Patience; the new endurance sport.

I'm so overcome with how beautiful this autumn has been.  About a week ago I took a camera to the trail and  took about 300 sequential pictures while I walked all the way down the trail and back. So that if I was ever to become really sick, in the hospital (mental or otherwise:) or in some way incapacitated, I  know the thing I'd miss the most is being outside and walking/biking/running. I hope that never happens, but when my Dad couldn't walk anymore and was really sick at the end, all I wanted to do was take him outside and go for a walk together like we did before. I pushed him in the wheelchair down the trail many times before we just couldn't do that anymore.
I wanted to catalogue, in some small way, all those things I love about walking on the trail, being outside, in every season, exposed to every kind of weather. I want to take the same sequence of pictures in every season.  So if I am sick, my kids can can play me back those pictures like a slide show, and pretend I'm there if I can't be.

4 miles on the treadmill watching back to back episodes of Alias.  Catherine loaned me the whole season on DVD.  However, she informed me on Saturday, they go in order. So I had to go back to the beginning.  It thought it was TV and could watch any episode at any given time.  So now I'm all caught up!

The trail was luscious from recent rain and the river ran very deep from melting snow.  The kids slept in (no school) and I got to have my most beloved AM hour to myself.  My hip was sore the whole rest of the day though....I did it a little to fast.

19 years ago I spent Thanksgiving Day in Battle Mountain Nevada.  I'd taken off for San Francisco right from work on Wednesday afternoon, and started driving into the night.  About 7 hours into that never ending flat tundra of Northern Nevada, my car started dying right on the freeway.  It was the alternator.  I got out of my car and a man in a mini-van pulled over and said the next exit was just about 200 yards away and he'd take me.  When I got into the van, there was a .38 calibur handgun on the floorboard by my feet. I freaked out a little, thinking that if he reached for it I'd knee him in the head.  But he just drove me to the exit and to the NAMPA parts store.  The store was closed, but he knew the owner and brought him back.  It was about 10:00 p.m.  They opened the store and we went inside.  Almost every  inch of available wall space overhead was covered with hunting trophies (Elk and deer heads, moose, etc).  A thousand hunted animals stared down at me standing at the counter, where the owner said an alternator for my VW GTI would cost me about $400. $400 I asked?  $400 he said flatly.   So I said thanks, I think I'll call my Dad.  And then I walked out into the bitter cold to where I saw a motel off the freeway. It was a Holiday Inn Express.  I asked the Manger if I could use the phone and I called my Dad collect.  I told him what happened, he agreed it was the alternator, and he said he'd be there in the morning with a new one.  So Thanksgiving morning I woke up, walked around town.  There were 3 buildings: The NAMPA parts store, a bar/restauraunt called the Owl Club, and the Motel.  I spent the morning in the Owl Club reading the Battle Mountain Bugle---first page news was a group of pictures of all the children who had turned one years old that month in Battle Mountain and a story about plowing the snow off 'main street' earlier that week.  I walked back to the Motel and my Dad and his wife showed up around 11:00 a.m. They had brought a turkey, potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and yams kept warm in a cooler.  They set the table with a linen cloth in the tiny conference room of the Holiday in Express, and there we ate thanksgiving dinner in Battle Moutain making a toast with Martenelli's cider from styrofoam cups.  Then my Daddy fixed the carburator and we drove back together, the rest of the way to San Francisco.  That was a Happy Thanksgiving.

Aside from riding the stationary yesterday for an hour while I watched a movie, I have run on the ground every other day. It's made my hip hurt again. I've performed due diligence with the stretching, redoubling my efforts on the days my feet hit the ground. It does help a lot, the special torque, the foot strike, and all that stretching-- but the pain never really goes away and is more stiff if I run days in a row. I think it's a matter of time more than any stretching or cross training for it to heal. That and maybe trying not to aggravate it further (biking and doing Yoga on off days). I felt so heavy today (well no duh with all that food I've eaten since Thursday). Thanksgiving lasts 4 ½ days at my house. It's a happy time of sage cornbread stuffing, sweet potato pie, and fresh cranberry relish. But makes for heavy running. The outside world around here has lost every bit of interesting colour this week and now matches my dishwater brown hair. It's all beige landscape and grey clouds. Even the surface of the lake is steely grey-green. The only saving grace is the silent, dark, winter depth of the river and the roosting trees. The occasional roosting tree hosts unfathomable numbers of tiny black birds perched in the branches a single leafless tree. Those little black birds perch shoulder to shoulder on every branch, and there are groups that fly in a single black mass around the tree. The raucous chirping is every bit as busy and loud as downtown NYC.