Home is Where The Tarp is

Andrew preparing breakfast at Little Cottonwood Canyon park and ride

I was fully loaded now. I had snatched my pack from the jaws of Greyhound and now all the gear I needed was packed all around my driver’s seat, from warm coats, to snowshoes to a new climbing harness and shoes as I started down the road from Colorado to Salt Lake City where I would catch up with my friend Andrew.

My streak west from Denver took me past Fort Collins, past shrub and red rock, under big sky and on through Laramie, over the plains of Wyoming with the hood of the Mazda pointed at the setting sun.

That morning, I had swept inches of fresh snow off of my windshield. Now, the temperature was warm enough outside that I kept my driver’s-side window open. The remaining snow had melted down to patches in the April sun. To the south, the white-capped peaks of the Medicine Bow Range defied changing seasons.

I stopped to fill my tank in Rawlins, home of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Just outside of town were the leagues of desolate plains and a row of unfriendly looking mountains. Anyone making a jailbreak was going to have a helluva time on the other side of the fence.

There were still plenty of miles for me to travel and it was getting dark. I had my headlights on through Evanston and over the Utah line. Soon I could perceive the bulk of great mountains rising up off either side of the road and then canyon walls that closed in the road as it twisted downward. I kept the car at 70 in the middle lane to pass tanker trucks on the right. Even so, plenty of hotshots passed me on the right, weaving perilously over the road.

Finaly, I turned onto the beltway that wraps around Salt Lake City. I called Andrew to bring me the rest of the way to the park and ride in Little Cottonwood Canyon that had been his home for the past couple weeks. He had just finished a winter as a ski instructor at Snowbird. After a rather toxic roommate situation caused him to leave his apartment, he set up a tarp in the woods behind it where he slept in a sleeping bag. If a tarp and sleeping bag seem like a Spartan living arrangement, keep in mind that this is how Andrew hiked the entire Appalachian Trail.

When I finally arrived at the parking lo, he started his small aluminum can stove and cooked us a meal of macaroni and cheese.

A couple thousand feet below us, the Salt Lake City suburbs shimmered halogen orange like a phantasmal ocean.

There were still plans to be made for hiking, skiing, climbing, getting to California and finding out where we would live and sleep while doing this.

Now it was close to midnight and the obvious place to sleep was Andrew’s tarp.

When we finished eating, I followed him up a trail through the brush nearby to the where he had set up camp. I threw down my sleeping bag and zonked out.

Luxurious accommodations

Going Back West With a Missing Bag

Author's note: I have many, many posts to write about my adventures in the west so far. The stories go back about a month back and hope everyone gets a chance to read them all. I will try to crank posts out in a timely fashion so the narrative doesn't get too stale. 

My journey began after the Boston Marathon, going from the east coast toward California. Following posts will describe my times on snowy slopes of Utah, through the canyons and up to the mountains of California. Before I got there however, I saw the first two-thirds of this country through the window of a Greyhound bus.

Call it the moment of trust, the leap of faith if you will, a trust that once I put my baggage in the hands of the Greyhound Corporation I will see it again when I arrive at my destination.

What I remember most vividly is that I was in the terminal in the New York Port Authority. There is the bus taking me out to Cleveland as I embark upon the long journey to Denver and other points west.

There are three important items: My black Jansport daypack, loaded with laptop, camera, and snacks; my orange parka in a compression sack, ready to use it in case I freeze on the ride at night; and of course my trusty blue rucksack, loaded with clothes and other items I will need in the weeks of adventures to come. That’s what’s going under the bus, but I can’t let go of it without a little trepidation.

Lord knows that over the last 10 years, it’s been almost everywhere I have — from the summer that my dad and I hiked the Long Trail, through the Hundred-Mile Wilderness of Maine, to Ireland and Peru and Wyoming. I go to chuck it under the bus myself. But one of the attendants tells me not to. We do that, he says. I can put the bag down on the cement like a good little passenger and sit down with an easy mind.

Well far be it for me to get in the way when far more qualified professionals are on hand. I step on board and forget about it.

Fast-forward 11 hours and I’m walking around the bus in Cleveland in the dark. It’s almost three in the morning and I don’t see the pack anywhere. The crowd picks up their baggage and files into the station to get new connections. I’m alone on the platform, packless.

“Did you find your bag sir?”

Shit, now I’m scared.

Sure enough, the company has lost the pack somewhere. Do they know where they lost it? No. Maybe it disappeared at the port authority. Maybe they unloaded the wrong bag in Newark. I can see about getting it back when I arrive in Denver.

There is nothing to do but get back sadly into line and catch the next connection west.

I had barely managed an hour of fitful sleep earlier because of the crappy seats and the fact that hot air was blowing directly into my face. I guess they’d gotten the memo about the frigid bus I’d ridden last time and decided the best way to handle that situation would be to bake all the passengers alive.

I pass out on the ride to our connection in Dayton and then going to Indianapolis. I look out the window to see flooding in Illinois, where groves of trees have turned to swampland. After St. Louis, I see enormous trees floating down the Missouri. As night falls again, I drift back into sleep.

I awaken to a whiff of cigarette smoke drifting past my nostrils.

Uh oh.

The bus grinds to a stop along the breakdown land. Midnight in God-Knows-Where, Missouri.

The driver opens the door to the aisle. He’s a burly guy and he looks pissed. He had explained the rules about smoking. It is a motherfucking federal offense to smoke in the bathroom and anyone who smokes gets kicked off the bus. Even so, some dumbass just had to go and put his dick inside the hornet’s nest.

“Who was smoking?” the bus driver shouts.

Silence.

“Who was smoking?”

Whoever it is, will end up on the side of the road in a hurry.

