Training Log Archive: ndobbs

Fun day. Drove to Walmartland. Passed Home Office, had a lovely breakfast at the Station Cafe and checked out Walton's 5 and 10.

Then went to Mrs. W's gaffe at Crystal Bridges. Admired lots of wonderful and sometimes scary paintings,

then ran around the grounds, and on some mtb trails outside the grounds (including a wonderful banked downhill slalom thing).

Next en route, Eureka Springs, a little French or Swiss spa town in the arse end of nowhere, Arkansas. More good food.


Closing in on Memphis, the radio got a whole lot better. Found a station playing only Memphis-made music (incl Nancy Apple).

Arrived in Memphis a bit after 10, took a while to find parking. Walked onto Beale St. Jaw dropped.

Wow.

People, music, dancing, blues, funk, non-blues, so much going on, and half of it in the street. Wandered up and down for over two hours, listening to bits of music, doing lots of people-watching. At some point the was a circle and inside three frat white boys were doing frat boy dance, the exact same frat boy dance I saw in South Bend, IN. I turned away, turned back, and suddenly 50 blacks were line dancing (is what they were doing called line dancing?). There's some really excellent music going.

Drove an hour towards Nashville, sleep a bit after 2.

C • Memphis 2

Excellent breakfast in Tucumcari (chorizo scrambled eggs etc), then a long drive... stopped in TX for water. There wasa tornado shelter in the rest area. Tumbleweed blew across the interstate (today or yesterday?).

Stopped in Hinton, OK for gas, and drove 5 miles up the road to find the one and only Red Rock Canyon SP (at least, the only one in Hinton). Went for a gorgeous run in the rain.

TX and OK were pretty boring. No oil fields, no cowboys (although according to the radio I just missed a rodeo), dull terrain. But then I hit RRCSP.

The base of the canyon had a stream running through it, and a park road, and some grass along much of the road with a bunch of camping and picnic areas along the way. I started running north from where the road entered, along the Rough Horsetail trail, named after the primitive plant (not like redneck primitive, more related to stuff that turned into coal -primitive) growing in patches of the woods. A couple of pools and cliffs later and I was heading back past the car, down the grass and road towards the southern end, all lush and pleasant with deciduous (fall started) trees and green grass and still the rain. Down near the end (I presume), a sign appeared indicating a walking trail. Streamers were orange vetting tape, courtesy of the American Volkssports Association. I wasn't expecting much. Yet the vibrantly red trail wound its way out of the base of the canyon (gentle slopes down here), into drier (and often dead) fir (?) trees, feeling a bit more alpine on the higher slopes. There were patches of bare (red) rock and the trail meandered up, down and along all the way back to within, surprisingly, 50m of the car. Heavenly. Chasing the streamers I felt like a kid following the Pied Piper (as I did to a lesser extent with the cairns in the badlands).

Stopped in Tulsa for free hotdogs at Arnie's. There's a law against smoking in restaurants, or anywhere food is sold, but food can be given away... so Arnie's offers free hotdogs. Until 8pm. At 8.30 the hotdog company hadn't collected their hotdog shtuff so it got evicted to a bench outside the pub. I said hi to the bouncer at 9 (?) and asked if they were still serving. He said no, but said there were free hotdogs if I wanted. Yay. Had a couple, then wandered around town (saw a building that used to be a blimpport), came back had another hotdog, and headed on my merry way.

Continued on to the Arkansas border.

Spent the morning wandering the petrified forest,

then car to Gallup for stuffed sopadillas (hotter than NY Mexican, and I got the milder version), before making my way to El Malpais.



Fun running out on the lava beds, going from cairn to cairn along the natives trail... more hopping, this time basalt in place of granite. Sun was setting, so turned back early as it was important to spot the cairns... badlands indeed.

Put in a couple of hours of driving afterwards, motel in Tucumcari... 2/3 of a day behind schedule.

C • Tucumcari Tonite! 8

Granite Dell, Prescott, AZ

On Jagge's automap. The area is mad, was out for three hours just about, lots of standing around and head-scratching and walking and jogging and leaping. Plenty of crevasses, small boulders, large boulders, fins, granite everywhere, no end of fine rocks one could lay out on.

I'd printed the map at 11*17 on nice paper before leaving Kingman, don't know exactly what scale it was, but it seemed to work. The black was a little splodgy. Wow, spellcheck doesn't like splodgy! Took a few controls.

Contours weren't quite what I'd expected, and cliffs were a bit hit and miss. A couple of 10m ones missed the cut. Barely anything under 2m made the map, it seemed, be it knoll, boulder or cliff.

Thirsty.

Drove a bunch of route 66 in the morning. Had dinner in Sedona, but it was dark, so missed out on the pretty scenery. Saw lots of hippie shops.


Slept by the petrified forest afterwards. Would any biologists know can we petrify mice? Does it only work with plants?

Camped on Big Sur last night. I could happily have stayed on the west coast for a while, but the o was calling. The Bakersfield area of CA is pretty grim, but up towards AZ it gets pretty again (I set rubber on route 66).

Motel in Kingman, AZ, tonight - 23.68 seems cheap for a shower and a bed and a shower. Must run tomorrow. And won't hang around to see the gay firemen.

Half a day behind schedule so far.
---

Sunrise -


And a little further down the coast.


Loads more where they came from.

C • So at this rate 3

C • map 8

I met a couple of cool guys from Washington at Arches a couple of weeks back, one of them sent me a couple of pics.

Poison oak? Or a yellow jacket sting-induced rash not exactly where the sting was? Eurgh. Rubbed some Tecnu in, but we'll pretend it was the sting.

C • PO 2

My memory of the Streets of San Francisco was slightly different to...


I had lunch with the lovely Zan

here.


While google appears to have a thing for strange bikes, while taking this pic

I did get passed by a 'self-driving car'.

For balance, I did pass by Cupertino (not very exciting) on the way south to Big Sur. I felt at home on the beach.


Another sweet campsite:

Boggs Mtn Middle.

Two thirty second mistakes, and a couple of sub-optimal routes, but enough to win the course with Eric having an off-day. Actually, Joseph Doetsch won the course, another second place... http://baoc.org/wiki/Results/2012/Boggs_Mountain#R...

Fun orienteering.

Erin had put on some additional training for the juniors, so I had to do it. Three loops, it said memory, so I did each loop by memory... had to cheat on the first loop, after that sloooow but ok.

There were gazillions of yellow jackets (wasps) at the event. Later on I got buzzed by these guys -


- while driving across this: