Schumacher.  For that brief stint I had as a primary teacher, Bruce was my companion teacher.  He always brought salt water taffy for the kids.  His son and his family moved in with them about a year ago.  Maybe more.  Their son, Blake, is the ward Sunday school president.  Bruce was his secretary, but he was recently released.  The new Sunday school secretary is......me!  Of course, since the Church went into lockdown mode, I haven't done anything.  Anyway, I said, "Good morning, guys!"  Carol said, "Good morning, Burt!"  I said, "It's so good to see you guys."  And that was that. 

I thought about doing 3 loops today, but I went on a 3 mile hike yesterday with my wife and my dog.  I'm a little sore, and I could feel it while I was running, so I decided to just do two loops.  I'm enjoying the weather, but fear that it's going to warm up soon.  Actually, that might be a good thing.  The heat is supposed to help with viruses.

I was feeling better today.  I decided to do 3 loops.  Saw some of the regular faces.  Very few people are wearing masks, but some are.  That's good.  I haven't shaved since the lockdown started.  That's my mask.

What was on my mind today while I was running?  Well, this morning one of my friends posted something on my wall again of Facebook.  He was a former client of mine that friended me.  Recently he's been saying a lot of anti-Trump stuff.  Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but he lives here in AZ where most people are conservative and Trump supporters.  This includes me.  Of course I don't like everything he does, nor everything he has done.  But I have never seen a President try and fulfill his campaign promises to the extent that Trump has.  It's not even close.  So I called my friend out on it once.  I said, "Look.  We're not all bad people.  I really like it better when you don't post anti-Trump stuff, but that's all you post about lately."  Something like that.  So, his response was to start posting stuff on my wall.  He really can't stand our President.  I get it.  I couldn't stand Obama.  But I keep my mouth shut most of the time.  I think Trump has done more good that he has bad, but if you don't like him, all you see is the bad.  If you do like him, all you see is the good.  I'd like to think I see both.  They say Trump has divided the country.  I say it's the media.  But that may be Trump's fault.  When Trump called CNN fake news, they literally declared war on him.  So every time they report on him, it's that he's a racist, homophobe, xenophobe, etc.  It's shameful, but he kind of asked for it.  Anyway, that's what was going through my mind.  Made the time go by faster which is what I need when I'm so slow nowadays.

I was feeling real sore today.  Don't know why.  I took yesterday off.  I saw Bruce and Carole again.  I asked if they were hanging in there.  They said they were.

Yesterday was my daughter Julianna's 21st birthday.  After lunch we all loaded up in the van to go see my daughter Mary, her husband, and my grandson.  We just stood outside her door making small talk while my grandson was inside sleeping.  So we didn't even get to see him.  I had Herbie with us, too.  After a while I walked over to the van to get ready to go.  But I didn't have they keys.  My wife did.  The rest of my family joined me, but my wife lagged behind.  There was a lady that had pulled up next to us a parking space over.  When she finally got out of her vehicle she had totally covered her mouth with a handkerchief.  She was taking this COVID thing seriously.  Either that or she has it. 

So this morning I wanted to go on a longer run, but I still am not feeling like I'm anywhere close to being in shape.  Everything is a struggle.  Everything is work.  I love when I can go out and just enjoy a nice long run, but I can't do that right now.  I decided to run up the RWCD Canal far as far as what felt good.  I ran up to Brown Rd. and I saw a runner coming towards me.  I realized it was Gary Prahl.  I've been following him on Strava.  I see him as a Flyby quite often.  He bought one of the new houses that were built in the old orange grove on the corner of Greenfield and Brown.  I've sent him a message before, but he's never responded.  It wasn't until recently that I actually started to "follow" him.  I thought, "This guy must think I'm a weirdo."  But oh well.  I've always had a fascination for getting to know my fellow runners.  That's why I like the blog so much.  Anyway, as we passed each other I saw a smile crack upon his face, and he said, "Burt?"  I was like, "Yep.  Nice to see you."  Ha!  He likes me!

I continued north and made it to McKellips.  I could see old man Hatch driving his stage coach.  He passed a lady walking her dog, and the dog started barking at the horses.  When I got to her, I said, "Just like my dog!  Thinks he can take on horses."  To my great surprise and delight, she stopped to talk to me.  It was just a quick conversation, but it's nice that some people will stop and talk, maintaining their six feet of separation, while others bury their faces in handkerchiefs and run away.

I ran to the half way point between McKellips and McDowell (a little over half a mile), and turned around.  After crossing McKellips I was running and I looked down and saw a $5 bill folded up.  Was it riddled in COVID?  I'll take my chances!  So, the title of this run became - "It pays to run the extra mile."
 

My legs were so sore from the get go today.  I probably looked like I was shuffling when I first started.  I did settle in to my regular slow pace, which if a little faster than a shuffle.  Anyway, there were more people out today than I've ever seen.  That's nice.  It also means people must be going stir crazy.  Cabin fever.  I saw the Ashcroft's on a family walk, and I saw the Knudsen's.  They were both on the other side of the Floodway from me, but the Knudsen's saw me, and I waved at them.  Also, Jeff is back.  The hobo.  I haven't seen him in ages, but I saw him Thursday and again today.  He's moved over to right behind the chain link fence at University.

Well today felt a little better.  That's hopeful.  Lot's of people out again.  Everyone social distancing.  I saw Jeff.  He asked if I brought my wallet with me.

I wasn't feeling as good as yesterday.  But I wasn't feeling terrible.  So that's something.  As I was approaching the Floodway on Adobe I heard some voices behind me.  I didn't see anyone before, so I knew it must've been cyclists.  Sure enough two guys on bikes passed me up.  One of them said, "Hey Burt."  It was Gary.  See?  He may not ever respond to my comments, and he hasn't followed me back, but he does like me!

I did 3 loops today.  It was a struggle.  My wife was leaving just as I got home.  I jumped in the pool and Herbie took off with one of my shoes.

I convinced my wife to go run Usery with me.  Truth be told, she's been wanting to do it for quite some time.  I finally feel like my ankle is strong enough to do it.  Well, some of it.  The plan was to just run 2 miles up and 2 miles down.  Vickie is going to Kingman today to see her friend whose husband just killed himself.  So we got out there as early as possible.  Certainly not as early as we used to do with our group runs, but earlier than we normally go out to run on a weekday.  Well, since everything is on lock down, people aren't allowed to go into the park/recreation areas.  I guess they can, but they can't drive into them.  They have to park on the road and walk down to them.  So there were a bunch of cars and people out.  We pulled up to the little parking lot in front of the sherriff's station where we usually park and there was a sign that said, "Sherriff parking only."  So we turned around and started driving up Usery Pass.  But there were signs that said "No parking anytime."  There were a bunch of these signs for the first half mile.  So a little after the half mile mark we finally found a place to pull over.  We stretched out and headed up.  There were a lot of cyclists and vehicles out today.  I had to move off the side of the road a lot.  Since I knew we parked at the half mile mark, I had a pretty good idea where the turn around would be.  I got to where I believed it was, and looked at my Strava.  2.0 miles.  I waited for Vickie to catch up so we could turn around together.   She was only about a tenth of a mile behind me.  I gave her a little head start and quickly caught up to her.  Or down to her because we were going downhill?  Anyway, I saw a group of cyclists coming up and one of them said, "Good for you!"  I was like, "I think that was Jennifer Hall."  Jennifer was on one of my Ragnar teams years ago.  She's got to be in her mid 60's by now.  I follow her on Strava and she usually just runs, so I wasn't sure if it was her.  I made it back down to our Jeep and waited for Vickie.  I beat her by a quarter mile this time.  When I got home I checked Strava.  It was Jennifer.  I sent her a message and asked if she remembered the fat guy wearing neon yellow shorts that she said hi to.  She did.

I woke up at 5am, and got out the door at 6am.  There were a lot of people out so early.  I guess it's not that early, but still.  I saw Sis. Ray.  I gave her an air high five.  I also saw the Schumacher's again.  The hobo that Herbie and I saw last night with all his stuff packed on a bicycle cart was still there.  He was in a sleeping bag agains the wall at least a tenth of a mile away from his cart.  I'm guessing the cart didn't fit through the gate.

Oh the days when my wife used to only walk.  She would get up so early.  There would be no quarrel over who was using the bathroom.  Those days are long past.  At least it's comical that we both go at least two rounds before we're ready to run.  So we both got out the door at the same time.  Well, I got out before her, but I stretch out before I run.  She doesn't.  She got about a 10 second head start on me and I caught up to her at the stop sign.  We ran together up 'til the Floodway.  A kid and a mom were heading toward us on their bikes.  The kid was on the sidewalk.  There were poky weeds on the other side of the sidewalk, so I hid behind a bush so he wouldn't run me over.  But he got off the sidewalk and my wife said, "He's off."  So we parted ways.  I did my regular route.  The one I've done 124 times since using Strava.  I'm so glad that the people I see are so nice.  I always get a wave back or a smile.  I'm hearing lots of stories about bad attitudes at the grocery stores and stuff.  But I pretty much only ever leave the house when I go running. 

I thought Vickie would be ahead of me by the time I got to University, but I looked toward the west and there she was.  I crossed the Floodway, stopped and waited for her.  She got a big smile on her face and said, "You stopped to give me a kiss?  You're the best husband ever!"  There's probably a lot of truth to that.

I took yesterday off.  I didn't mean to.  I just went upstairs to feed the dog and saw the puzzle.  We started the puzzle on Easter.  It usually doesn't take us this long to put one together, but this was a mosaic Star Wars puzzle.  It was quite difficult.  There were so many images that were repeats.  Actually I wonder if there were.  Some of them looked very similar, but I wonder if they were just maybe a frame different.  I actually think that's the case.  But I would stare at a puzzle piece for minutes and stare at the finished image to try and find where the piece went.  I was usually successful with this method, but of course it would only give me an approximation of where the piece went.  So I would try and carefully put the piece near where it went.  The problem was, my daughters were also putting pieces where they thought they went based off of color schemes.  I finally had to just start going through all the pieces one by one and moving them around.  When I did this, it really started to come together.  Well, we ended up finishing it yesterday and I never went running.  I wore my running clothes all day, which wasn't great.  I sweated in them and got a rash.  But the rash was mostly gone by this morning, so I put on a bunch of Body Glide and went out.  I know I give too much personal details, but luckily nobody reads my blog anymore. 

It's  supposed to be 104º today.  I'm glad I got up early while it's still somewhat cool.  I wasn't feeling great this morning.  I have really been struggling with sleep lately.  I think because I've gained so much weight.  I just snore all night, and I feel more tired when I wake up than when I go to bed.  So, I think I'm going to try and do better at not overeating.  I don't feel like I do, but my enormous gut says otherwise.  The run was fine.  I saw some familiar faces.

I got some good sleep last night.  I cut back on my portions.  I'm sure that helped.

My alarm went off at 4:02am this morning. Of course I turned it right off because we don't do group runs anymore on Saturdays.  About 40 minutes later my wife and I were woken up to a thud.  I was like, "What was that?"  She ran upstairs.  In the bedroom above us our grandson had fallen out of the bed and busted his eye open.  It's almost 11am now and he's just now on his way home from getting stitched up.  I went running.  There weren't as many people out today as there usually is.  Don't know if it's because it's getting hotter, or parts of the economy are opening back up, so more people are at work.  I saw Sis. Bishop running.  I decided to run up the RWCD Canal today since my wife and I wouldn't be running Usery.  She took my grandson and our son to the hospital, but she had to wait outside.  She texted me a few times during my run to give me updates, but she only knew what our son was texting her.  Anyway, I wanted to run further than I did two weeks ago, so I decided to go up to McDowell and turn around.  I knew this is a 5.8 mile route, and I haven't run that long for quite some time.  But I should be able to do that, right?  I felt okay, but kept it nice and slow.  My pace is the pace I used to consider my recovery pace.  I guess all my runs are recovery runs now.  I got to McDowell, but didn't touch the Covid-ridden fence.  I was taking it a quarter mile at a time.  The Walgreen's sign said it was 93º, but it didn't feel quite that hot.  When I got to Brown Rd. I saw this old man on a bike.  He said, "Don't get run over!"  I jumped in the pool when I got home.

So I'd been working on this project for my top client.  He wanted it Thursday so that he could take it to the Town of Cave Creek and get it submitted.  Because of Covid, you now have to call and make an appointment to submit plans.  I let my client know that there was no way I was going to get it done Thursday, and if I did that it wouldn't be until late, so he wouldn't be able to submit anyway.  They're closed of Friday, so that gave me until Monday to get everything done.  Well, I worked on it all Thursday, Friday, took Saturday off, and of course Sunday was Mother's Day.  I don't like to work on Sundays anyway.  It's rare that I do, but I kinda had to since I took Saturday off.  But I waited until after dinner and Mother's Day was pretty much over by that point.  But I still had a lot of work to do to finish the project.  I worked on it all through the night and finished it at 6 in the morning.  So, no running Monday.