Another passenger turns around.

“Some dumb motherfucker is going to make me late for my connection!”

“Sir, you can’t swear here,” the bus driver said, suddenly appearing comparatively calm.

“We’re all adults here!” the passenger shoots back. “Whoever was smoking needs to get off this bus.”

But who is the culprit? The lambs are silent.

“Where I come from, snitches get stitches,” one woman offers.

The bus driver scowls. He will have the police investigate when we get to Kansas City he promises us. Then he locks us behind the aisle door and puts the bus in gear.

The mystery smoker has escaped.

When I get o Denver the next morning, I go to the information counter to ask if my bag has turned up.

They have no idea where t might be, but tell me that if I wait, it might arrive when the next bus from my connection pulls in at 11 p.m.

This is not the news I was hoping for, but I am still glad to be in Denver where I have friends putting me up for the night. I was smart enough not to leave anything to valuable in that bag anyway.

Better news begins the next morning, when I get back into my car and drive to the bus station. Lo and behold, my bag is waiting for me there. It has survived the long journey through the darkness and we are reunited at last.

We Run Strong. We Keep Going.

Before I entered Boston Marathon 2013, I knew I was signing up for a lot more than just any road race or even any marathon.

Anyone who runs, or has been around runners — OK, maybe anyone who reads — knows that the Boston Marathon is something special. It’s a living piece of history, a 117-year story of fierce rivalries, individual determination and competition, tied together in the bonds of athletic camaraderie. It’s a chance for Average Joe to move up from the local road races and fun runs to race the same course with the best in the world.

Think about that. What are the chances that your best football player from High School will end up on the field with the NFL? Or that you or your buddy who plays basketball will end up shooting hoops for the Bulls or the Heat?

From the 2:05 elite racers to the folks who go through it in five hours, runners of all abilities who get in the corrals in Hopkinton will get the chance to squeeze out all they’ve got along the way to the Boylston Street finish line.

That dedication is matched only by the enthusiasm of the onlookers, who screamed louder for me than my leg muscles screamed at me as I pounded down the final miles after Heartbreak Hill.

There was always an arm stretched out to offer a cup of Gatorade or a high five; there were the med tents, ready for people who needed them; there were the volunteers, the cops and BAA professionals who somehow organize and orchestrate the event along the 26.2 mile race course aimed straight into downtown Boston.

Like so many of the people who crowded at the start Monday, this was an event that I had anticipated for a long time. I had spent close to half of a year in training and years of running before that. In fact, I’m pretty sure I planned to run Boston back when I was 12 and saw went out to see my dad run that race. At the time, I doubt that I had done anything more than four miles and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to do more than six times that distance.

When I crossed the start-line Monday, a 24-year-old man, I had gone that distance three times in previous marathons. Even so, I knew that Boston on Patriot’s Day would be a new animal entirely.

It started with the crush of eager runners in athlete’s village before the race. Around 25,000 competitors had come to Hopkinton from all around the world. We had trained hard to be the best we could be on our home turf, had worked to get a reputation at the local road races and fun runs.  But now there were countless other people like us, people who could match or beat our times, who had made the same sacrifices and suffered the same agonies of self-doubt about whether we could go the distance or hold ourselves to the pace. All but a few of us would see many, many sets of runners in front of us as we ran. It was a little humbling.

And in my mind, it was no less impressive that my 63-year-old father was coming back to run his first Boston Marathon in years and his 10^th marathon overall. He and several of our friends from Southeastern CT have been raising money to build a statue commemorating local hero and 1957 Boston Marathon winner John Kelley who died in 2011.

It was going to be a slower pace for my dad and our friend Phil, whose goal was to reach the finish line and not worry so much about the overall time. Both have had their injuries and neither was dead sure whether they would finish the race. Nonetheless, they were determined to give it all they had. I was damn proud to have my father running in my first Boston Marathon.

As for me, my sites were set on setting a personal record on the Boston course. I’d be happy with anything below 2:45:44, I figured, but I decided to aim for 6:15 miles, which would put me at about a 2:43-minute marathon. The trick would be to hold the right pace and not to get carried away by the temptation to match the more ambitious runners.

It was pretty hard not to get pumped up by the cheers along the sidelines. A bunch of kids were giving high-fives, people were playing radios on their front lawns. I let myself relax and enjoy the early marathon vibe. When I crossed the first mile in 6:55, I didn’t let myself freak out because I was slower than pace. I would crank this one up gradually, I decided, so that everything would be warmed up when I hit top speed.

Meanwhile, there were more high-fives to give, more cheers to take in. It made me feel more amped up than ever.

After I went by one particularly deafening section of spectators, I turned to the guy next to me.

“Hell yeah,” I told him.

“Hell yeah,” he agreed.

There was no loneliness of the long distance runner where I was. People talked happily with total strangers, enjoying the moment.

At around the 5K-mark I heard a small commotion behind me.

“Blind runner, coming through! Blind runner, on your left!”

Blind Runner, a scraggly haired woman, ran alongside a guide who was giving her directions about the course ahead and sounding the warning to other runners nearby. The guide sounded a bit winded though; he was slowing down and Blind Runner was speeding up. She told him that she was going to go for it.

“Really fast blind runner coming through!” he gasped and fell behind.

No sooner had she lost her guide, than several other runners asked her if they could help.

She told us she had some eyesight and could see some of what was directly in front of her. There was another pace runner waiting for her at the 10K mark.

“Well, you’ve got about thirty yards of space right in front of you,” one guy said. He’d be willing to help get her through the miles ahead if he wanted. She agreed, but only if she wouldn’t be holding him back. No way, the guy said. She was hitting the perfect pace.

I watched them pull ahead down the course, she and the new guide pounding down the course toward 10K.

“Look out! Blind runner coming through!”

As I got close to Mile 13, I heard a distant din of people shouting and cheering, a noise that grew louder as I worked my way up the crest of a hill. I was approaching the Wellesley Scream Tunnel.

Traditionally students at the all-female college get out to the course to cheer (very loudly) for the runners and also solicit kisses.

Forget the Gatorade stop; here was a surefire energy boost right before the halfway mark in the marathon.

Another thing to consider; just as there are some people who will come to a full stop at the water tables I’ve always been one to grab the cup and run. It’s a little messier, but it keeps the momentum going and gets the job done most of the time. I figured I could apply a similar strategy at Wellesley where hundreds of students with signs were going wild for the runners.

Who to choose? OK, howabout with the sign that says she loves beards?

 I was running too fast and ended up kissing someone else, but who cares? Right on the lips! Such accuracy!

I get running again but decide to make one more kiss stop before I took on the second half of the marathon.

OK, I definitely should have slowed down that time. Almost head butted her.

Some runners were taking more time at the Wellesley stop than others. I get back in the pack and start picking up the pace a bit, even as the dreaded hills of Newton loomed on the course ahead.

The closer I got to Boston, the more people were cheering on the sidelines. I had left enough energy in the tank so that I could get over the hills of Newton and up to Heartbreak Hill without losing my speed. The fact that the spectators were cheering like crazy didn’t hurt either.

 Suddenly I heard my name from the sidelines, and a GO NADS cheer from my friends Max and Zack, fellow members of the North American Distance Squad.

It was all downhill from there, as the saying goes. I let my legs and gravity do the work. The muscles ached, as did my feet.

Intellectually, I knew that I was putting my body under a lot of strain, that I couldn’t keep doing this for much longer. But that fatigue was nothing compared to the adrenaline I got from the mob of cheering onlookers, a wave of energy, which were almost too much to handle at times.

Every couple hundred yards, someone would spot my number.

“Yeah! C’mon 685!” “Let’s go 685!”

My legs pounded the asphalt, taking me faster than I had run at any point in the race. Pure autopilot. Totally high. I knew I was running exactly the race that I wanted to run.

I went beneath a highway underpass and saw the Citgo sign near the finish. I tweaked the speed up slightly, feeling like a rickety machine going to its maximum — push it too hard and everything flies apart.

When I pulled onto Boylston Street, I pumped my arms faster so that my legs would move with them. There was only a quarter mile to go, but it was a small lifetime. Then my foot went over the sensor at the finish line and I could rest at last.

I crossed the line in 2:42:20: for a new personal record and 361^st place. I was exhausted. I was pumped.

I walked down the chutes in a happy daze, collecting the free food and drink. Walking sucked, but if I stopped walking I knew I wouldn’t want to walk for a long time.

I got to meeting area B and slumped down against the wall with some of the other runners, Soon enough, I saw my buddy Matt who had snapped some pictures of me coming in at the finish line, along with some shots of the front runners.

Not long after, I saw Connecticut runners Spy and Stan, who had run 2:49 and 2:55 races. We exchanged our sweaty handshakes and then they sat down for some much needed rest.

I knew my dad was on the course, though I figured I could hobble back to Matt’s apartment on Beacon Street, and get cleaned up. Later I could get back to the finish to meet him there. Then I’d join some of the Connecticut runners for drinks at a pub downtown.

That’s the way the story should have ended, but unfortunately it isn’t how the story ends.

I showered up back at the apartment, and grabbed a celebratory beer. Matt pulled up the runner tracking page on the BAA website that showed my dad was going down the course a lot faster than I’d expected him to be running.

I realized I would have to hustle it back to the finish area to meet him at the reunion area nearby. It was out of the question that I would be able to see him go across the line where the crowds were bound to be impenetrable.

As I was getting ready to head out the door, I got a text from a friend of mine in Gillette, asking if I had heard about the blasts at the finish line.  Then he called my phone asking if I was all right. No one was sure about what was happening, but it sounded like there might have been a terrorist attack.

Sirens were going off around town. Then texts started to roll in from friends, asking if I was OK, if I knew what was going on.

I had no idea what was going on, but I already had a bad feeling in the pit of my gut. Hopefully, it was just some jackass with fireworks, I told Matt. At a large event like that, it was easy for confusion.

At the same time, I started worrying about my father who was on the course and was bound to have been close to the incident.

This is probably not what your supposed to do, I told Matt, but I want to head back there and see if I can find my dad.

Matt agreed that going back might not be the brightest thing, but went with me as I started back out into the city.

I quickly called my mom at home, to let her know I was fine, and asked her for my dad’s cell phone number which I didn’t have since he never uses it. He didn’t pick up when I called, so I figured he was either still on the course or he hadn’t gotten to his bag with his cell phone yet.

I noticed that my voicemail was full of messages and tried to dial out. No dice. The signal wasn’t going through. I remembered that cell phone lines tended to get jammed up in disasters when everyone tries to make phone calls. The streets were filled with people dialing numbers, trying to let friends and family know that they were OK.

The streets were closed off as Matt and I got closer to the finish line. We were cut off. 

One thing I know about disaster communications is that text messages take up far less bandwidth than calls. Texts go through when calls do not.

Then I got a text from a friend telling me to get on Facebook to tell everyone I was all right. That way, fewer people would try to call and there would also be more bandwidth available to first responders. With the lines closed, there was nothing else to do.

We went up to the apartment and I posted a message. For the next couple of hours, I was in contact with worried friends over text messages, trying to figure out if anyone had word from my dad or Phil.

