Neglected

I have neglected you, oh little blog.  I am going to try to be better to you, pay more attention to you, and treat you with the respect you deserve.  Seriously, I am.  Don't you laugh at me!!  NO... please don't leave me!!  


Ok.  Lets do this.  I joined a Facebook page where the goal is to run every single day, even if it's just a mile.  It's the I <3 to Runs 2012 Running Streak Page.  So I thought I should try to do the same with this blog.  Maybe not everyday because if anyone has to read this boring crap every day they'd probably want to kill themselves.  But you know, more often.


What happened this year?  At the beginning of the year, I had a conversation with my sister Miki.  (I'm pointing this out so I have someone to blame later).  We were running at her local park.  Neither one of us was happy where we were at in our lives in general.  For me this included a general feeling like something is very wrong and needs to be fixed - in pretty much all areas of my life.  We made a pact that we're going to change something major in our lives, to work towards something that'll shake things up, something that might point us to a happier station in life, a catalyst.  


In a nutshell, Miki went to a yoga retreat and she absolutely loved it, and is now teaching yoga.  She is still going to school to get her degree, moved out of our parents house, and the guy she is dating is a great guy.   Me, I took a voluntary lay off from Lockheed Martin, backpacked all Summer long, and have been doing not much more than running trails and travelling around locally to visit people and avoiding work like the plague - perfect for me right now.  I dumped my apartment, and stored stuff at my parents place where I usually sleep when I'm in town.   I got the opportunity to crew a friend at Badwater, run a bunch of races, and in the last few months, I ran the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim (45 miles), ran a 100k (closer to 60 miles) in Utah, and ran too many beautiful trails in Yosemite in between.  Thats the good stuff.  
My truck was stolen - the only thing I own - and a box of sentimental pictures and nick knacks that I'd been too lazy to remove from the back - gone.  That put a big damper on my travels since I was living out of that truck when I was travelling around too.  I got the insurance money for it, and the day I signed all the paperwork, my truck was recovered in Arizona, on it's way into Mexico.  No longer my truck tho!  A friend of a friend helped me bid on the truck when it went to auction, but I lost the bid.  At least I got to follow that thru to the end.  
I'll leave out the love life stuff since thats just depressing.   
But the Mission was accomplished!  We both have drastically changed our lives.  Miki is working on settling her life down, and I'm working on avoiding an office job for a few more months (and hopefully find an outdoor job that I'll love) until I run out of money to support my bad habits of running camping backpacking etc etc.   Will this be for the better?  Guess it'll take another to year to find out!


New truck, new adventures.  I'm trying to get motivated to run more.  And talking to a good friend of mine during a run, who is also looking for some good mojo, he mentioned he was going to try to write in his blog more, so I thought why not do the same, and maybe some good mojo will find my running legs too.   


So if this is incredibly boring, just email me your thoughts and I'll be sure to let you know what I think of you.  Hopefully this will be fun to read now & then.   


Gotta go drop the kids off the pool.  Thanks for listening, and I'll make a real attempt to not bore you to death.


Faye

the reason i'm late (a conversation between me and logic during a run)

logic: you know your turn around time was back there on top of Black Mountain, right?

me: yeah i know, but i figured since it was all uphill that it wouldn't take as long to go back, so i can add another 30 minutes to my run

logic: ok i can agree to that, just checking

...later...

logic: turn around time! yay!

me: well i was thinking, theres a cool spring up ahead a little ways, so i'm just gonna run a little further to see it

logic: it's way up there and you've seen it plenty of times already! Whats new about it?

me: come on - its not that far and its all down hill all the way back except that short hill i just came down

logic: that was over a mile and 1000 ft

me: your exaggerating

logic: theres a sign you just past that says 1.2 miles

me: what sign

logic: you realize that you're running downhill now, right?

me: it's not that steep

...still later...

logic: it's been awhile, where is this dang spring?

me: just around that corner i'm sure of it

memory: hahaha

me: don't listen to memory, logic, you know how unreliable she can be

....still later...

logic: it's WAY past your reassesed turn around time, and here is your spring now lets go back

me: but theres a creek just up ahead all I want to do is go see how high the water is

logic: youve gotta me kidding me

me: seriously, it's just up around that corner

....much later....

logic: well it's about #*#$@ time, good, here is your stupid creek. Are you happy?

me: actually, yes I am

logic: do you see that sign?

me: what sign

logic: the one that says we are 4 miles past your turn around point

me: whoops!! thats IF the mileage is right. And where the hell were you 4 miles ago anyway?!!

logic: f*** it i give up. I need a drink

me: oh, about that, i ran out of water a mile ago

logic: i hate you

....and so it goes on & on & on....

On my run this morning there were a few deer on the trail munching on some tree leaves. As I approached (running) none of them even budged. So I walked by quietly and tried not to make eye contact – yeah I’ve seen those episodes of when wild animals attack! It was pretty cool tho, I could have pet them. But I just couldn’t resist, and I looked back as I was passing by and one of them paused eating, peered at me from around the branch he was eating off, and gave me the stink eye!!! He was letting me know he could smoosh me with one hoof if he wanted to. I apologized and scuffled on by. Mean ol deer. :-P

The day before I saw a lone coyote silhouette hanging out on the trail ahead of me – it was about 45 minutes before sunrise. Later in my run an owl was hooting away in the trees (this was about sunrise by then) and I started hooting back (it was raining and I doubt anyone was in the park yet). She followed me, flying from tree to tree, and kept on hooting at me. It was funny. I kept on hooting back at her too. I was mostly agreeing with her that it was too early and cold and wet and what was this silly human doing out here running?