I got up early today and my wife was getting two of my daughters ready.  They were both taking a bowling class at school.  We didn't have bowling classes when I grew up.  I guess it's an alternative to PE or something.  Well, since all the bowling alleys are closed, they had to find a replacement.  They decided to do hiking.  I wanted to run, but I kinda wanted to go hiking, too.  So the plan was to hike up to the top with them and then run down.  That's what I did.  The hike itself was a pretty good workout.  I took it easy going down because I didn't want to fall.  But at one point I slightly rolled my ankle.  Under normal circumstances it wouldn't have hurt, but since I'm still recovering, it did hurt a little.  I shook it off and kept going.  When I reached the trail head I looked up and saw my wife, two daughers, and their friend.  I waved at them and my wife hollered at me.  Then I got to the road and kept running.  I wasn't sure how far I'd get.  When I used to ride my bike, this is the road I would go on.  It's the Usery Pass loop.  There's one hill that I like to ride my bike down because it's so steep.  It's scary, but it's fun.  Well I reached that hill and had to run up it.  I've ridden my bike up it once.  It's hard.  I've never run up it.  I didn't know if I'd get to the top or not before the girls picked me up.  But I did.  Strava says I got 3.44 miles.  I think that's probably accurate, but it did glitch.  I know it was a mile up the hill for the hike, which makes it a mile down, and it seems reasonable that I ran another 1.4 miles on the road.

As soon as I started running this morning, my ankle started to cry.  I guess that ankle roll yesterday hurt more than I thought.  So I just did one loop today, real slow.  I saw someone running on the opposite side of the Floodway.  They passed me up.  I was pretty sure it was Rich.  It was.  Strange because I've been seeing his pace on Strava lately and it's slower than mine.  So he turned around at Brown.  I went over to his side of the Floodway and followed him.  He continued to put the distance between us until he stopped and started walking.  Now it makes sense.  I was never able to catch him, but I wasn't really trying to today either.

I felt a lot better today.  There seemed to be more people out today.  One man said to me after seeing me huffing and puffing, "What we do to our bodies!"
 

So my wife asked me to send out a group text to see who wanted to go running this morning.  I got one reply right away.  It was from Maggie.  Come to find out, Maggie had told my wife to tell me to send the text out.  Conspiracy!  Anyway, it ended up just being me, Vickie and Maggie.  We picked her up at 5am and drove out to Usery.  Again the sign for no parking at the sherriff's station was still there.  So this time we kept driving to another parking lot down by the river.  Luckiy we had a Tonto pass.  This parking lot was 1.1 miles away from our regular parking spot.  We decided to do 5 miles, 2.5 up and 2.5 down.  Vickie and Maggie got a small head start on me.  I caught up to them before a quarter mile.  At a half a mile with Vickie and Maggie just behind me I ran past a truck parked on the side of the road.  As I approached I saw this head pop up from the back.  Someone was sleeping in it and had just woken up.  I also saw a girl sleeping in the passenger seat.  Even though they looked harmless, I made sure to watch that Vickie and Maggie got by them safely.

At three quarters of a mile I stopped to take pictures of the wild horses.  There were a bunch of them just north of the Salt River Tube rental parking lot. 

I checked my Strava when I passed our regular parking lot to see how far I'd gone.  1.1 miles.  So now I had an idea of where I'd need to turn around to get 5 miles done. 

It was a busy day.  Lots of cars.  Lots of cyclists.  And even a handful of runners.  I saw the first two runners when my Strava said I was at 2.3 miles.  They were running downhill.  I was worried that I'd reach 2.5 right when we got to each other, and it would be creepy to them if I turned around with them.  But they were fast and it still said 2.4 when they went by.  Then I saw another runner.  She for sure would have been 2.5.  So I just kept running.  There is a little hill right before a dip in the road where I know is usually the 1.5 mile mark.  So I ran to there, which would give me a little over 5 miles.  Oh, I forgot to say.  I kept looking back to check on Vickie and Maggie.  They were never too far behind.  But one time I turned around and they were gone.  I wasn't sure if they stopped to walk or what.  Anyway, after I turned around and still couldn't see them, I checked my phone again and saw a text message that Vickie had sent me 6 minutes ago.  She said they turned around at two miles.  So I ran down and while I was running I turned behind me to look at a vehicle and saw another girl runner about to pass me up.  Where did she come from?  I found out later from Strava that there were a group of girls that had started at the top and ran a 10k downhill. 

As I approached the intersection I could see the girl that passed me and two other girls up ahead beyond the stop sign.  I figured they had all parked at the same parking lot we had.  But then I was like, "Where's the other girl?"  Then I realized that the two girls way up ahead were Vickie and Maggie.  I wasn't sure if I would catch them right away, but they were walking.  Apparently they ran the two miles up and walked the two miles down.  I thought about cutting through the desert to beat them to the van, but I didn't. 

When I got home I finally gave myself a hair cut.  I did not trim my beard, and I gave myself a mohawk.

I was dragging to get out of bed this morning.  I didn't sleep well.  But I finally got dressed and went outside.  It's warm, but not terrible.  I shaved my mohawk off yesterday.  One day was enough.  But it was weird seeing my shadow today.  I was listening to some YouTube clips today as I ran.  When I was running south I saw someone coming toward me.  I realized it was Rich so I turned the podcast off.  He did his patented swing around and ran with me again.  We talked about doing Rim to Rim.  I think he's got me convinced to do it.

Terrible sleep last night.  Probably the Taco Bell dinner I had.  I got out the door around 7:30am, I think.  It felt a little warm, but there was a nice breeze while I was running, so it wasn't bad.  I felt good, and if I had been able to get up earlier, probably would've gone 3 loops today.  Right around mile 2, I got a phone call.  I took it and walked for about a minute.  When I hung up, I picked up the speed.  I haven't tried to run fast in a looooong time.

So, this is kinda gross.  For the second time in my adult life, I've had to get my ears cleaned out.  I try to wash them every time I shower.  I turn the shower on massage so that it's jetting out high pressure water and I stick it right up to my ear.  Alas, the build up was too much, and we had to resort to irrigation.  It was so gross, but bless my wife's heart.  Anyway, now I can hear again.  What I noticed most about my run this morning was how much I drag my feet.  I could sure hear that.

Another benefit of being able to hear is getting woke up by our rooster at 3am.  And then 4am.  And then 5am.  That guy has got to go.  Anyway, I needed to be up early this morning because Mike, yes, the same Mike I run Usery with, was coming over to work on our air conditioning system.  Since we bought our house a few months ago, we've been trying to do the home rennovations ourself.  The first thing they've been working on is one of the upstair bathrooms.  They tore everything out, but they still need to put it back together.  They've also been removing the wall paper from my office.  But before they removed it, they wrote poop, fart, and diarrhea all over it.  They're funny.  Never mind that sometimes I have clients come over.  Also, we wanted Mike to get in and work on our terrible A/C before it gets too hot.

Luckily today is nice and cool.  I noticed when I took Herbie for a walk last night how much cooler it was down in the bottom of the Floodway.  It's crazy the temperature differential.  So at 5am, I got ready to go.  Mike had told me yesterday that he would be here at 6am.  That gave me time for two loops, but I likely wouldn't make it back before 6am, and knowing Mike, he would already be there. 

I was running on Adobe towards the Floodway, and I saw someone running towards me.  I recognized him as Jesse Lee.  He was running with his dog.  He turned and ran on the west side of the Floodway and I on the east side.  He's much faster than me so he got to Brown way before I did.  Then he ran to the east side of the Floodway and started heading back.  We said hi to each other as we passed.  I ran south down the west side of the Floodway and saw some real fast runner coming towards me.  After he went by I saw two more guys.  I gave them both kudos on Strava and one of them started following me.  His last name is Moody.  Maybe he's related to RAD.  Then I saw two people riding bikes about to cross the street.  It was Dan Brinkerhoff and his daughter.  I said good morning to them, but I'm not sure he recognized me.  Must be the beard.  I went to University and back to the east side of the Floodway and headed back north.  I'm pretty sure I saw Edythe Ray walking on the other side.  It's always nice to see so many people you go to church with out being active.

I almost had this crazy idea to have my wife join me for that 11 mile loop I did earlier this year.  Glad I didn't do that, because this 7 miles just about wiped me out.  I didn't run Friday or Saturday or Sunday.  The reason why I didn't run Friday was partly because Mike was over finishing up working on our new AC, but also I was a bit sore and wanted to be fresh for our Saturday group run.  Mike was going to join us but he had dropped our unit on his foot and wasn't able to.  At quarter to 4 in the morning we got his text.  Then a few minutes after 4 we got a text from Maggie saying she was feeling good.  So Vickie and I just slept in and I never went.

That's why I wanted to do a long one today.  After entering the Floodway I looked to the other side and saw a coyote!  I haven't seen one since February when I twisted my ankle.  I thought maybe someone came by and hunted them.  I guess they're still around.  It was on the opposite side of the Floodway and we ran together for a while.  I started to video it.  Then it started running down the bank of the Floodway into the bottom.  I realized there was another human on the RWCD road, so it was trying to avoid him.  I stopped and watched it, then tried to run with it again, but it stopped near the well site. 

I ran up to McKellips and could see a truck that had pulled out onto the RWCD road in front of me.  I figured it must be an RWCD truck because who else would it be.  But I had to run 3/4 of a mile to reach it.  It was my favorite zanjero, Mosiah.  I stopped and talked to him for about 15 minutes.  He's such a good guy.  By this time I was 3/4 of a mile away from the turn around point.  I crossed McDowell and ran the last half mile to Junior.  Junior is a small little pump that pumps water out of the Canal into the first drainage lateral.  It's called Junior because it's just downstream of the Main Pumping Plant, which is where they pump water out of the Arizona Central Project Canal into the RWCD Canal.  A bit of useless trivia for you.

I turned around and headed back.  I was getting tired and thirsty.  After a mile I saw Mike Norberg, my Strava friend, leaving his neighborhood.  Every time I run this far north it seems like I see him.  We said good morning to each other.  He's so friendly.  I got to McKellips and was able to run through the vehicular gate because Mosiah had left it open.  Right before reaching Brown I had to stop and start walking for the first time.  I ended up walking quite a bit in that last mile.  I even called my wife and asked her to have a cold water waiting for me.  I got home and drank two bottles of water.  Then I cleaned the pool, and now my legs are dead.

I was only going to run one loop today because my legs have been wrecked the last few days.  I started running and felt good enough to do two.  It is warming up!

I felt better today.  A little faster today.  But I didn't get out 'til 8:30am and it was hot.

I texted the group yesterday afternoon.  Mike responded immediately to say that he had to work.  No replies from Glen or Alyssa as usual.  Maggie texted my wife to get more details.  She decided she would go with us, but didn't say so until after we had gone to bed.  Some time during the night my wife's phone turned off.  I was up at 4am, but since Maggie had not replied, so we thought, we didn't leave.  When my wife finally realized her phone was off, she turned it on and realized that Maggie had been waiting for us, and since we never came, she went back to bed.  It was around 7am now, and I decided we should go on a hike/run.  I drove over to Bulldog.  We hiked a trail that Vickie had done a few times.  It was steep and not conducive to running up or down.  So I mostly hiked.  We saw a couple of groups of firefighter trainees going up while we were coming down.

I felt bad for flaking out on Maggie, so I texted her to see if she wanted to go hiking with us today.  I figured she could bring her kids and stuff.  She was going to come, but at 1am she texted to say that she had just got done playing 007.  So now she's the flake.  So it was just me and Vickie.  We hiked Wind Cave.  I saw Tom Haws as he was coming down and we were going up.

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.

Emily woke up real early this morning.  Like 4:00am early.  She kept poking her head in our room.  I would say, "Hi, Emily."  She would say hi back and then leave.  I finally got up while she was on our toilet and had to wait for her.  She wanted to spend time with me.  She wanted me to eat breakfast with her, but I had to explain that I don't eat breakfast before I go running.  And since I missed running yesterday, there was no way I was going to miss it today.  She gets so stubborn once she gets an idea in her head.  And it breaks her heart when she can't have things her way.  And that sometimes translates into throwing a fit.  But I just had to be stern with her.