Finally, I heard from my mom that he had been turned off the course about half a mile from the finish line. Thank God, I thought. Even through my relief, I thought about how infuriating it must have been to wait so many years, to get so close to the line and then have to turn around because of this.

I still didn’t know where he was headed, if we were going to see each other or if he was going to leave town. Hours later, we finally got in touch when he and Phil were headed down the interstate back to Connecticut. People had given them food and garbage bags that they could wear against the wind. Then they had to walk around the finish line for an extra mile to where there were buses parked near Boston Public Garden.

We were both to hear glad the other was safe, both furious at the cowardly act, which had tarnished the day.

The finish line didn’t matter, I told him. You ran the full marathon.

I stayed at Matt's place that night where I hit the cot just like the proverbial sack of bricks.

The next day, I walked through town on stiff legs, under bright blue skies. Visitors wore their yellow and blue marathon jackets on the streets and posed for pictures in front of the historic buildings with medals around their necks.

Life seemed to be moving on. A breakfast place that I visited with Matt and my friend Zack was filled to the brim with runners. We passed by people who were still commuting between their offices in the skyscrapers going to their apartments, in the quaint neighborhoods and in the surrounding towns. We were also able to take the T over to the Museum of Fine art, which had offered free admission to visitors.

Other people were already out for runs in the streets and in the parks, preparing for the next big race.

The barricades were still up around Copley Square, where people had put flowers around the fences.

Nearby, trucks from the major news stations pointed their antennae at the sky to tell the world about the people who died, the people injured horribly in the blasts and the sorrow of a city.

I knew I had been lucky.

No doubt, many runners will remember the pain and confusion that we felt on Monday, but just as it is appropriate to mourn, I hope that we can all remember the thousands of things that went right on Monday, including the heroism of those who rushed forward to help people after the blasts.

 I want to remember the kinship I felt with the other runners who gave their best on the course and the immense outpouring of support from spectators in Boston and the outlying towns. The senseless act of violence has no hope of matching an event that carries so much energy, momentum and will. A marathon is, after all, about perseverance and overcoming challenges.

This won’t stop us. We’re still going strong.

The Boston Marathon By Numbers

Self Portrait after the Denver Marathon

A lot of months of work are riding on 26.2 miles.

As soon as I got my 2013 calendar from Union College, I started scribbling my daily distances and times in the boxes, adding up my weekly running mileage, the days I felt strong, the days I felt like crap, days when the sun was shining or the snow was blowing.

There are only a few more boxes to fill now before the April 15, the day I will run in my first Boston Marathon.

I can flip from January, through February, March and April and take in the full scope of my training. It is not the portrait of how to run a perfect marathon. There are days I skipped that I shouldn’t have skipped, workouts that I could have run harder. I usually ran between 60 miles and 70 miles a week, awarding myself equivalent credits in miles for days when I chose to work out in the pool or on the elliptical trainer. I’ve covered (almost) 900 miles since January 1.

The top week in 2013 was a 76-miler (counting a 45-minute pool session as six miles) and the slimmest week was a paltry 39 miles in February when I hit a wall of physical and psychological exhaustion and took three days off.

I remember how I had been gearing up to run a 20-mile out and back run from my apartment in Gillette, Wyo. and watched as a pleasant morning gave way to hellish blizzard conditions.

It’s a test, I thought. If I can do this run, I can tackle worst that the marathon can throw at me. I bundled into my rain jacket and balaclava to render myself impermeable to the flakes that whipped down the wind like throwing stars. The roads were covered in ankle-deep slush puddles that cars splashed up at me as I tried to navigate the semi-white out. Even with my face covered up in the balaclava the flakes were still hitting the narrow slit I’d left for my eyes and they stung like hell. I realized that my form sucked and I was moving really slowly, that I felt drained and that I was making myself suffer for no good reason.

After two miles of struggle against the teeth of the wind, I turned around. The next day, the weather was much nicer, but I had work. I thought about running 17 miles in the dark, thought better of it, cooked dinner and had a beer. The next day, I decided to wait one more day, and decided I didn’t want to pay catch up.

These kinds of days are dangerous. If I copped out once, it would be easier to cop out the next time. On the other hand, I was getting to the point where I was feeling totally burned out. Somehow running in the cold and dark after work had lost some of its zest. I made a deal with myself. I’d give myself three days to totally slack and then commit myself fully to training right after that. For the most part, the deal has held up.

I’ve logged many miles in the dark after work, bundled up like a space man against the wind. There has always been a nice period of procrastination before I’ve headed out  the door, giving myself plenty of time to contemplate the icy road margins I would soon be running on.

In that way, I’ve been grateful for the calendar and for the running guidebook that I’ve been using. Having a training program written down ahead of time has taken away some of that inner wrangling:  Should I go out running or should I stay in? Well guess what fool?  The schedule says you’re running twelve miles today with five 1000-meter repeats. Looks like you better lace up those shoes!

The guidebook I’ve used is “Advanced Marathoning” by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas.

The book is the reason I went on a gut-busting 20 mile run with 10 miles at a 6:14 “marathon pace” (the wind was at my back) or a 18 mile run with a 14 mile pick-up at 6:29 pace (I was being too easy on myself.) I also ran a bunch of 10K time trials, a pack of runs with short distance repeats, and several runs with 100-meter bursts of speed. The 100-meter reps and the marathon pace time trials were both new staples in my training regimen and I hope that they will pay dividends on race day.

In other words, if I don’t P.R. it will be entirely the book’s fault and I will invite Pfitzinger to pay me back the money I wasted on the race entry.

