Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Another very nice day--pretty much a repeat of yesterday, with full sun, blue skies, and just a few degrees cooler. Also a repeat of yesterday insofar as I got out and biked, skied, and ran. So fine!

I think I will switch back to my "less good" skis (a pair of combi skis where it doesn't matter as much to me what the state of the bottoms are) for the time being. There is plenty of snow in the woods, however, not plenty of snow on many small sections of the trail net, thanks to wind scouring, tree removal, etc. It would seem like grooming would include moving some of the plentiful snow in the woods to some of these sections that are hurting, but that's not what usually happens.

An unusually fine, late December day where winter relented for a few minutes, and it was possible to score a trifecta (biking, skiing, running) in total comfort. Didn't even need long pants for biking. Not going to be like this next week!

The favorite thing I've seen this week (so far), has to do with railroads. Statistics for last week's rail traffic were out today, and total traffic for that week this year was up 27% over last year. As a way of understanding the difference, the report included this explanation:

"Please note: Christmas Day is not included in the current week this year, but is included in the comparable week in 2015. Therefore, this week's traffic volume is somewhat overstated compared to 2015."

C • We need a Mussolini! 2

Skied and then ran snow trails. While skiing, it felt colder than I had anticipated--which I attributed to a still pretty strong wind. Once I returned home and checked the temperature, I realized another reason it felt colder was that in fact it was colder than I realized.

Then, to mark the (basketball) contest of the evening, I made Air Force pizza, using great care to craft a scene using bits and pieces of red chilies and mushroom stems, depicting the fiery mid-air collision of two Air Force falcons. I doubt that the collision of two falcons actually results in flames, and probably it's just a mild explosion of feathers, but I took artistic license. Zoom zoom, zoomies.

C • Much better than spirit cheese... 4

More wind today, though not as much as with the past 2 days. I only saw one tree while skiing that was blown down today. The groomer with some spent the day trying to clear the trails, but still didn't get entirely done--Summit Loop hasn't been cleared yet, and I know there are at least a few trees down on it, too.

Went running after skiing, and even on just a short section of multi-use trail it was easy to see the multi-use trails are a total disaster. It will take a while to clear them off. In the meantime, considering the numerous necessary detours off-trail for fallen trees, it's much better to be running than biking!

Just back from skiing, getting home as dusk was meeting nightfall. The current temperature in town is 19F while the "feels like" temperature is 4F. This was one of those times when it really did feel much more like the "feels like" temperature; I wouldn't have guessed it was still as warm as 19F.

It was hard to tell how much new snow we got up top. In places every single flake of new snow had been scoured away and in other places there was some pretty good drifting.

It was obvious the stronger winds that were kicking up towards the latter part of my running yesterday did not abate during the night, and hit the pine forest at Happy Jack with devastating effect. Just on the parts of the trail net I skied on today there was at least 39 trees that had come down across the trails, and there was a huge amount of various debris strewn everywhere. So, while the new snow mostly buried the debris from the prior wind storm, now we need some more snow to bury the new batch of debris.

After these two pretty big wind storms, it might seem like all the trees that were ready to fall down have been blown down, but I am not at all confident that is true. The amount of trees that have blown down so far still only represent a relatively small percentage of the dead trees still standing. And sometimes live trees blow down, too.

With the forecast calling for snow, my plan had been to let the snow arrive, and then go skiing for several hours. The snow arrived on schedule, and I prepared to go skiing. The plan then fell apart, due to wind arriving after the snow arrived, and thoroughly mucking up most of the roads in SE Wyoming.

It looked like I might be able to drive over to the Snowies, as the roads were open, with only the typical advisories about blowing snow and such. However, by the time I was out in the prairie and about a mile out of town, I decided the better part of valor was to turn around and give up on the idea of skiing.

Therefore I settled on running from home up the west slope of the Laramie Range. Going up was no problem; I knew that when I turned around I would have to be face the wind, and the first half of the way down was okay, too. From that point, however, the wind speed started increasing, and by the last 20 minutes or so the wind was edging over into the brutal range. It felt good to get back home!