So I got out and did my normal two loops.  There's a couple I see quite often.  The man has a white beard.  From now on, I will call them the white beard couple.  I saw them walking on Adobe.  My guess is they live in the quarter section north of me.  Then, right before I got to Brown, I saw another couple I see quite often.  The man wears a British cap.  A quick Google search tells me they are called flat caps.  I will now call them the flat cap couple.  I saw them in almost the exact same place that I saw them the last time I was running.  So I knew I would see them again on my second loop.  I made sure to point out that I only had a 3-inch diameter of sweat forming on my shirt so far. 

I looped around and headed south.  After crossing Adobe, I could see a family with children playing in the bottom of the Floodway.  As I got closer I thought I recognized them as the Ray's.  But then the sprinklers turned on in the Greenbelt and they all made a mad dash to go play in the sprinklers.  Maybe I would be able to tell if it was them if they were still there when I looped around again.  So I looped around on University and I saw this shirtless old man crossing the street.  I could hear him running, but he stopped shortly after entering the trail.  The Ray's were just turning the corner, but I know it was them, because I texted their mom later.  Then I saw flat cap couple again and pointed out how much the sweat mark had grown.  They started clapping and the guy called me "Iron Man."  A little bit after that the shirtless guy caught up to me and passed me.  When he got to Adobe, he started walking again.  Anyway, there wasn't any more people out than normal, but it seemed I had more interactions with people today.

Lots of active people out today on the trails.  I saw Edythe and Rhoda again.  I yelled, "There's no sprinklers over here, Rhoda!" 

The high today is supposed to be 111º.  I didn't run Saturday, so I wanted to get about 5 or 6 miles in today.  So I got up early.  As I was sitting on the toilet, I could swear I heard Emily's voice.  Yep.  She was up.  That girl either wakes up before 5am or after 10am.  No in between.  I asked her what she was doing awake.  She said she wanted to spend time with me.  She wanted to watch the sun come up with me, and she wanted to go on a walk.  So that's what we did.  My wife had chalked out a workout routine in the cul-de-sac.  Emily was sad that it's pretty much all gone now.  We walked over by Rhoda's house.  We saw some that someone else had chalked out another workout routine.  So she did that one.  Then we walked around the block and sat down to rest at Adobe.  Every time Emily would see someone walking, walking their dog, cycling, or driving with their window rolled down, she would tell them good morning, or have a great day, or your dog is very cute.  Then she would say, "See?  I'm being neighborly to the neighbors."  We walked home and it was about 6:00am.  I went to the bathroom again and decided to just do one loop.  So that's that.

I've been so busy at work that I put running on the back burner.  I got out and did one loop today.  When I got home I jumped in the pool, shoes and everything.

I did two loops today.  Usually I do one loop from Adobe to Brown and one loop from Adobe to University.  Today I did two loops from Adobe to Brown.  When I got home I checked on the boys to make sure they were getting ready for the survey.  AJ was sick.  I had already notified the property owner that they would be out there, so I decided to go in his place.  It puts me a day behind with my regular work, but oh well.  Luckily Caleb knows how to set up all the equipment, because I don't.  We got there and found out that the battery for the receiver and radio were dead.  So we had to hook the equipment up to my van battery.  That meant we couldn't use the van to go drive around to the benchmarks.  Luckily the farthest one away was just over a half mile.  But that's over a mile of walking and it was hot!  On our way back I decided to survey the intersection near where the wash connects.  Historically the wash crossed the road and went by our site.  But it looks like the road has been built up high enough to divert the flow to the south.  I want to be able to prove that.  So we took a couple dozen shots and went back to the site.  It was still hot.  I walked around looking for property corners.  I noticed I had to pee.  It was so hot and I had to pee so bad, that I couldn't concentrate.  I almost knocked on the door and asked if I could use their bathroom, but I was too embarrassed.  So finally I just peed in my PowerAde bottle that I had finished off.  My pee was so dark.  That means I was getting dehydrated.  And I could feel that I was starting to crash even though I had been drinking lots of fluid.  Or maybe the pee was dark because of the PowerAde.  But I'm sure I was crashing.  I called my wife to have her bring us some more fluids.  She said she would find a place to stop at on the way.  But before she did, we had another battery die in the rover head.  I was like, "You know what.  We're done.  Let's go home."  So, yeah.  I'm not cut out for this type of work anymore.  I've become soft sitting behind my computer all day.

I woke up before 4am.  I didn't sleep well again and David was crowing.  I went to the bathroom and tried to lay back down.  I might have got a few more winks, but not much.  I got up again shortly after 5am and sat on the toilet for a while.  I finally made it outside and started running at 6:18am.  It was cloudy, but still felt hot.  There were a lot of people out today.  They all probably thought it would be nice and cool due to the cloud coverage, but it wasn't.  I did two loops and I saw Amy Spencer as I was leaving the Floodway.  She waved at me and asked how I was doing.

My morning routine usually consists of waking up, sitting on the toilet, laying back down for a few minutes, sitting on the toilet for another half hour until my wife yells at me, taking the dog out back, letting the chickens out of their coop, feeding the dog, and going running.  This morning after feeding the chickens I noticed some bubbles in the pool.  It was actually rain drops.  Had I not seen them, I wouldn't have noticed it was sprinkling.

Today is Wednesday as I write this.  I remember stopping twice on this run, but only remember why once.  That was because I caught a whiff of what smelled like a rotting corpse.  I stopped and looked around but didn't see anything.  It lightly sprinkled during the run, but I could only feel it if I concentrated on it.  I jumped in the pool when I got home.

Vickie and I are going up to Flagstaff this weekend to hike Mt. Humphreys. (sp?)  I hope I'm ready.  After getting dehydrated last week, I felt like I didn't want to ever hike again.  But there might be a thunderstorm.  That should be exciting, right? 

I started running this morning and Vickie left shortly after I did.  She follows the road and I follow the Canal.  I didn't notice she was behind me when I got to University.  I was too fixated on the other hobo that was camped out over by Jeff.  Jeff basically has nothing.  This guy has a shopping cart overfilled with his stuff.  Anyway, my wife took a picture of me and posted it on her Strava.  Creeper.

A few days ago I was missing my last Ragnar van team, so I went and found our group text and sent everyone a message.  One of the messages was for Rochelle to invite me on her next virtual Ragnar team.  It seems like she's doing one every other weekend.  I don't blame her.  They're free.  Or you can spend about $30 and get a T-shirt and a medal.  Anyway, she invited me to be on her team for the virtual Vermont trail relay this weekend

Vickie and I already had plans to join that hiking group again and go hike Mount Humphreys in Flagstaff this weekend.  But Rochelle told me that I could use my hiking miles as my Ragnar miles.  Apparently you just complete your miles wherever, whenever between Friday and Saturday.  So I signed up.  I also got Vickie to sign up.

This morning we I decided that we would do our first leg together.  Vickie usually runs a "3.3" mile loop.  One of our legs is supposed to be 3.1, so that should work.  It was very humid.  We stopped at the 2 mile mark so Vickie could get some rest.  Then we finished up and jumped in the pool.  So, leg 1 done.  I'll mark this as a race after our last leg, since I'm pretty sure we'll be doing a leg a day.  As always, Ragnar is not a real race, but I want to keep track of them, and marking them as a race is the best way.

We stayed the night at La Quinta Inn in Flagstaff.  We got up and drove to a hike that looked like it would be fairly easy and the distance we would need to cover our Yellow Loop leg of the virtual Vermont Trail Ragnar.  The internet was sketchy so we ended up going the wrong way.  We probably got more elevation than what we wanted.  But it was a nice easy hike anyway.  I quite enjoyed it.

Ragnar #34

This was hard.  And not very fun.  But it was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous.  This was our last leg of the virtual Ragnar we signed up for.  It was supposed to be 7.2 miles.  Since we were going to hike Mount Humphreys, the tallest peak in Arizona, with Vickie's friend's hiking group, this would work out great.  We met up with the team the night before at Oregano's.  There were 11 of us including Daylene, Heidi, and Labrae from our Mount Baldy hike.  They first gave us two tables that would only fit 8 people.  So they said they would put us at another bigger table once the other party left.  We could see them leaving so we waited.  There were four guys and 7 gals.  Since one of the tables was bigger than the other, I suggested we split off with a boy table and a girl table.  But I wanted to sit by my wife, so I sat at the girl table.  I ended up sitting at a spot where the corner of the table was sticking right into my fat tummy.  I was very uncomfortable, and my ankle was a bit sore from the hike Vickie and I did that morning.  Then while I was eating, I started to sweat.  So I stopped eating and just asked for a box.  I can count the number of times in my life I've asked for a box on one hand.

When we got back to the motel I ate the rest of my dinner and we went to sleep.  I sweated so much.  It was gross.  I had to flip my pillow over because it was soaked.  We got up at 3:30am so we could get ready.  I tried to eat Vickie's leftover chicken fried steak, but it was chewy, so I spit it out.  I just ate a bananan and some chocolate milk.  We packed up and left and we followed Daylene up to the trail head.  Everyone else was already there, but they had to wait on me to do my #2, #2 of the day.  And the one ply toilet paper in the portajohns wasn't doing me any favors. 

After I finished we were ready to go.  It was 5:15am.  We were greeted by a beautiful sunrise.

We took some pictures and were on our way.  I was feeling good for the first 3.5 miles.  I think the hike we did the previous day helped us to acclimate to the elevation a little bit even though it was about 2,000 feet lower than our starting point.  This hike starts at 9,268 ft and ends at 12,633 ft.  There was a lot of rocks and roots for those first 3.5 miles, but since it was a relatively steady climb, they didn't bother me.  Then we started getting to steps.  And climbs.  They were starting to make me tired.  I'm sure it was the elevation.  Every time I would do something strenuous, I would have to stop to catch my breath.  And the higher we went, the worse it got.

The saddle is around mile 4.1.  This is where we took our second break.  Daylene, who had hiked this once before, said, "Now comes the hard part."  I was thinking, "That was quite hard enough.  I don't know if I want to do anything harder than that."  I could turn around now and still have enough miles for my Ragnar leg.  But I didn't come all this way to not get to the top.  And it was only 1.3 miles away.  So the group got up and was ready to go.  Vickie and I were the last to leave, but then one of our stragglers, Tami, arrived.  We decided to wait with her until she was ready.  There were two other girls that hadn't made it up yet either.  Someone told us that they were coming.  They knew they were with us because they were all wearing funny leggings.

Tami didn't take a long rest, so we were back on the trail not too far behind the rest of the group.  But they soon were out of sight.  We could see Chuck a ways off.  Then we saw Heidi.  We actually caught up and passed her.  But I was moving real slow.  It would seem like I could only go a few feet before I would have to stop and catch my breath after another step up.  And now even the little step ups were making me stop.

From the saddle you could see that there were two peaks before the actual peak of Mount Humphreys.  Having this in mind I just trudged along knowing that the first two were false hopes.  After the second one I could finally see the top.  It still looked so far away.  But I could see people on top, which means it wasn't as far away as it looked.  And even though it was a steep incline to the top, there were no more step ups.  So I was able to get to the top to the cheers of the rest of the group.  Vickie was right behind me.  Heidi followed not long after.  We took another group photo and looked at the view.  It was beautiful, but I was too tired to be able to enjoy it fully. 

I started to see clouds building up and I motioned to Daylene that we should start heading out.  We started down and it was right when Tami had almost gotten to the top.  She didn't want to be left alone, so Vickie turned around and hiked back up to the top with her.  I waited for them.  After about 10 minutes they were back and we headed down very slowly.  Going down was almost as bad as going up.  And my trail shoes weren't working great.  They were slipping on patches of sand, and I almost biffed it several times.  My arms were getting sore from lifting myself down all the rocks.  We finally made it back to the saddle, and the girls wanted to keep going.  Now it wasn't quite as hard, but I knew there were still some more step downs, and they weren't fun.  Vickie had to pee now real bad.  We stopped and took a quick break, but she couldn't wait long.  She decided she was going to hold it until she got down to the bottom where the portajohns were.  At the saddle I had decided to use her hiking poles because of all the slipping I was doing.  They helped.  I didn't slip anymore, but my right arm got real sore to the point where I could barely move it.  I gave the poles back to Vickie.  Luckily now we weren't in the sandy part anymore.

But I did slip once more after that and I was so annoyed that I told Vickie to go on without us.  She needed to pee and I was going to take my time, so it wasn't a good combination.  Tami and I hiked together, but I told her to go ahead of me.  I actually needed to pee, too, and I didn't want her to see me.  I was walking slow and I was stopping probably every quarter of a mile.  I caught back up to Tami and we hiked together again until she was trying to lower herself down a rock and she slipped and fell on her butt, and almost bashed her head against a tree.  She told me to go on without her.  I was thinking, what happens next time when you actuall concuss yourself?  We still had about two miles to go, but I decided we would part ways.  I needed to be done, and the rests weren't helping.  I said a little prayer and then realized that the best thing would be to just keep going without stopping.  The clouds were still building.  I did stop briefly once and then I heard a rumbling thunder crack.  I thought it must be God saying, "I told you not to stop!" 