Some other factors that may play a role in my finishing time include the fact that this will be my first time running Boston. The course is a net downhill with a couple of gnarly hills around the twenty-mile mark. The fact that the race is in April and in New England means that the weather could be just about anything. Last year, runners got screwed by 80 degree temperatures, and in other years, temperatures have been well below freezing. April storms are another possibility. This year, it looks like it the mercury will be in the 50s under clear skies. Here’s hoping.

While I would like to believe that my training will give me the strength I need to beat my personal record of 2:45:44 from the Denver Marathon, I’m not going to assign myself a pace. Instead, I’ll do what I’ve done for previous races, which is go by feel. I’ll use my stopwatch to tell if I’m running way slower or faster than I should, but mostly I’ll go by the feel of my stride and my breathing. I’ve tried to be more scientific about running these past couple of months, but I’m still miles away from making it a science.

Meanwhile, the elite guys will toe the line Monday with 100+ mile weeks under their belts, unfathomably fast speed workouts, perfect diets and a stony discipline that make my dedication look laughable by comparison. I bow to their perfection. It honors me to follow (quite literally) in their footsteps.

The training will determine just how far behind those footsteps I will be when I cross the line.

Oh yeah. For all of you guys out there interested in following me on race day, my race number is 685. You can actually follow my progress online and get text alerts about when I’m crossing the lines.

I mean, I’d be flattered enough if you just wanted to know my finish time. But if you want more than that, the Boston Athletic Association has a ton of info on ways you can follow the event, from watching the coverage on TV or going online.

Since I am in Wave One, the race starts for me at 10 a.m.. The Boston Marathon is always on Patriot’s Day —April 15 this year.

A free app for tracking runners is available here.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baa-marathon/id632231181?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2

When you want the full story afterwards, I’ll sit my tired ass down and write the blog.

The Greyhound Grind

One of the amazing sights I had the opportunity to see because I went by bus

When I announced my plan to get a bus ticket from Connecticut to Denver, the decision elicited grave concerns, fears for my safety and sanity, the broader question of why I would voluntarily take a slower, shittier mode of transportation than air travel.

Had I instead declared my intention to slash a bunch of wounds across my flesh and jump into a nearby cesspool, those people would probably have more horrified and confused, but only slightly.

Bus travel offers the chance hang around with people that you may not particularly like for extended periods, and a looming sense of claustrophobia for approximately the same price as a plane ticket.

However, it is also one of the greenest ways to get around. As a neurotic, self-doubting environmentalist, I can’t allow myself to take a plane without feeling a sharp pang of hypocrisy. How do I tell others to make sacrifices to improve our planet, when I’m putting thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere so I can ride an aluminum bird?

Riding the bus across country is a few degrees suckier than taking a plane, but it also produces a lot fewer carbon dioxide emissions, even fewer than trains do. I could lay out the nuances of the argument here, but I think I would rather leave that to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Check it out!

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/greentravel_report.pdf

While cross-country bus riding is not without its suckitude, it remains my firm belief that my generation will have to start making sacrifices in order to offset the greater suckitude of climate change and the accompanying drought, fire, flood and famine. I know that I’m no angel, that many of the things that I am doing remain wasteful and produce more waste and pollution than they should.

Sinner that I am, I consider the bus ride to be less of an act of virtue and more of an act of penance.

However, my time in purgatory did offer a few perks, including the option of sleeping en-route (when I could sleep) and the opportunity to catch up on reading (when I could concentrate.) Moreover, the bus brought me a small sense of moral righteousness over air travel (which no one will care about because they’ll think I’m crazy or a pompous ass.)

Now that I have emerged successfully on the other side of the journey, I can speak with an expert’s authority about what it is to take a bus across most of the country: why it just might be the best way to travel, the worst way to travel or a fun way to feel less of your butt and more empathy for people who shake screaming babies.

The thing about screaming babies…

YEAHHHGHHHH!!!!!!!!

The thing about screaming babies…

YEAHGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

…is that…

AGHHH! AGGGHHH! (choking sounds of the tiny body trying to get hack up mucous so it can scream some more)

…is that…

yeaAGHHHHAhhaaaaeeeyheAAAAA!!!!!!!…

…they make it really, really hard to read to concentrate on reading or writing.

EeeeeyAHHHHH!!!!! EeeeyaAAAHHH!!!!! EEEEYAAAGGHHH!!!!!!!!

This is not the best time to be trapped in a small, enclosed place.

You look at the emergency exit bar on the window and wonder how well you would fare doing “tuck and roll” down the highway median at 60 miles per hour.

 It is simple biology. All of us with intact and functioning frontal lobes should hear the baby’s cry and feel the need to make it stop, make it stop, protecting the fragile offspring. Of course the system that makes us think this way isn’t sophisticated enough to differentiate whether the baby is ours or not, nor to make us care whether we shut it up with a bottle or a chloroform blankie.

Nearby, other people are making do with earbuds cranked up to full volume. These earbuds stay at full bore when there are no crying babies. I get to enjoy all the music lyrics, even from several seats away. The situation makes me contemplate just how much ear damage people are willing to inflict to listen to their beats at top volume — and how such damage would only encourage them to crank the music louder over time.

Cleveland

At least, iPods have user-friendly volume controls. Babies do not; nor were the parents considerate enough to bring a duct tape roll. For the next 45 minutes the other passengers and I get treated to an a capella screaming fit that would make for excellent background music within the pits of hell.

As darkness closes in, the screams subside, and I pray for sleep, if only as a means of escape from the bleak realm I inhabit and into the blissful arms of Somnia. As soon as I shut my eyes however, I feel 10 times more awake. I just don’t sleep well in seats. Nonetheless, I try to cheat my nature by putting my head against the window and lean my feet into the aisle — the number one position recommended for people who like to die in bus accidents. The fact that a sudden deceleration could go poorly for me is not as important as my need to be unconscious.