Today was basically a repeat of yesterday, but even milder--the high for the day was 51F. That meant I could go out for a bike ride at noon in bike shorts, summer bike gloves, no wind liner in the helmet, a light jacket, and no worries about feet getting cold. Then I headed up top to ski and run. The snow was good for skiing other than all the wind debris, and enough snow bikers had been around where I was running to make for great running.

Afterwards, I observed several of the standard Christmas Eve traditions I know many orienteers follow: listened to the Santaland Diaries (I feel I should not have to add that I listened to the unabridged version, but so many people are in such a rush and listen to the short version only--why even bother, in that case?), watched "I Hate Christian Laettner" (almost as good, but in a very different way, and a must for any aspiring athlete), and then made festivus pizza.

For this year's festivus pizza, I settled on a map theme, and recreated a tiny piece of the Pelican Bay map using pieces of kale, black olives, blueberries, yellow squash, and roasted carrots. When it had finished baking, I completed the masterpiece by constructing a stick figure out of toothpicks, and placed it carefully in a beaver pond mire, thereby depicting the incident some years ago when Steve Gregg attempted to run through marshy area and got stuck up to his waist in gunk and was unable to extricate himself.

Snow is forecast for tomorrow and it would be a fine thing to get all the wind debris on the ski trails buried in a fresh application of white.

C • Orienteering map pizza! 1

Beautiful blue skies nearly all day long, and perfect conditions for just about anything other than fly fishing (fly fishing gets tough when everything is frozen over.) When conditions are right, it's best to start out with some biking--just in case things change, which they can. So I did start that way, and did a loop south of town. Saw an empty oil train headed north for a refill, and that's when I was heading north for a refill, too. Then skied, then tacked on some easy running. While running, I discovered incontestable evidence that the chain-sawers had snuck out and sawed up quite a few trees across the multi-use trails. They are so sneaky. Once again, nobody saw them, nobody heard them. But good for them--running on the trails after dark is much easier with the trees out of the way.

Not so cold out today, and while there was no sun, there was also no wind, and as well only a little bit of snow slush left on the roads. So, therefore, hopped on my bike and went rode around various parts of town to see what there was to see. Nice ride, and stayed warm except for my feet, which got a little bit cold. But so what--after all those of years of mapping, I'm well versed in being able to ignore cold feet.

Came back home and had some proper tea and crumpets.

Skied the parts of the trail net that I didn't ski yesterday and continued the tree count. I came up with 23 trees down across the trails, which is not bad for a minor wind storm. From the reports, it sounds like lots more trucks than that blew over on the interstates, so the trees come out ahead.

Besides the trees, I also counted one medium small black dog that was running around like a crazy--man, was it fast! Never did figure out who it was with.

Always nice to hit winter solstice day. It's all up from here.

Updated census stats were out yesterday; Wyoming shined in being the only western state to experience a population decline over the past year. That's got to be coal and oil. So the already nation leading O' map per capita figure (measured in km2 per person) edges even higher.

Went skiing, it was still windy out, but not like yesterday--at least not in Laramie. Further west, however, must have been a different story, because the Walmart parking lot was packed from one side to the other with semi-trailers. I'm pretty sure they weren't there to shop for Christmas.

The sections of the trail net I skied on had been it by at least a dozen trees. They had been sawed up and moved off to the side, but even after they're moved, there are massive amounts of debris at each spot that require new snow to cover up. For all the pine debris on the trails, the skiing was still decent.

After skiing, I ran on one of the multi-use trails, and it had been hit even harder by falling trees. None of them had been moved yet. Not really a problem for running, and more of a problem for snow bikers. And an opportunity for the chainsaw crowd to get out and do their thing. Just imagine how easy it would be to shop for Christmas gifts for a friend who liked to chainsaw--you'd just get them more new chains, rugged leather gloves, ear protection, and those little portable signs they deploy that say: "Chain-sawer at work, be alert for possible sawdusting."

C • 2 questions 6

Down in town in the early afternoon it only seemed normally windy, and up top it was windy, but maybe only a bit more than in town--or at least that's the way it seemed. It must have been windier than I was thinking, however, as lots of trees had blown down at Happy Jack, including at least one that fell across a trail while I was skiing. And when I came home, I gathered from the news there had been many wrecks and intermittent road closures during the day on both I-25 and I-80. During the evening, the winds picked up, and whether it was wind related or for some other reason, power was knocked out in town twice for a couple of hours total. Must have been a great day to be a wind farmer.