I was back into the rocks and roots.  If it wasn't for them, the last three miles wouldn't have been so bad.  But they were there and it was bad.  I trudged along.  There were two trees that were fallen over the path.  Luckily only two this time as opposed to the 50+ on the previous hike.  When I stepped over the first one, I didn't see the rock on the other side.  I stepped on the rock, and it rolled, and my right ankle rolled, and my left knee hit the ground all in one motion.  I just stayed there on my knees for about 10 seconds waiting for the pain to go away.  It was the same ankle I had twisted in February.  But the Lord had already listened to my prayer about getting back safely, and to my surprise, I was able to get back up and start walking again.  I was even able to run a little bit of the last mile.  Right before I left the forest and entered the meadow, it had started to rain.  It actually felt so good.  I finally finished and right when I got to the van, it started to dump hard.  Just in time.  But poor Tami was still out there.  She made it too, though.  The other two girls only made it as far as the saddle.  But that's good. 

I am glad that I made it to the top and can say that I've hiked to the highest peak in AZ, but I don't ever want to do it again.  I drove down the hill and we ate lunch at Sizzler's.  Then I let Vickie drive home because my arm was still so sore.  I layed down in the back and took a nap.  Traffic was terrible again, but we finally made it home just in time for dinner.  Here's a picture of Vickie and me at the saddle.

I'm way behind on blogging.  This was a slow run days after my Mount Humphries hike.  It was very slow.  I remember the shirtless old man passing me and saying, "Good job, brother!"

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.

After my last hike, my feet hurt so bad.  I wonder if I have diabetes.
 

Today is Vickie's birthday.  Yesterday she said she wanted to go on a hike.  I think she wanted the whole family to go, but she didn't tell us.  I got up and she decided it would just be her and me.  Fine by me, I guess.  She found a short easy hike fairly close to us.  Turns out it was right at Bulldog.  But instead of going east, the hike was on the west side of Usery Pass Road.  It was actually one of the peaks of Usery Mountain, but not the highest peak.  We started at 8:31am.  Kinda late, but the temperature has been going down lately, so it wasn't too hot.  We crossed the street, straddled over the broken barbed wire fence, and started trudging up the sandy wash.  After a couple hundred feet I could hear gun shots.  The gun range is right on the other side of the mountain, but these sounded closer.  We kept going and then I could see some people up ahead behind the brush.  We got closer and saw that it looked like a scout troop.  I'm ok with them learning gun safety, but I don't think they are allowed to shoot there.  Anyway, after that Vickie checked her All Trails and realized we weren't on the trail.  That makes sense because I see mountain bikers come in here all the time and there's no way they could pedal through all this sand.  So we cut through the desert and got on the trail.

At one mile in I head the distinct shake of a rattle.  It startled me, but not to the point where your blood runs cold.  I was more scared that I was pretty well exposed with tennis shoes, short socks and shorts, and that my wife was right behind me, and that I would rather the snake bite me than Vickie, and that I wouldn't be able to stop her from walking into it in time.  So I did the only thing I could do; I yelled, "Dut dut dut dut dut dut dut!"

It was kind of exciting, and we weren't really in any danger.  But in the brief time between hearing it and seeing it, a myriad of thoughts go through your head.  We circled around it, taking pictures and videos.  It did what it was supposed to do.  Warned us by shaking its rattle and got ready to strike if we got too close.  I did want to try and catch it, but Vickie talked me out of it.  It stopped rattling as we walked around it, which didn't make for exciting footage, so I kicked some rocks at it so it would start rattling again.

After that we were on high alert, but we didn't see any more snakes for the rest of the hike.  It was an out and back, and by the time we got back it was gone.  We stopped and got donuts on the way home for Vickie's birthday breakfast.

I need to get up earlier.  Not because it's still hot, but because I would rather run while it's dark and people can't see me.  But I didn't get out until 7:06am.  I think today is the first day back for many kids at school.  I saw the crosswalk guard doing his duty for the elementary school, and I saw my next door neighbor's junior high kid sitting at his bus stop.  My two high school aged daughters only have school two days a week; Tuesday and Thursday.  The rest is on-line.

I turned west to head toward the Floodway/Canal.  I saw four guys walking across the street.  I thought about just going to the other side of the Floodway to run because I didn't want to have to deal with them.  But I couldn't break the habit of running the same route in the same direction.  So I turned in behind them.  I caught up to them and one of them looked to be in his 40's and the other 3 in their 20's.  As I passed them the 40 year old said, "Is that all you got?"  Mohummad Ali once asked that same question to George Foreman, so I gave him the same answer, "That's it."  One of the 20 year olds said, "Well, you're beating us."  Not long after that I heard their footsteps behind me.  They caught up and passed me.  They started walking again before reaching Brown Road.  They went through the gate and turned west.  I was like, "Please don't tell me they're going to go back south on the RWCD Canal.  I don't want to play leapfrog with them.  But they ended up crossing Brown Road, and that was the end of them.

I think they kind of made me push my pace because my second mile was 2 minutes slower than my first one.  My legs were sore, but not as bad as they were during the two weeks I took off from running.  I turned north on the Floodway trail at University.  Jeff was laying down asleep against the wall.  He was probably pretending because there was what sounded like a dirt bike revving its engine real loud as it drove down the street.  As I approached the green belt, I could see a leg up against the wall.  It looked like a woman's leg.  It seemed weird because although I could see a lump of clothes, I couldn't make out the rest of the body.  When I was close enough I could see that it was a lady (or a man with nicely shaved legs) underneath a jacket.  She was sitting on her butt up against the wall with one knee up and the other leg criss cross apple sauce without the cross.  Then there was a man laying down next to her long ways with the wall.  I'm guessing they slept there.  I briefly stopped just to make sure they were ok, and when I saw one of them move their arm, I ran off.  I wonder if they were there the other night when I took Herbie on a walk.  I could smell cigarette smoke, but I assumed it was coming from the other side of the wall.

I took Vickie to a fancy restaurant last night.  Her birthday was Saturday.  I wanted to book a reservation for Saturday, but there wasn't any availibility until 9:30pm.  So I booked one for Monday at 6:30pm.  I literally just asked Google to find me some fancy restaurants, and a seafood one popped up, so I took it.  I'd never been there before, though I'm sure I've driven past it.  We pulled up and there was a tiny little building on the property.  How can this be a fancy restaurant?  It was all underground.  It was kinda fun.  Vickie got a lobster and filet mignon.  I got crab stuffed shrimp.  It was real good.  We had a carrot cake for dessert. 

Luckily I barely ate anything before that, so this morning I wasn't suffering from being overfilled.  I got up just before 5am, went potty, and went back to sleep.  I should've stayed up, but I didn't.  Vickie and I went outside at the same time to go running.  I started my stretch routine, and she started picking up some of the garbage on the side of our house from our remodeling project.  I left about 30 seconds before she did.  Maybe a minute.  Not sure.

I was running north on the Floodway path and passed two ladies.  One young and tall and one older and short.  I'm guessing it was a mother and daughter and the daughter had outgrown her mom.  Then I saw the lady with the curious dog.  The dog always wants to come see me, and the owner doesn't really stop it.  But I don't mind.  Then I turned south on the RWCD road.  I could see Vickie running on the other side of the Floodway.  So she was following me!  We waved at each other.  Then I could see an RWCD truck stopped at Adobe and the Canal.  I wasn't sure if it would be there when I got there because I was still over a quarter of a mile away.  But it was, and it was Mosiah.  I stopped and talked with him for a little bit.  I pointed out my wife as she was heading toward us.  Then another zanjero truck pulled up.  It was Dave.  He got out and we started talking and shortly after that Vickie arrived.  I introduced them to her, and Vickie says she remembers meeting Mosiah before.  Mosiah asked if I had any marathons coming up, and I said no.  But Vickie piped up and said she was doing Rim to Rim this weekend.  Then she said she had to go because the girls needed her help getting ready for their first day of school.  So she left to go home and I left to do one more loop.  I got home and jumped in the pool.  It was actually cold.

I was up at quater to 6.  I thought I'd have the bathroom all to myself.  But after a while I saw the light on in my room because my wife was up, too.  So I cut it short, hoping I'd be all right.  But I wasn't all right.  I had to go more.  Next thing I know it's 6:35am.  That's almost 50 minutes of you know what!  Of course, I wasn't on the toilet for all that time, but still.  I did my two loops again.  I could see a bunch of trucks up at the Canal on Brown.  Then I saw a zanjero truck pull up.  I wondered what was going on.  The zanjero truck left before I got there.

When I finally got there I saw Rob Carlock and Danny Shin.  I don't remember what Rob's official title was when I worked there, but he was one of the heads of the zanjero department.  Danny worked in the shop.  They were talking to other guys from a construction company.  I said, "Hey Rob!"  He didn't recognize me right away because of my Covid beard, so I was about to run on by.  But then he said, "Oh, hey Burt."  So I stopped.  I kinda interrupted the converstation, so Danny walked to the side with me so we could talk and Rob could continue talking with the construction guys.  I asked what they were up to.  He said they wanted to be able to clean out underneath the street this year during Dry Up, and this company had short Bobcats that are remote controlled.  I then said that I had heard about Stephen Davids.  Stephen was one of the zanjeros that trained me.  He was about my age.  A couple of weeks ago I got a message on Facebook from his sister-in-law that he passed away unexpectedly.  She didn't say how.  I asked Danny if he knew how.  Covid, maybe?  He said they were never told.  Just that he didn't show up to work at wherever he was working now, and they sent the cops over to his house to do a welness check, and he was dead.

I said goodbye and headed south down the RWCD road.  I saw the tall old lady.  She's usually trotting along, but today she was walking.  Then I could see my wife running down Adobe.  I waved at her, but I couldn't tell if she waved back.  It looked like she had her face turned toward me, but I couldn't tell if she was waving.  She later told me she was.  Three more days until she does Rim to Rim.
 

I finally got up a littler early.  Early for me anyway.  I was having a weird dream when I woke up about my mom confessing to having given up my older brother's twin as a baby.  She said she could only take care of one of them and was now feeling guilty.  I told my brother that I rember seeing someone that looked exactly like him at ASU.  (True story.)  But my mom said it was a girl.  I decided I was going to find her, so I took my phone out and started doing a Google search for babies that were put up for adoption in Bakersfield, CA in December 1972.  A monthly calendar popped up starting in 2020.  I had to scroll all the way down.  I was scrolling and scrolling, and ads were popping up that kept slowing it down.  I never made it before I woke up.

Since I'm driving Vickie to Flagstaff today, I decided to stay up and get my run in.  I was on the toilet when I heard Emily come in to my room.  Apparently she had a weird dream, too.  I got dressed, took Herbie outside, and then went running.  I saw Edythe Ray.  I don't think she recognized me right away.  It was a little dark, and my beard keeps getting longer and longer.  I saw another beautiful sunrise.

It was dark out when I started.  But not too dark.  There were lots of pretty girls out running.  At least I assume they were.  It was dark.
 

I didn't run yesterday and I regret it.  I saw some of my locals post on Facebook that they got sprinkled on and saw rainbows.  Oh well.

I've been listening to Audiobooks lately on YouTube.  So far I've listened to 1984, Crime and Punishment, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, That Evening Sun, and now Catcher in the Rye.  I've read 1984, Animal Farm, and Catcher in the Rye before.  All in high school, so it's been a while.  I remember parts of Catcher in the Rye.  I remembered that there were F words in it.  But I didn't remember that there were so many other swear words.  I mean, there were thousands of them!  Still, I listened to it. 

Since I was getting close to the end, I had an hour to go, but I listen on 1.75x speed, I decided to listen while I was running.  I don't trust that my headphones will stay in my ears while I'm running so I just held my phone close to my ear and turned the volume all the way up.  I saw the Schumacher's walking toward me.  I paused it in case they wanted to talk.  We just said said hello to each other.  I had to pause it two other times when approaching Brown and University because the traffic was too loud for me to hear.  Anyway, the real reason I'm saying all this is because on the way back to my house I was running by this sweet old lady I see a lot.  She waved at me and I back at her.  Just then, the narrator said b@$&@*d.  Loud and clear.  I'm sure she heard it.  I won't be able to look her in the eyes anymore.