At first it seems like I might be able to pass out successfully, but soon I find that I’m putting a lot of torsion on one ass cheek.  I’m also at risk of falling between the seats and am ready to try something else.

I flip around so my head points toward the aisle and wedged my feet against the side of the bus. My jawbone picks up the hum of the bus motors, a lullaby. Finally, my mind shuts down and I get about two hours of sleep.

Then we’re in Cleveland and we all have to get off the bus for a cleaning (by which I mean they’re cleaning the bus, not the passengers, though I probably could have gone with a shower at this point.)

We gather inside an eye-stabbingly bright fluorescent terminal where an enormous television on a pedestal above our heads blares out an advertisement for bowel medication at bowel-loosening volume. I must be in a badly-written dystopian sci-fi movie.

The television goes from the bowel ad to an inspirational made for TV basketball flick. The unbearable noise must be the bus station’s way of making sure that no one falls asleep inside.  The acoustics send the noise bouncing all over the walls in a series of funky echoes. There is no escape.

 I limp listless towards the bathroom to unload my bladder.

I see myself in the black felt cap staring back from the mirror at the sink, stubble on my cheeks, crazed expression.

I brush my teeth while another dude shaves his head with an electric razor.

“Yeah I ride the bus,” I my expression seems to say, “You got a goddamn problem with that?”

The shot clock is winding down on the inspirational basketball game as I get into line to re-board the bus. A woman tries to board the bus but is in the wrong line and the Greyhound employee is being kind of a dick about it. I say nothing, glazed eyes pointed dead ahead, handed the employee my ticket and get on board. There are miles yet to travel.

Pennsylvania

Darkness on the road again, and I’m making feeble attempts to fall back to sleep. The hard seats say, “No!” Also, I am sitting next to the window that admits a steady stream of the cold night air through a gap in the insulation. It wraps around me like an icy snake, keeping me awake.

At 6 a.m. we hit a rest area in Milesburg, Pennsylvania. When everyone shuffles in, I find the driver and ask if he can open up the hatches below the bus so I can grab the parka out of my pack. If I’d had any brains I’d have had it out in the first place, or I would have been smart like the woman next to me who brought a blanket.

Fortunately, the driver is willing to help, and even shines his flashlight into the busses undercarriage until I find my pack. I quickly dig out my jacket and thank him.

When we all get back aboard, the driver asks if anyone else had found it cold over the last few hours of driving. Several answer in the affirmative. Well, this is as high as the heaters go, he tells them. And if they want to get warm, they should step outside and then get back on the bus, so it will feel warmer to them by comparison.

I feel like a wuss in my super-insulated orange parka, meant more for isolated mountain peaks than for slightly heated busses. At least I’m not cold.

I finally get some sleep, which lasts until the Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey border. The riders file out for cigs and fast food and I walk around the parking lot in order to un-kink my legs.

Soon enough the New York skyline is in view.

NYC stopover and the final push

I choose to stay with some friends in Brooklyn and the day of walking around, taking subways and running from Prospect Park to Coney Island is a nice break from all the bus crap.

That night we dine on Indian food and grab some drinks from Sharlene’s Bar in Brooklyn.

The next day, I take the subway over to the Port Authority and get on the next bus for New London, Conn. where my parents will pick me up. The last state that I travel through turns out to be the worst. Not only are we on I-95 hell, but there is also possibly the most annoying couple in the world sitting on the bus. The antics of the middle-aged dynamic duo would be hilarious in a movie, I decide, but something about sitting next to them for four straight hours of traffic jams makes them somewhat less than wonderful bus companions.

It starts with an argument about caffeinated soda and evolves into the man telling his wife to fuck off, and cranking up his headphones so he can sing along to the music. Before the bus starts moving, he announces that he is switching seats, because it feels like a metal bar is going up his butt.

I stare ahead and try to stop imagining myself turning around to punch the guy in the face. The couple gets into about five more arguments in the next fifteen minutes and the guy cranks his headphones up again. No wonder why the dude, is so damn loud, I think, I bet he can’t hear himself.

I try to get back to Emerson essays on my Kindle, though it’s hard to hold any concentration. I’m reading about the importance of self-expression and I realize I have an important opportunity to put theory into practice.

With my rage and frustration at the breaking point, I do the unthinkable. I go back, lean over the guy’s seat and politely ask him if he can turn the music down.

The dude is surprised.

“Are you sure, it’s my headphones?” he asks.

“Yes, they’re your headphones,” a guy from the seats nearby tells him. I thank him silently. The annoying dude turns them down and apologizes. I get back to my seat and grimace the remaining miles home.

Eventually, I’m heading back west, and must admit that it is tempting to say ‘screw this” and just grab a plane to Denver. At the moment however, I am sticking with a plan to go by bus. I can’t say that there is any particular hallelujah moment that convinced me that I should ride back rather than fly. The best explanation I can give is the obstinacy, which got me on the bus in the first place.

It should be a fun trip back.

Escape from Gillette

Shortly after I got on Highway 59 and started the long drive from Northeast Wyoming to Denver, I pulled the Mazda over at the outskirts of the city.

“Welcome to Gillette, Energy Capital of The Nation,” the sign reads. They don’t have a “Come Back Soon” sign for outbound traffic. I am not coming back soon.

I did set up my camera on the small bendy tripod to take a parting shot to remember the place where I’d spent a year and a half of my life. I'll remember the good times, good friends and a lot of lessons. Many people who have lived in Gillette and done similar work also know that it can be a pretty tough gig. My gig ended with a layoff.