I can't remember exactly what was going on during the day, but by the end of the day neither me nor Vickie had gone for a run or anything.  She crawled into bed at 10:45pm, and I said, "Do you want to go on a midnight hike?"  She was like, "When?"  I was like, "Right now!"  So she threw her shoes back on and off we went.  All we did was walk up the RWCD Canal up to McDowell Road and back.  We got our headlamps, but we never used them because the moon was pretty bright.  That's not entirely true.  Occasionally I would turn mine on to search for animals.  We heard an owl as we were walking between Adobe and Brown.  But I couldn't see it.  After we crossed Brown and were heading toward Greenfield I turned around and saw a light behind us.  It turned out to be a couple of guys on mini ATV's.  We crossed Greenfield and were heading towards McKellips.  I heard some rustling in the leaves next to the wall.  I turned on my light and it was a skunk!  Luckily it kept its distance, but I kept the light on it until it turned the corner and scampered off into the orange grove.  We crossed McKellips and heard another owl.  I turned on my light and pointed it at the top of the power poles.  I couldn't see anything, but it looked like there was something big in the path ahead of us.  It was so big that I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.  But I realized it was an RWCD zanjero truck.  Oh yeah.  Those were the days.  Finding a nice quiet place to park and take a nap.  Hey, it's a 12 hour shift, and as the week goes on, you start to get exhausted.  I can't blame him.  We walked by the passenger windown and I could see him shuffling around to get comfortable.  Or maybe he was waking up.  I didn't see the owls.  We finally made it to McDowell and it was 10 minutes before midnight.  Vickie was wearing her workout outfit, and I was wearing regular clothes and my running shoes.  I was getting uncomfortable with the sweat in my nether regions, but I didn't think much of it.  We turned around and headed back.  The zanjero truck was now gone.  We had gone a mile and a half since last seeing it, but I didn't hear or see it move.  Anyway, we could still hear the owl and I shined my light again, and this time we saw the owl.  And another owl.  And another.  There were three sitting on top of the electric pole.  Hindsight, we probably saw them the first time, but didn't realize it.  We thought they were part of the pole.  But we could see that none of the other poles were like that.  So that was fun.  Three owls and one skunk.  We made it back home a few minutes before 1am.  I sat on the toilet and looked down at my panties.  They were stained with blood.  I showed them to my daughters and told them I was on my period.
 

I felt like I had a little extra pep in my step today.  Maybe my midnight hike helped out.  I saw Edythe again.  She has a lot of children.  I'd say she rivals the Pachev's.

I got out this morning almost the exact same time as yesterday.  I ran the same two loops again.  The first four people I saw were all walking dogs.  After that, there were quite a few runners out this morning.  I wonder if they're starting to train for the Phoenix Marathon?  I also saw the Booths out walking.  I said hi, but I'm not sure they recognized me.  The Booths are great.  But Br. Booth does like to talk a lot during quorum.  That's not a bad thing.  But it does make me question his motives.  But that's just me projecting.

I went to bed early and woke up early.  It was somewhat dark when I started running, but the moon was bright and full.  I took a picture of it twice.  I could see a figure up ahead of me on the Floodway path, but after I took the picture, they were gone.  I started running again, and after passing the line of sight of some trees, could see the figure again.  I could also see now that there were two of them and they were walking in the same direction that I was running.  I may have scared them a little.  I believe they were of the same denomination as me from the bits and pieces of their conversation that I was able to pick out as I went by.  Then I saw a blue light up ahead low to the ground.  I immediately knew that it was the same two girls I saw the other day walking their dogs.  One of them has a blue glowing dog collar on her dog.  I said, "I knew it was you guys because I could see the collar."  I'm very awkward in my beginning conversations with people I've never met. 

It was starting to get lighter and I was moving quite slow after not having run the last two days.  When I got back to Adobe I saw a guy walking a dog.  I didn't recognize him right away as he waved at me.  But then it registered in my mind who the dog was.  So I turned around and said, "Is that you, Jesse?", talking to the owner and not the dog.  I knew it was him by the time the words left my mouth, but all he said was, "Hey."  Crossing Adobe I saw the old couple that I see all the time.  They were turning south on to the Floodway path on the east side of the Floodway.  I was running south on the west side which is also the RWCD Canal east road.  One of the Sutherlin's chickens was making a funny noise.  The Sutherlin's are in the first house backing up to the east side of the Floodway off of Adobe.  I turned around to look and the old couple was looking, too.  I kept going, but I kept hearing it and wondered if it was really one of their chickens or some other sort of bird that was following me.  I ran down to University and headed north on the east side of the Floodway.  I said, "Hey, guys" as I passed the old couple.

I loved the General Conference addresses over the weekend.  I was wise enought to take a nap in between the first and second session yesterday so that I wouldn't fall asleep during the second session.  However, that nap caused me to wake up at 3am this morning.  I got up, went to the bathroom, and tried to lay back down to go to sleep.  I couldn't.  Then at quarter to 4, I heard David start crowing.  Seriously?  Maria still sleeps outside our window next to the steps.  I heard her start clucking so I went outside to check on her.  She seemed to be all right, but I could hear the pool pump sucking air.  I opened the pool gate and went in to check.  We want to drain it within the next couple of weeks so that we can do some maintenance on it.  But as I walked over to the drain, I could hear water spraying.

There are some irrigation pipes that run along the dividing wall between us and our neighbor.  At the end of the line is a spigot with a little riser right next to it.  The riser is capped with a twisting cap that I assume is for bleeding the line.  However, it's broken and it leaks water.  It's been leaking water for over year now, I'd say.  And recently it's been getting worse.  I haven't paid it much mind because it provides another place the chickens can go to get a drink.  And it's not flooding anything.  With the harsh summer temperatures, a lot of the water gets evaporated.  But the ground is getting saturated and it could do damage to the wall. 

My plan was to have one of the handymen that are working on our house renovations right now fix it.  We just ripped out the flooring in our laundry room and bought a brand new washer, dryer, and water heater.  They put in the new flooring and the new appliances came Friday.  But now the cold water faucet to the washing machine is broken.  My guess is that it broke when it was turned off because now it won't turn back on.  So we can't use the washing machine because it doesn't work if the cold water doesn't work.  Blah!  We're going to have to have one of the handymen fix it for us, and I figured I'd ask them to fix the irrigation leak, also.  Well, now I'm going to have to fix the leak myself because it was shooting water straight up in the air.  That portion of the yard was getting really flooded.  I'm glad I woke up.  Maybe that's what was making David crow. 

I woke up my wife to let her know what was going on.  She was starting to panic because she figured I wouldn't wake her up unless it was an emergency.  I mean, it was a little emergency.  When she came to her senses, I told her we need to turn the water off.  The valve is in the front yard.  We weren't sure which one was for the backyard and which one was for the house, so she stayed at the valves and I went to the backyard.  I walked around the side of the house through the RV gate this time.  I stepped in a puddle of water.  I was like, "Oh man, did it flood all the way over here?"  But shining my light on the ground I could tell that the water was localized and it was coming from the pool pump.  That explains the pool sucking air.  I guess the seal is broke.  So, the laundry pipes, the irrigation pipes, and the pool pump.  Our plumbing sucks!  I called Vickie on my phone and we figured it out which valve shut off the backyard.

By now it was pushing 4am and I wanted to get at least another hour of sleep.  But I couldn't.  I sat on the toilet again for a while.  Then I played some games on my phone and decided to go running.  I got dressed and walked through the bathroom door and into the hallway.  As I opened the bathroom door, I heard my bedroom door open.  It was Emily.  She was awake and had to use the bathroom.  I'm always worried that if I leave and she's the only one else awake in the house, that she'll follow me.  I told her after she was done going potty, she could sleep on my side of the bed.  She said she didn't want to.  She wanted to watch the sunrise with me.  Great.

Don't get me wrong.  I love spending time with her.  But it was 6am now, and I wanted to get started before it got too light.  Well, there was nothing I could do to convince her to go back to bed, so watching the sunrise it was.  This means, she puts her shoes on and we walk out to the corner of Adobe and 48th and sit on the curb.  It was getting light out.  Emily loves to say good morning to everyone that's out, walking, walking dogs, riding bikes, and even driving by.  And I guess everyone else loves it, too.  She sure can strike up a nice converstation with perfect strangers.

As the sun started to come up, so did the mosquitoes.  That's what got her to decide to go home.  I walked her home and told her to pour herself a bowl of cereal.  If she's eating, there's a good chance she won't follow me.  But she said she wanted me to cook her scrambled eggs!  It's quarter to 7 now!  I woke up Vickie.  She had no problem going back to sleep.  I told her Emily wanted eggs.  She said she would be up in a bit to make them.  Then I went to the front door and hollered, "Emily stay there while I go running!  Mom's going to make you some eggs in a minute!"  And I finally got to go running.

I saw some of the dog walkers that I had seen earlier.  I smiled and waved at them.  I saw the Schumacher's.  This time I decided to stop and ask them how they liked General Conference.  Carol said it was excellent, and Bruce said it provided much need interpersonal perspective.  I said they were very timely.  We parted ways and I passed them again as I heades south on the other side of the Floodway.  Turning back north on the Floodway, there was Jeff, sleeping in his sleeping bag as usual.  There's also a new guy about an eight of a mile north of him.  I ran by my back wall and looked to see if there was any water leaking through the wall or any visible damage, but it looked all right.  Finally I got home and Vickie made some eggs for me, too.
 

I started running one minute before 6am.  It was just starting to get light out.  As I approached the Floodway I could see some reflector light under the pavilion by the water fountain.  I thought maybe a cyclist was getting a drink.  But that fountain only yields hot water.  I've let that thing run for minutes and it just stays hot.  So I ran by and noticed someone was sleeping on the ground next to the bench.  They had a bicycle.  I almost stopped to ask if they were all right, but they had a duffel bag under their head, so I could tell it was for sure someone sleeping.  That's about all the excitement I had on this run.  My pace was 30 sec/mile faster than yesterday, but still slow.

I started running at 5:47am.  It was dark.  I was running for a while and had almost made it to Brown Road.  I said to myself, "Wow.  I haven't seen a soul."  Just then I heard a voice behind me, "On your right."  I knew he was on a bicycle, so whenever you hear that, you kind of panic a little because you only have so much time to remember which side is your right and which side is your left.  But I pulled myself together real fast and motioned him to pass me on the right.  I turned back south on the RWCD road.  I decided I would add on another loop to my run today, meaning I would keep running south after University and go down to Main.  That adds just over a mile to my normal run.  And I felt like I was really struggling.  I'm in such bad shape right now.  But I'll keep at it.
 

I went to Kingman over the weekend for my sister's wedding.  We drove up Friday mid morning.  I brought a pair of running clothes, but I never went running.  I spent most of Saturday setting up for the wedding that would be at 5pm.  I didn't go Sunday either because I try not to sweat on Sundays.

We got home around 10pm Sunday night.  I slept in and started my run at 7am.  A little later than I like, but better late than never.  Today is the first day where students will be going back to school full time instead of just two days a week.  I saw the junior high kids at the bus stop.  One of them was our old bishop's son.  I said, "What's up, Ethan?"  But his name is Emerson.  I continued to the Floodway and headed north.  I saw the Schumacher's again.  Some day I'm going to remember how to spell their name without having to look it up on Facebook every time.  I stopped briefly and asked if they went to church yesterday.  Yesterday was also the first day of non-restricted crowd sizes at church.  They said they did.  I said I missed it due to my sister's wedding, but there's always next week. 

I got to the other side of the Floodway and headed south.  I could see the old man in the fisher hat ahead of me.  I didn't think I would catch up to him.  I was making up ground on him but couldn't catch him before Adobe.  I saw the tall old lady and waved at her.  The old man continued south down the RWCD road after crossing Adobe.  So I did end up catching him.  I almost asked him what his name was, but I didn't feel like it was the right time.  I got to University and headed back north on the east side of the Floodway.  I saw a guy heading south on the other side near Adobe.  Turns out it was Br. Massey from the ward.  Strava told me so.  Then when I was leaving the gate, I could see two ladies walking down the sidewalk and I could see the tall old lady leaving the gate on the other side of the street.  So as I was waving at her again, one of the walking ladies said, "Burt."  I had no idea who she was at first, so I stopped and realized it was Sis. Knudsen.  Not sure who the other girl was.  Maybe one of her daughters that I don't know?  But I asked them both if they had gone to church yesterday.  She said they didn't because they were up at their cabin and they were supposed to have the flooring redone on Friday, but they didn't come until Saturday, so it was being worked on Saturday and Sunday.  Then she said, "There's always next week."

I got up nice and early this morning.  I started my run at 5:48am.  It was dark.  I could see a red light low to the ground up ahead on the Floodway trail.  I wondered if it was the blue light collared dog.  As I got closer I could see the blue light, too.  Apparently the other girl put a glow stick around her dog's neck.  So now they're twinsies.  Kind of.  There wasn't much going on today because of the darkness.  But it was getting light and I could see pretty well for the last quarter of my run.  As I was heading north on the east side of the Floodway on my second loop, I saw a lady running south down the RWCD road.  I don't think I've ever seen her before.  But then again, it was a still a touch dark.  I waved at her but I can't tell if she even saw me.  Just then I heard, "On your right!"  It was that same guy on a bike again.  So that was embarrassing.

I was up early.  I didn't sleep well last night.  Probably because of the nap I took yesterday and I ate more than I should have last night.  It took me a while to get out the door, though.  It was 6:21am, and it was already light out.  We're supposedly nearing the end of days over 100º.  It is a little cooler out.  I like running when it's a bit cold.  I seem to go faster.

Today's run was much faster than yesterday's even though I didn't feel great.  I think it's because it wasn't dark out.  I slow down when it's dark.  I saw a lady ahead of me walking her two dogs.  One of the dogs, the stout one, kept turning around and looking at me.  She just kept focused ahead and kept pulling him along, but I was worried that I was going to make her trip over him or something.  Right before I passed her I saw Edythe Ray coming towards me.  She said something about running, running, running.  She has a very soft voice.  I guess she was talking about me because she wasn't running.  Then I passed the dog walker and apologized.  I wasn't sure if she would hear me because she had headphones on.  But she said, "No, you're fine."

About a minute after passing her I heard a noise and looked to the west.  It was a (flock?) of geese flying in a V formation.  They went right over my head.  I thought about taking a picture and pulled my phone out of my pocket, but it was too late.

I guess Strava disabled the Flyby feature.  That's too bad.  Or maybe I just need to reboot my computer, but I expect its the former.  As I was approaching Adobe I saw a guy riding a bike slowly.  Not real slow, but he looked like he could definitely go faster if he wanted.  I saw a lady running behind him.   I wondered if they were together.  They both turned on the RWCD road, and I followed them.  The guy went on ahead.  I didn't think I would catch the girl, and I didn't, but she wasn't running that much faster than me.

I headed back north on the Floodway path and saw the old couple that saw me shirtless last week.  I told them to have a great day.  I got passed twice by cyclists today but neither of them were the same guy that passed me yesterday.

I did a quick Google search on Strava and flyby's.  They disabled it for securtity reasons.  Makes sense.  The option for it is still there, but you have to enable it.  So they turned it off for everyone, but you can go back and turn it on yourself.  But who's gonna do that when they probably didn't know it existed in the first place?

I got out after 7am this morning.  I thought it might be too hot, but it has been cooling down a little.  I saw quite a few people out today.  A couple of them were awkward because of timing.  Twice I ended up following behind ladies that I'm sure were nervous.  You can't blame them.  I just wish I could say, "Hey, I'm one of the good guys!"  But that's exactly what a bad guy would say.  I could hear one lady pushing her baby in a stroller.  She was Asian.  I would guess Japanese.  She was loudly speaking in Japanese, I'm guessing, to the baby as she pulled the stroller from the side instead of pushing it.  I thought it an odd custom, but perhaps an accepted one in other cultures.  Wow.  I'm really walking a line here.  But it turns out there was a phone sticking out of the cup holder and she was talking to some on the phone.

I decided to run up to 1-1/2 on the Canal today.  That means half way between McDowell and McKellips.  At one point I came across a tree branch that had fallen from the main trunk of a tree in someone's backyard.  It was completely covering the path leaving only a tiny place to step over it right next to the Canal.  I'm glad we didn't come upon it when we did our midnight hike a couple of weeks ago.  We would have walked right into it.

It's funny how a 4.7 mile run now makes me sore for days.  I was still feeling it this morning.  I started at 6:39am this morning.  It was light out.  Not sure why I slept so long because I went to bed early.  As I was stretching I saw Sis. Ashcroft walking down the street.  Herbie barked at her from the upstairs window.  I came around the corner of the garage and pointed at him.  Bad doggy!  I ran north up the Floodway path and saw Br. Aschcroft and one of his daughters.  I said, "I saw your wife a looong time ago."  I got a belly laugh from him.  I said, "She left you in the dust!", and got another belly laugh. 

I was approaching Brown and was closing the distance on one of the old couples I see all the time.  Then I saw a lady running on Brown and turn into the Floodway.  We were all going to pass each other at the same time.  Knowing the path was only big enough for 3 people in these times of Covid, I stepped off to the side.  But the runner lady stepped off at the same time.  So I had to swerve even closer to the channel bank.  The lady looked awkward because she wanted to wave at both me and the walkers and now she was in the middle of us.

Heading south on the RWCD road, I saw the Schumachers again.  They were being closely followed by two guys that looked like they wanted to pass them, but couldn't because I was in the way.  Br. Schumacher said the closing prayer at sacrament yesterday.  I said, "It was nice to see you guys yesterday."  Then Sis. Schumacher said, "Good morning, Burt."  Not the response I was expecting.  Then I realized they were once again listening to something on Br. Schumacher's phone, so they probably didn't hear what I said.  Last time I could tell they were listening to a General Conference talk.  It was probably the same this time.  I passed them, and waved at the guys behind them.  Then I looked across the Floodway and saw my wife.  She usually doesn't run on the Floodway, but I guess she chose to do so today.  I waved at her until she saw me and waved back.  I wondered if she was going to do a loop or if she would exit the Floodway at Brown and run down the street.  I thought, maybe I should speed up so she doesn't get to Adobe before me if she stays on the loop.  Well, as I was coming back towards Adobe I could see her from far off.  I was like, "Holy crud!  She smoked me!"  She got to Adobe before I did and then crossed the street and continued south.  She pretty much ran the same route I did.  But I realized that we were about at the same distance south of Adobe as we were north of Adobe when we passed each other the first time.  As sore as I was, I wasn't about to push the pace, so I was fine with that.  But after she finished I noticed her pace was one second/per mile faster than mine, which she bragged about.

Still not getting up as early as I'd like.  The weather seems to be cooling down slightly.  I saw some people wearing sweaters.  I saw Edythe on the other side of the Floodway.  Don't think she saw me.  Then I passed the Schumachers on the other side of the Floodway which measn Edythe must've saw them, too.  I ran to the other side and said good morning to them.  I was running slow, but I was trying to run a little faster than yesterday.  I got about a third of a mile from home when I got a phone call from my top client, so I had to stop and answer it.  But I walked while I was talking, so I don't know if my time would've been faster than yesterday's.

My grandson and I had watched all of the Tremors movies.  Burt Gummer is our hero.  I saw that a brand new one was released on Netflix last night.  I said, "Alexa, make an announcement."  "What's the announcement?"  "Atticus, there's a brand new Tremors movie!!"  A couple of minutes later we were watching it.  Burt Gummer didn't make an appearance right away, and I wondered if he would.  Napoleon Dynamite was in it.  Is he taking over?  I thought Jamie Kennedy was.  But then he was called to duty.  No one can fight a graboid like he can.  After a while I had this feeling that he wasn't coming out of this movie alive.  In fact, at one point my grandson said, "Burt Gummer never dies!"  But I couldn't shake the feeling.  Well, spoiler alert, he sacrifices himself in the end.  What a bummer, Gummer.  My grandson and I are grief stricken. 

I went to bed right after that and got up early.  It was nice and dark out.  I literally had the entire route to myself.  As I was coming to the Floodway I saw a lady with a headlamp and three dogs walking out.  She was at the street when I passed her, so she doesn't count.  I ran up to Brown and went to the RWCD road.  The horizon was starting to turn pink.  I ran down to Adobe and it had changed from pink to yellow.  At University it was turning gray, or maybe navy blue.  I wanted to do three loops today so I continued south after University down to Main.  I saw a couple on the other side of the Floodway.  It just light enough to see their shapes.  Could it be the Schumacher's?  What are they doing on this side of University?  Indeed it was, and I could make out Sis. Schumacher's arm waving at me.  They were over a half mile ahead of me.  I probably wouldn't catch them, I thought. 

I got to Main Street and now the horizon was baby blue and the clouds were pink.  It was beautiful, but this would be the last time I would see the sunrise because now I was heading north by northwest. The chase was on.  Not really.  I was running as slow as normal.  Each mile got faster as I went, and I'm sure it's because I could see more and more as I went.  I couldn't see the Schumacher's when I crossed University.  The path winds, and there are trees and bushes.  But after a while I saw them.  Still didn't look like I would catch them.  It might be close, though.  Finally, they got to Adobe before I did, so I was right that I wouldn't catch them.  But I was within shouting distance and told them to have a good morning.  Sis. Schumacher said, "You, too, Burt."

I made someone else mad at me this morning by telling them they shouldn't be fishing in the Canal.  Wow, did this guy take it personal.  I still believe that it's better I tell them, than they do.  But he called me tubby.  He was this close to me pushing him out of his chair and in to the Canal.
 

Not much to report on this run.  I saw the Schumachers again.  Lots of runners out today.  The weather is cooling down.
 

We drove up to Sedona to hike with Vickie's hiking group again.  We planned on doing three "vortex" hikes.  Apparently that has something to do with places where there's hocus pocus supernatural energy.  Who knows?  Bunch of hippies.  The first hike was Cathedral Rock.  I had heard that this was a tough hike.  Truth be told, it wasn't that bad.  It looked scarier than it was.  The sand stone was nice and smooth and not at all slippery.  Daylene and one of the other girls only made it half way up.  There was this crack that you had to scramble up and they were too afraid to try.  After doing it, I think they could've done it easily.  The other 6 of us made it to the top and took some pictures.  Then we came back down and Daylene and the other girl, her name escapes me, were still there where we left them.  I helped Daylene down the rest of the way.

We then drove over to Bell Rock.  There were a bunch of different paths and we weren't sure which way to go.  All Trails wasn't helping.  We wandered around a lot.  We wanted to get to the top, but how do you do it?  We got to this place where you had to scramble to get up.  I saw another place to go up, and some of the girls followed me.  (I was the only guy.)  I realized this wasn't going to be easier and told them I didn't recommend they come up this way.  They told me to turn around, which I did.  We then went to where the other girls went up and I found a real easy way to get up, but they didn't want to.  So it was just me, Vickie, and Heidi.  Katelynn stayed with the other girls and they hiked around the base of the mountain.  We tried to find a way up, but there were no marked paths and everything looked sketchy.  I decided it wasn't that important to me to go to the top.  Maybe if we were following someone that knew the way.  So we turned around and went down.

After the other girls finished, we went to eat at a Mexican restaurant.  It was good.  I wasn't in the mood for meat, so I ate a vegetarian burrito which was pretty good.  I also had a slab of cactus.  Then we decided to forgo the last hike and head for home.  What a nightmare.  It took 7 hours to get home because the traffic is always so bad on a Sunday evening when everyone that left town for the weekend is coming back.

My big left toe was hurting after hiking Sunday.  I thought for sure when I took my shoe off I was going to find it all bloody.  But it wasn't.  I decided to take Monday off to rest.  Also Monday morning I started to feel the soreness in my arms and chest from the scrambling.  Yowza!

So I went running this morning, but my legs were really hurting.  I decided to just do one loop.  It was actually kinda cold this morning.  I saw Edythe and she was bundled up in a jacket.  I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt as usual.  I said, "What's with the jacket?"

I still wasn't feeling good today.  Just one loop again.  I decided I am going to take another day off.

I was feeling better today.  The soreness from the hike was gone.  Now I just felt normal.  Which still isn't great, but good enough for two loops.  I saw Edythe cutting through the park at the intersection of Adobe and 48th.  There are two openings in the Floodway fence that you can go through before getting to the main one at Adobe that I usually take.  I saw another lady that I've been seeing a lot lately.  We waved at each other as she ran by.  I saw another lady that walks her two dogs.  I'm pretty sure she was the one Emily talked to the day we went to watch the sunrise.  Then I headed south on the RWCD road and saw the runner lady again.  I told her to have a good day.  I saw a zanjero in his truck at Adobe and the Canal, but I couldn't tell who it was.  There was an old man that I'd never seen before who waved at me.  I waved back and also waved at the zanjero.  There were two guys running together near University.  I said good morning to them.  I've been seeing them lately, too.  They were the ones that wanted to pass the Schumachers a couple of weeks ago.  But they were just walking then.  I headed back north on the Floodway path and saw the old man that had waved at me on Adobe.  I said, "You're making up some ground!"