Tough gigs are part of life though and I’m not complaining. OK, maybe I complain over drinks with friends, or mutter to myself occasionally to myself on runs. This doesn’t mean I feel like I’ve been through anything special. Nor does it mean that I don't think payoffs in job experience, meeting new people and trying out a new life in a different part of the country weren't worth the time and effort.

So long as I have friends, running, beer and friends who will tolerate/participate in bitching sessions over beers and on runs, I should make it through all right. Bitching has its place, but if I put too much of it in writing I might become Drama Dude and shrink the small cache of people who read this blog.

I’d rather write about what’s next. I mean, I haven't figured out a lot of what's next, and again, that fact does not make me special.  Leaving Gillette has been the blessing that has given me time to breathe, reevaluate and start to do some things I’ve wanted to do but haven’t had the time for. 

Lucky, happy bastard that I am, I got back in the car and started driving south to start doing some of those things.

My progress so far has included a brief visit to Denver and a Greyhound east ride east into New York City. I just touched down in my wooded homeland in Connecticut. 

It’s exciting to reconnect with old friends and family, and it’s also exciting to wrap up months of training and run the Boston Marathon April 15.

I’m not settling in on the East Coast though. Soon enough I will get back to Denver, meet up with a friend and visit some of the great national parks of the west. I plan to fill the next month with a random series of adventures in canyons and over mountains.

It’ll be something to write about.

Gut Check

Bighorn Peak seen from a ridge to the Southeast

One time or another, some of us are bound to ask questions like, “Why the hell am I doing this?”

Such moments of self-reflection are not uncommon to those who squat wretchedly in the snow by a camp stove at five in the morning.

The smell of charred oatmeal flakes was already a good indication that my pioneering new technique of cooking breakfast was maybe not so pioneering.

In theory, a ziplock bag’s worth of dried oatmeal and sugar stirred into a pot full of snow would marry seamlessly into a warm, wholesome meal that I could eat before I started my climb on Big Horn Peak. In practice, the flakes started burning before the snow could melt around them, creating an ashy, lukewarm goulash. The flavor was not improved by the remnants of the Indian meal I had cooked in the pot the night before.

But a meal was a meal. Food was energy I would soon need and, just as important, those calories were heat. I slopped down each nauseous spoonful in misery.

It was well before the dawn, and to be completely honest, I wasn’t exactly sure where I had pitched my tent the night before, besides that it was some anonymous grove at the base of the mountain.  I had spent half an hour or more scooping away the deep powder with one of my snowshoes. By the end, I had made an enormous hollow, which allowed me to lay the bottom tarp on solid ground.

After dinner, I was in my sleeping bag at 6 p.m., eager to depart the realm of consciousness.

Long hours of uneasy slumber dropped away with the ring from my cell-phone alarm. Now the day’s challenge was somewhere up above me and to the west. The thousands of feet of rock, snow and ice that I intended to scale were hidden behind the branches, of the pines, cloaked in darkness. It was virtually guaranteed that I would be the only one up there.

Again: Why the hell am I doing this?

I’d scanned a mental list of easy answers as I left the day before, when I rolled out of town on my usual trajectory west toward the Big Horns.

It had been a pretty crappy week, one that had spawned a series of angry, unwelcome clinging thoughts. I lowered my foot on the gas, but the little buggers still held their grip. If I couldn’t drop them on the highway, maybe they would freeze to death in the mountains.

That was it, then.  I was going up on high to repair the damage that civilization inflicted on me.

 Obviously.

 My untamed, poetic, rambling soul demanded this — that I not only venture out in search of oneness with nature, but also that I take the ultimate challenge of a 12,000-foot mountain, testing both physical strength, but also my will.

Sing it brother! So true!

And then I would return to that polluted civilization with tales of daring exploits and triumphs on high that would rouse the hearts of those sedentary mortals who’d wiled away the weekend in bathrobes with a DVD collection of “The Office.” Yes, they would be damn impressed when they came across my blog post later and scrolled through the story of fighting the elements tooth and claw, along with the awesome pictures and…my thoughts trailed off.

It was easy to see the flaw in my thinking. If civilization was the condition I sought to escape, why was I fawning after its validation. This was something the mountains alone could not give me; only other people could do that.

Getting an early start

Yes, I can climb and ramble over every hill and isolated mountain only to find my footsteps leading me back to those bright lights and convenience stores, the apartment, the desk, the friends that I would hang out with, swapping stories in the bar.

Every blessing of civilized society was in the car with me, from snowshoes to a backpack, the tent, processed food, high-tech jacket and sleeping bag. I humped it all toward the mountains in my gas-powered machine courtesy of the federal highway system and state roads.

This time, however, I wasn’t sure if a weekend of mountainous lonerdom is what I really needed. Sometimes being the loner was the problem.

My life thousands of miles from where I’d grown up, on the high plains had meant time away from friends and family – though I’d valued those short visits. More recently, most of the people that I’d met and befriended in Wyoming had left the state for other work.

Reflecting on this as I approached the mountains beneath the insipid gray sky did little to boost my spirits.

What was the point of this anyway? If it were pointless, what would I be doing with my time that was more meaningful?

I thought about activities that were more creative than hiking (like practicing music or writing a short story at home), things I could do to better society (like volunteering), activities that were engagement instead of disengagement (like socializing amongst friends instead of going out into the mountains alone).

All of these required a different kind of work ethic than the kind of mindless obstinacy that I had cultivated within myself for these treks. Perhaps it was even less risky than doing something else that I was less familiar with. To be sure,  when I’ve left on such trips,  I’ve hardly guaranteed myself success – I have also reaped my share of misery and failure in the high places. But in any scenario I’ve faced, the most important ingredient has been my will to move forward. Whether it’s a sunny day or one with wind whipping sleet, success has hinged upon my desire to succeed and thrive. Success in so many other things in life be they jobs, relationships or creative success hinge upon the approval of others.