I went to bed real early again last night.  Probably between 8:30pm and 9pm.  I was awakened at 11:30pm by my wife watching Tik Tok videos in bed next to me.  I scolded her for waking me up at 4 in the morning.  I knew it wasn't 4 in the morning, although it felt like it.  I just like to scold her for unreal things.  I went to the bathroom and went back to sleep.  I didn't get up until late, and finally went running at 8:40am.

My wife wanted to run 5 miles today and was very nervous about doing it.  She left before I did and texted me when she got 3 miles in.  She was shooting for a 13:30 pace, but she was at a 13:03 pace, so she decided to shoot for 13 instead.  She ended up running  5.31 at 12:53 pace.  I didn't know that at the time I left.  She probably finished shortly after I started.

I also decided to do 5 miles to show her how easy it was.  Although, 5 is not easy for me lately.  But it actually felt easy today.  The idea was to run straight up the Canal for 2.5 miles and then come back.  I turned in to the Floodway and saw a dad and two boys walking towards me.  I recognized them right away as Br. Whetten, Dallin, and Lincoln.  Dallin was one of my Wolf scouts.  Their daughter/sister is Katelynn's best friend, and she apparently stayed the night last night.  We were just at their house this week for our annual spooky dinner with them.  At one point during dinner Br. Whetten said, "We're so glad you guys could come over."  I replied, "We're surprised you guys invited us this year.  Not because of Covid.  But because you're in the bishopric now, and you're so high and mighty."  Anyway, I said, "Hey guys!"  Br. Whetten said, "It's good to see you."  I said, "Happy Halloween!"

At the mile and a half point I had to stop to shake this small pebble out of my shoe.  I sat on the irrigation box at 2-1/4.  (RWCD numbering system)  I was one mile away from the turn around.  It was almost 9am now, but the weather was great.  Strava used to only show tenths of a mile while you were running, and then give you to the hundredth once you'd saved and uploaded the workout.  Now they show you to the hundredth, which is nice.  I had a pretty good idea where 2.5 would be, so I pulled my phone out of my pocket and I was at 2.46.  I stopped at 2.5, took a quick rest and started back.  Usually my longer runs are slower, but since I was feeling good today, I tried to maintain a faster pace. 

After I passed McKellips again I could see a bunch of people to the south of me.  Getting closer I could see that it was a family letting their dogs play in the Canal, and an older couple walking.  The dogs got out of the Canal and one of them jumped up on the lady that was walking.  I laughed on the inside.  Then one of the dogs got loose and started running towards me.  It passed the couple and was coming straight for me.  I figured if it didn't bite them, it won't bite me.  It did bark, though.  I stopped and said, "Come here, puppy."  He ran back to his family, an Asian man and woman with two young boys.  The man apologized, and I said, "No worries.  I love dogs."  The older of the two boys said, "Have a good day, sir!"  I said, "Happy Halloween!"  And the other boy yelled something at the top of his lungs which I couldn't make out, but it was cute. 

During the last mile, I kept feeling like I was slowing down, so I'd mentally have to pick it back up.  I made it home, and my wife was mad because my pace was faster than hers.

The sun was just about to come up this morning.  I ran to the Floodway entrance and saw the Ashcroft family was about to leave the  Floodway on the south side of Adobe.  Br. Ashcroft is hard to miss, even when it's kinda dark.  My legs were feeling sore from Saturday, so I didn't push it at all.  I made it to Brown without seeing anyone else.  When I turned south down the RWCD road, I saw a beautiful sunrise and stopped to take a picture.  Then I started to see more people.  I saw the two guys that were running together last week.  Now they were walking together again.  I saw some runners and dog walkers.  My underwear was pretty tight and felt like it was going to chafe my undercarriage.  They were so tight that I couldn't grab them and pull them away.  I finally had to reach inside and pull them down.  This happened about three times.  The last time I just pulled them down to the midway of my rump and left them there.  I hope no one saw.

So, here's another story.  I'm friends with Sasha, the blog founder, on Facebook.  (In real life, too, as he's stayed over at my house a number of times for the Phoenix Half Marathon.)  He made a post about Russian propaganda on Facebook.  As we all know, Sasha is Russian.  The point he was making was that a certain newsworthy thing lately did not seem like Russian dissemination.  I commented the following, "Those crazy Russians!"  Now clearly that's a joke.  But guess what happened.  I was censored for it.  I violated the "hate speech" rules.  I contested it, and lost.  But yeah, contested it?  I didn't even get to plead my case.  All I could do is say that I believe I was not violating their rules.  So I guess you're not allowed to make jokes of any kind that involve race.  And that makes for a pitiful society.  When we can't laugh at others while laughing at ourselves, that's not a world I want to live in.  So maybe I'll stick to the blog instead and ditch Facebook.  Unless of course it was Sasha that reported me.  But I'm guessing it was an algorithm.

I got dressed to go running yesterday, but I wasn't done with the job that I told my client I would be done with the night before.  So I worked instead and thought about running later.  I never did.  So I just wore my running clothes to bed.  I woke up at 2:30am and checked the election results.  Still not official. I had a hard time getting back to sleep.  I think I slept for about an hour between 4:30am and 5:30am.

I started running at 6:20am.  It was starting to get light out.  I could see two figures coming toward me.  Girls.  I bet it's Edythe and Rhoda.  "Is that you, Rhoda?"  Her hand raised to wave at me.  Rhoda is so nice to Emily.  Last week Emily and I went on a walk.  She knocked on Rhoda's door and Rhoda was so excited to see her and initiated a hug. Emily has always been a hugger, but she's learned not to during Covid.

My pace was a tad faster today than Monday.  I need to continue to be consistent, and not miss more than a day of running.

Apparently I forgot to blog this day.  So....I got nothing.

My wife kept asking me what I want for dinner.  I wouldn't mind fast food, but really it's not a good idea knowing I was going to run Usery in the morning.  I asked Emily what she wanted, and of course she said Taco Bell.  I decided I could stomach Taco Bell.  I also decided I would go with my wife so I could look at the menu.  It's changed so much lately.  I also decided I would take Herbie with us.  I made a lot of decisions.  So we drove to Taco Bell with me in the passenger seat and Herbie in the back.  He liked sticking his nose towards the window.  I saw a new item that looked good.  A nacho cheese gordita or something.  And of course I got two Doritos Locos® Taco Supremes.  But as soon as I told my wife what I wanted I jumped out of the car with Herbie.  I figured I was about a mile from home.  Turns out it was 0.90 miles.  I was hoping I could beat her home.  We started running.  Herbie wanted to sniff every light pole we passed.  Or pee on it.  I failed to think about the fact that he probably had to poop.  And he did.  So I ducked down and pretended like I was picking it up.  But I just left it there.  We got to Adobe and headed west.  I wasn't running fast, but faster than normal.  Then Vickie drove by.  She slowed down and looked right at me, but she said she didn't see me.  I got home a couple minutes after she did.

Usery Pass, I did not miss you.  Earlier this week I sent a text message out to Vickie, Maggie, Alyssa, Mike, and Glen.  I said that Vickie and I wanted to run Usery this Saturday at 5am, but only wanted to do 4 miles - 2 miles up and 2 miles down.  Maggie said she wanted to come.  Alyssa said she would come even though that's early for her.  Mike asked what time.  (He didn't read close enough.)  Glen didn't say anything.  I hope I sent the text to his correct phone.  So yesterday I texted again and asked if anyone wanted a ride.  Maggie said she did.  Mike said he wasn't going.  Maybe next week.  Alyssa said nothing.  Glen said nothing.  After my Taco Bell I went to bed.  I didn't go to sleep right away.  I finished binge watching Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Seems like it might be the last episode ever. 

Vickie and I both woke up at 3:45am before the alarm went off.  As I was sitting on the toilet, I heard both of our phones go off.  "Who's flaking out on us this time?"  although I knew it would be Maggie.  Sure enough, she needed more sleep.  I texted her some random emojis.  She texted back and said it was raining.  I went outside and there was a bit of a drizzle.  I checked on Maria, and she was staying dry.  She still sleeps next to the back door at the top of the steps.  Then it started to rain buckets.  But after about 5 minutes, it died down.

So Vickie and I left.  We were running behind so I texted Alyssa to see if she was coming.  I told her it was raining.  No answer.  By the time we got there the rain had completely stopped and we got not a drop while we ran.  Vickie put on a brand new head lamp, but realized it didn't come with batteries.  So I figured I'd stay with her.  We pretty much run the same pace now anyway.  We both had on reflective vests, and I had on my tail light.  She turned on her flashlight on her phone.  She stayed right behind me the whole way.

At 0.9 miles I saw a light on the other side of the road.  I thought, "What if that's a cyclist that has collapsed or something?"  So I went over to check it out.  Vickie followed me.  Turns out it was just a pen light.  Or something.  The cover was broken, but the light was on.  Weird.  We went back to the other side of the road.  Vickie said, "We're messing up our times."

Cars usually come in bunches.  Or pairs.  They get stopped at the light at McDowell Road.  It becomes a single lane each way road, so usually you see at least two cars coming.  But I saw about 5 or 6 coming at once.  The first three passed by and it looked like two more were coming.  Then I heard a man's voice.  I turned around.  Where did that come from?  I looked ahead and realized it was a pack of cyclists.  Or a gaggle of cyclists.  Whatever you call them.  Riding together, they gave the illusion of a car.  When I finally realized what was going on, I stepped to the side.  I was off my game today.  Usually I'm more alert to the cyclists.  I guess it's been a while.

Shortly after that I saw a van coming toward us.  There was a truck right behind it.  The van was driving kinda slow.  I wondered if it wanted to pull over.  I was hoping if it did, that it saw me.  It passed by us.  A few minutes later the van was coming up from behind us lightly honking the horn as if to say, "I'm a friendly."  Was it Alyssa?  Does she have a new creeper van?  I guess I'll never know.

We were approaching the two mile mark.  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and Strava said we were at 1.97.  But Vickie said we were at 1.90.  I decided I better run just a little further to make sure we hit 4 miles without having to run around the parking lot.  Maybe the jaunt across the street skewed our numbers.  I went to 2.03 and turned around.  From there it was all downhill.  I saw a few more cyclists coming up.  I stepped off for them even though it was dark and unstable.  I kinda thought we wouldn't see any cyclists today because of the rain and the slick roads.  But they're hardcore.  I got back to the 4runner and I was at 4.06.  So I guess Strava was pretty consistent.

Before we went home we drove down to the river to see if we could see any wild horses.  We didn't.  But we did see a magnificent sunrise.  So take that, so called friends.

I spent a large chunk of the weekend reading some of my old blog entries.  This blog used to be so fun.  I had a blog long before I had a Facebook account, so in between the blog and Athlinks.com, they were my social media.  And I used to reach out and try to meet new people.  And I used to love to encourage people.  And I used to love to make new friends.  But along came social justice warriors.  And along came Facebook.  And along came quitters.  And along came me getting out of shape.  The blogs certainly not as fun anymore, but it still holds so many funny memories.

So it was actually cold today.  Not bundle up cold, but I could feel it.  I got to the Floodway and saw 7 people within the first quarter mile.  That's a lot.  But I didn't see anymore people in the next quarter mile.  I turned south down the RWCD road and saw one of the couples that I had passed.  Then I saw another couple and wondered where they came from.  Then I recognized it was Sterling Massey, the guy from my ward that I just started following on Strava.  He was running with his wife and his dog.  Two Saturdays ago Maggie texted me to help her move a piano to her house.  Bishop Coombs, Sterling, and Greg Spencer also showed up.  Sterling and I talked about how we run the same routes much of the time.  Knowing that lately he's been running just shy of Brown Road before he turns around, I wondered if he would be turning around soon.  They did.  And they passed me, although they were on the other side of the Floodway.  I think he realized it was me, but he didn't wave at me until he could tell I was looking.  They got to Adobe and started walking.  I had to wait for about 10 cars.  I've never had to wait for that many cars!  But I think it was because school was starting.  When I finally crossed I was able to catch up to them.  Then they started running again and passed me.  They weren't going that much faster than me, and I actually was running about a minute per mile faster than I was last week.  So we finally crossed paths when we were switching sides at University.  I stepped off the sidewalk and into the road so they could pass by.  I already had a conversation worked out in my mind.  "Hey guys!  It's finally cold, huh?"  But all I got out was, "Hey guys!"  Sterling said, "We finally crossed paths."  I said, "Yeah."  And that was it.  Other than his wife's giggle.
 

I got up early this morning.  Even earlier than David, our rooster.  I started running at 5:45am, and it was still dark.  And cold.  It stayed dark the entire time.  I like running in the dark, but I always slow down.  My pace was about 16 seconds per mile slower than yesterday, so not terrible.  I passed by one couple.  I couldn't tell if they were people I see all the time.  Just too dark.  When I got to Adobe again I saw some red lights flash on the signs hanging on the fence.  There's a clean up after your dog sign and a no fishing, boating, motorized vehicle sign.  Where did the red light come from?  I looked down the street and didn't see any cars.  Then I realized there was a dark figure running toward me.  He was wearing an LED light on his back, and I just didn't see him right away.  We said good morning to each other. 

It was cold, but it'll be a while before I'm not wearing shorts and T-shirts.  So even though I could feel the cold, I could also feel that today's run wasn't such a chore.  I guess I'm getting into shape a little bit.

Another dark and cold morning.  I left at 6:02 am, so I knew it would start getting light out on my run some time.  It was dark up until I got to University.  I hadn't seen anyone.  I finally saw a lady walking two beagles.  She said good morning to me before I said it to her.  Shortly after that I saw another guy walking his dog on the other side of the Canal.  I waved right as he turned his head to look at his dog.  I didn't think he saw me, but he waved back with his head still turned away from me like a cool cucumber.  I got to Main Street.  On the northwest corner of the intersection of Main and Higley is a tree that I call the bird tree.  There's always hundreds of birds in it.  You can't even see them, but you can hear them.  I heard a few and I waved my arms at it as I ran under it.  I woke the rest of them up.  The sun hadn't quite broken the horizon yet, but I could see pretty good now.  My last two miles were faster than my first two even though it didn't feel like it.
 

My legs were sore today.  Hmm..just one extra mile than normal and I feel it the next day.  It was 6:18am when I started running.  I wore a sleevless shirt which rubbed both my armpit and my ribcage raw.  Yesterday there were no clouds.  So when the sun came up, the sky started turning yellow.  It's the clouds that make it turn pink.  Today we got some pink.

This morning Vickie and I got up early.  Vickie is going to Zion to hike with her friends.  I planned on going running right when she left.  But not a minute had passed by and Emily was awake and in my room.  There will be no running this morning.  I went outside to feed the chickens and collect eggs with Emily and Herbie.  Herbie got excited and started running full speed.  He wasn't necessarily chasing the chickens, but he was scaring them.  Then he ran right into my knee.  I'm glad it was my knee instead of Emily.  But it hurt.  I kept my running clothes on all day and when Dartell came over to watch her, I went out.  It was 5:18pm.  I got to Adobe and could feel my knee starting to hurt.  I continued on to the pavilion and stopped to stretch out more and massage it.  I tried to run again, a little slower.  But I got to the Floodway fence and knew it wasn't going to happen.  I turned around and walked home.  The walk of shame.  When I got to the stop sign one of the sister missionaries rolled down the window and said, "Hi Brother McCumber!"  So that was embarrassing.
 

I took an extra day off because of my knee.  I took Herbie on a walk last night and it did all right.  I was worried that it would still hurt, so I just decided to run the route I walk Herbie on every day.  Well, almost every day.  Except those days he's getting punished for running into my knee.

I got to the stop sign and saw this lady running.  It was the same lady I saw last week, that I guess I forgot to blog about.  Usually I cross the road, but since I was taking a shorter route today, it meant staying on this side of the road.  This also meant I was going to be right in her way.  She's super fast.  I moved all the way over to the side of the sidewalk.  But she ran in the street as she passed me.  I said good morning expecting her to be annoyed.  But she sounded pleasant when she said good morning back.

The knee behaved.  I'll try and up the mileage tomorrow.

For the last three days that I've gone running, I've felt something in my shoe.  The first day I thought it was just a little rock.  So when I got home, I shook my shoe out and the only thing that came out was a little piece of paper.  I thought it strange that a piece of paper could get positioned in such a way to bother me like that.  But the next day I felt it again.  So I thought maybe my shoes were falling apart and losing their padding and something in the soul was poking at my foot.  But I forgot to check when I took them off.  The next time, same thing, but this time I did check.  I stuck my hand in my shoe and felt around, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  Then I turned my shoe over and saw that a bullhead (sometimes known as a goathead) had lodged itself in my shoe so deep that I didn't see it.  I pulled it out and threw it in the trash.

Today's run was poke free.  Also it was very dark and warm.  We've been having record highs here.  It finally seemed like it was going to cool down, but now highs are back in the 90's.  Anyway, I was running along thinking to myself how dark it was and how I could barely see anything.  But then I saw a shadow advancing.  As it drew closer I could see the soft glow of a cell phone light.  I didn't want to scare the person coming towards me so I yelled out, "Good morning!" when I thought they would be in range to hear me.  I received a sweet and mouselike, "Good morning!" back.  I said, "Is that you, Edythe?"  She chuckled, "Yes it is, Burt." 

I crossed Adobe and was thinking about the funny encounter when I was brought back to my senses by the sound of a siren.  It sounded like it was on Greenfield.  Then it stopped.  I was about an eighth of a mile south of Adobe when all of the sudden the RWCD road was lit up with red and blue lights.  I turned and saw the firetruck heading east.  Hopefully not to my house.  Then I started thinking about how there was a time in my life where I would pause to say a little prayer for whomever was on the distress end of call.  But I don't do that anymore really.  So I started thinking if there was any good reason why I don't do that.  Perhaps the person in distress was just pummelled for sneaking into some father's daughter's bedroom.  In that case, maybe they got what they deserved.  So they shouldn't be prayed for?  I don't know.  I'd have to reach a higher spiritual plane to show empathy for a child predator.

It stayed dark the entire time.  I only saw one other guy on the trail walking his two dogs.  They wanted to protect their owner from this mysterious dark stranger.  Then I saw what I originally thought was a large white dog.  It was actually light from a flashlight.  Someone was in the green belt walking around with their flashlight.  They shined it on me a couple of times.  I don't know what they were up to.  Maybe just exercising.
 

I started my run 32 minutes later today than yesterday.  It was dark, but not quite as dark.  The sun would be coming up soon and the rays were already providing enough light that I could see maybe 20 more feet in front of me.  My knee has been feeling better, but I'm still running real slow just in case.  I was heading south on the RWCD road when I saw a cell phone light coming towards me.  It was the same place that I saw Edythe yesterday.  But it couldn't be her.  What are the chances that I'm going to see her in the exact same place I saw her yesterday 32 minutes later?  Apparently 100%.  At least this time I was able to actuall see her instead of just recognizing her voice.

No clouds today, but the horizon looked pretty right before the sun came up.  My wife left on her run shortly after me.  We were flyby's on Strava.  Her pace was faster than mine today.  And she ran further.

I didn't sleep well last night and woke up with a headache.  I started running at 6:05am.  I wondered if I would see Edythe in the same place three days in a row.  While I was wondering that I saw a lady coming through the retention basin/park from the Floodway.  She waved at me.  It took me a sec, but I realized it was Edythe.  So even though I was thinking about her, I didn't realize it was her.  I guess I had my mind set that I would see her in a mile at the same place as before.

It was dark out, but I could see Edythe because of the lights in the park.  But once I'm on the Floodway path, there's hardly any lights.  The sun was about to come up, so it wasn't dark dark, but it was dark enough that I can't see people until they're about 20 feet away.  But hardly anyone's out anymore this early.  I did see a guy cruising down the RWCD road on a bicycle.  He didn't have a headlamp, but he had a tail light.

The run was slower than yesterday.  I'm sure it was the headache.  But it wasn't miserable, so there's that.
 

Lazy morning.  I had some bouts of sleep paralysis during the night.  I don't like it.  I laid around in bed even though I woke up pretty early.  I finally started running at 7:52am, which isn't terrible, but much later than usual.  My wife asked why we weren't running Usery.  I mean, we could be.  But she decided she would rather go to the gym this morning.  I'm an avid gym avoider.  She bought me a membership, but I haven't gone once.  So I ran up the Canal.  I wasn't sure how far I'd go.  Maybe six, if I was feeling ambitious.  I wasn't.  I could turn around at McKellips.  But that wouldn't even be four miles.  I have to do at least four miles.  I know, I'll run up to 1-3/4 and turn west down the hidden orange grove road.  As a zanjero, I was shown a shortcut to get into this part of the Canal without having to get out and unlock the gate.  The hidden orange grove road.  So I took that path.  It's nice and secluded.  There wasn't as much people out as I would have thought, but there was still enough to keep me entertained. 
 

I found out today that we're heading on vacation today and not tomorrow.  Glad I knew that before I went running or I might not have gone.  However, the run wasn't the best.  My knee started hurting again.  I got to almost University and stopped to stretch out a bit.  I started running again and got to the other side of the Floodway.  But after a while I had to stop and walk.  This happened two more times.  I would pause my Strava each time, so what's normally about 2.54 miles ended up being 2.32 miles.

I was driving for a good chunk of the day Monday.  It was very uncomfortable.  My knee didn't like it.  I slept on my sister's couch, but had to scrunch up.  I woke up with my knee throbbing, so I laid down on the floor for the rest of the night.  I didn't run yesterday.  I woke up a little after 5am this morning.  I was sleeping downstairs on a nice bed.  I had to go #1 and I thought it was still in the middle of the night.  I went upstairs and found my wife sitting on the couch awake.  My phone was on the charger upstairs and I saw what time it was and was surprised.  So I decided I would try and run today.  I got dressed and hoped my wife would join me, but she went back to sleep.  So I walked out the door to 25º cold.  I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and hoped I would warm up once I started moving.  For the most part I did except for my fingers.  I wasn't sure how far I'd go.  Maybe run a mile and turn around.  I ran one of the same routes I did last year; up the dirt road by the church, under the freeway through the culvert, then alongside the northbound I-15 freeway.  I started feeling ok.  My knee wasn't bothering me, so I decided to go 1.5 miles and turn around.  As I was running, I kind of thought about going up to the top of the gradual hill I was on.  So I went a little further than 1.5 and decided to play it safe.  I turned around and my glasses started fogging up.  So I took them off my face, folded them, and gently placed them in my pocket.  I could now see my breath with every exhale.  I wondered if the sweat coming off my face would freeze to my mustache.  It didn't.  I got home and my wife never knew I left.
 

Well, I'm 99% sure I had Covid-19.  I never got tested, but other people in my household got positive tests, so it stands to reason.  I've felt better for quite some time now, but I've been worried about the long term effects, especially those dealing with heart issues.  My father died of heart issues.

I finally decided today would be the first day back.  I went easy and tried to listen to my body.  It was early out, which is good, because when I got Covid, I decided to shave my hair into a mohawk and bleach it.  Just for fun.  But I've only allowed a few select people to see me because, c'mon, it's embarrassing and clownish.  However, there was a bit of a full moon this morning, and it was low to the horizon in the western sky.  I was worried that the light of the moon coupled with the street lights would shine brightly on my blonde head. 

The run was fine.  My body ached.  Not Covid aches.  Running aches.  I saw two old ladies.  I'm guessing they were old.  It was too dark to see, but I said good morning to them and they sounded old when they said it back to me.  The moon was providing enough light to see the trail.  But when I got to the other side of the Floodway, the rooflines from the nearby houses blocked the moon, and it was quite dark again.  The run seemed like it was taking forever.  It was.  I was going pretty slow.  I saw a light on the other side of the Floodway and on the other side of Adobe.  I guessed it was a bicycle because it seemed to be pointing straight ahead the whole time, whereas a person might be turning their head and having the light pointing in all directions.  But it was going real slow.  When I got to Adobe and ran over the Floodway, I found out it was a person.  I think a man, by the way he was breathing.  I also think he sped up when he noticed me.  I kept going east down Adobe and hoped he wouldn't see me, but I'm sure he did as I was under the street lights.

I got out a little later today than yesterday.  But that's ok because I shaved my mohawk off yesterday.  I'm almost bald at the moment.  Except for my beard.  I took a selfie with the moon in the background.  I stopped a couple of other times to compose myself.  I'm still taking it easy.  I noticed today that the Canal was drained.  Was it yesterday and I just didn't see it because it was so dark?
 

Another early morning with a beautiful sunrise.  I didn't see a soul running north, but when I turned south on the RWCD road, I saw three runners coming toward me.  Two of them were close enough that I wondered if they were together.  But the one that was lagging behind was also zig zagging.  The third person really looked like a woman from far away.  The way her knees stuck together and her ankles flared out while she ran.  I would not have guessed that it was Edythe, but it was.  Usually I see her walking, although I have on occasion see her run.  But not since her last baby.  Anyway, she looked like she had a good pace going.  Certainly faster than me.  And she seemed happy to see me.