Not so with mountains. Peaks can be fickle in their own way but there is a fairness to them. Those who struggle throughout their lives to be something may never be rewarded for their toils. Eventually, the persistent hiker, one who was smart enough not to tumble into a ravine, will reach the summit. Similarly, one may wander in life uncertain, searching vainly for a goal. The mountain should do away with such existential wobblings.

There is the summit. Go forth and climb to it.

As the penitent monk tries to escape the worldly things to get closer to heaven, so does the mountain climber seek to ascend beyond the muck and slime of ordinary existence. He ascends bodily into a land that is pure, dead and snowy white. Life exists here, but tenuously. It is easy to pretend that all is barren, those proud, beautiful sloping forms of the mountain peaks.

The brutal beauty of the alpine summits is not just what is there but also what isn’t.

Unruly, stinking life is gone and its absence reveals the proud bones of the earth. Towering rocks show themselves, as do unrelenting snowfields, as do vast spaces that either make the visitor fell like an insignificant speck, or one particle in a grand, perfect creation.

 Wind and cold kill away what is weak and imperfect — including the traveler if he stays. And yet he comes anyway, hoping to transcend the ordinariness, which he is undeniably a part of, and to which he must tragically return.

Barren ridge leading to summit of Bighorn Peak

If there is an unquantifiable value to these hard and beautiful places, it doesn't necessarily follow that the traveler must go alone.

Some of my best experiences in the outdoors were the ones I’d shared, whether it was Colca Canyon with friends in Peru or the countless New England mountains my father and I have climbed together.

An amazing sunset is still beautiful whether one person sees it, or a group of people sees it. A mountain is just as physically challenging to climb alone (often harder) than it is to climb it in a group.

But when people go together, that individual satisfaction of conquering a commanding peak is also a team accomplishment.  It is rewarding to see others work hard toward the common goal, to put in the cooperation and communication needed to make things work. Whether the group succeeds together or fails together, the most important thing is whether it stays together.

Seeing things together can add a fresh level of appreciation.

Going out with others past the strange beauty of mountain cliffs, or to a wild waterfall means that those things become a common memory. The inevitable hijinks and pitfalls of any climb become fodder for a story that can be swapped over drinks years later. When someone else is around, you can talk about the beauty of the landscape and feel that much less like a doddering crazy person walking alone through the hills.

Bighorn peak as seen from near the Circle Park trailhead. The route I chose is to the left side of the frame.

Often, the distinction between what is meaningful or meaningless is how we remember it, how we tell the story. Whether I like it or not, I usually walk out of the woods with some kind of lesson learned. I try to write them down so that I don’t unlearn, or even so that others may gain wisdom from my follies.

After I finished the disgusting oatmeal, I put my snowshoes back on and looked down at my compass needle to find where I should aim myself in the darkness.

The climb was gradual at first, but then I came to a steep section that required me to pop the ascender bar on my snowshoes.

The red light spread in the east.

By the time I crested the first ridge, the sun came over the horizon to cast its light upon the thousands of feet of rock and snow that I still had to climb. My path was a catwalk of shattered stone, sandwiched between two abysses. Eventually this path wound to the summit. While this was an intimidating sight, my excitement at seeing the sunlight and the miles of untrammeled terrain was the closest thing that I had to real exultation on the trip.

Within another 15 minutes, I took the snowshoes off and began scrambling along rocks. I knew I had a long way to get to the top, and then a long way back to my tent and a long way back to the car. I thought about turning around then so that I would know my tracks back to the tent would still be fresh on my return. An early turnaround would also hedge against the increasingly likelihood that I would hike the final miles out in the dark.

But turning around felt wrong. If I had a good chance to make the summit, I would take it now, rather than have to go back over the same route on some later trip.

Looking northeast from the Bighorn summit

In a couple of hours of rock scrambling, I made it to the cold stack of stones at the summit. The whole climb up, I had thought about how I had wanted to be somewhere else. Now the frigid wind coming over the mountain slopes compelled me to hasten my descent. 

From noon until dark, I underwent one of the most exhausting ordeals of my life, first picking along the rocks on the way down, reaching the snow and losing my tracks. I spent about half an hour looking for my tent and then had to stuff everything into my heavy pack to haul the long, snowy miles out.

Because of my gross cooking pot, I had decided not to melt any more snow for water. Now I was thoroughly dehydrated and scooping up the odd handful of snow for what moisture it would afford. My legs and back ached continuously.

I could feel the reactors slowing down in my head, the needles on the machines moving back to E and the whirr of gears and belts dying as the lights of the control consoles went dead one by one.

The thought of just lying down in a snow bank to shut my eyes, was at once appealing and deadly. I focused on the dull desire to keep pressing forward. I had no energy to concentrate on anything else.

If there was one small blessing to be had, it was that the trees held the warmth; if the air had been 20 degrees colder, it would have multiplied the ordeal.

Darkness came as it always will come, and I squinted along the trail through the pines. I made certain not to lose the trail because I knew I didn’t have the energy to be lost in the woods in the dark. If that happened I would have to camp it out for the night and find my way out in the morning. Fortunately I didn’t have much difficulty staying on this well traveled section of trail and reached the road. It was still another mile to the car — the magical ticket back to lights, people and everything else I had left behind for the weekend.

I took a gaze up at the cold stars overhead and started hoofing my way down the last stretch.

I knew I would make it.

Morning light seen through lodgepole pines in the mountains