Checked the Cowboy Orienteering Index (temperature - wind speed must be greater than 25) in the morning to see if it might be allowable to go orienteering today, but it wasn't even close. So, skiing. Pretty windy up top, however if you could survive the parking lot and get into the trees, then it wasn't so bad. Saw Mark Jenkins and chatted with him briefly; he had been climbing not so long ago in the Boulder area with someone who recognized my name from orienteering, but it wasn't a name I knew from anywhere.

I was planning to run afterwards, but the wind was increasing and the walk back across the parking lot was enough to make me doubt I had the right combination of pants to take much more. So I made the smart decision to head home and spend some time burning calories on the trainer instead, which has the additional benefit of heating the house.

C • Why don't you just park on ... 12

When I woke up this morning, the sun was up and yet it was still -8F. Pretty cold, and that was the *inside* temperature! Sleeping in for a bit longer felt like a good idea, but that would not be the cowboy way. I threw off the buffalo robes, jumped out of bed, grabbed the nearest guitar and strummed on it vigorously--and realized I was not wearing any clothes and was in full view of anyone walking by the front of the house. Whoops! Plus by then my fingers had become frozen to the strings on the guitar--definitely not the cowboy way. I threw down the guitar in disgust; not too much of the skin on my fingers got ripped off in the process, so at least that was good.

It was time for breakfast, and I stood in the kitchen for a good 2-3 hours trying to decide whether it should be cold oatmeal or hot waffles. Cold oatmeal will actually warm you up quicker when it's really cold inside--counter-intuitive, I know, but run the experiment and see for yourself--and therefore oatmeal offered the wimpy choice. So naturally I steeled myself to make the harder choice and I commenced to make waffles.

I will admit that rather than going outside into the even colder cold and plundering a neighbor's beehive for honey, I took the easy route and just reached into the cabinet and pulled out a container of honey bought from the store. Though there's nothing like a few dozen bee stings to properly bring out the warmth on a cold day, so even using the store bought honey involved taking the harder route. I made a mental note to tweet all this with #storeboughthoney=htfu.

It never got any warmer than 0F, but after all the commotion and what not of the morning, getting out and up top for some skiing wasn't as bad as it could have been. At least there wasn't hardly any wind (that would have quickly made things bad), and even with the new snow from the storm last night, my skis had at least a little bit of glide, rather than it being a pure skis-on-sandpaper type vibe--a fact I attribute to not having touched my skis since last season, and probably there wasn't a vestige of anything even faintly resembling wax on their bottoms.

I skied for a little over an hour and a half, which was enough to get finally get some blood into my fingers and get that tingle of fingers returning to life going. By the time I got home, the sun had set, and there was nothing but an orange-pink glow on the western horizon, an odd color that yet at the same time looked vaguely familiar. As I was going inside, it came to me what it reminded me of: it was the exact color of the president-elect's hair.

C • honey 1

Another day without sun (and even though the day isn't over, there is no hope, as snow is headed this way very soon), but I got out on my bike for a ride over to West Laramie and back anyway, arriving back home just in time to catch President Obama's press conference as it was beginning. Listening to him speak and take questions, my overwhelming thought is: he's going to be missed.

Went skiing in the late afternoon, with near perfect timing--snow started a minute or two after I did. It was still mild out, even up top. And it remained mild while I skied. When I finished, I hopped in my truck, changed into running shoes, drove 4 minutes to where I wanted to run from, finished listening to the NPR segment that was on the radio, and then stepped outside into...some really cold air. In that short amount of time, the temps had dropped--my guess--somewhere between twenty to twenty-five degrees. So instead of a slightly sweaty run, it became a brisk run. If it had been any colder, I would have needed a face mask.

Biking plans/hopes came for naught today. No problem with the temps--way up into the high 40's. Rather, another day of no sun meant the slush on the streets hung in there and hung in there. I don't ride on cobblestones, and I don't bike in slush--at least, not without an overwhelmingly good reason.

I was pretty sure the mild temps would turn the snow up top sticky and I didn't feel like fooling around with re-waxing, so I ran trails. It was really nice out. It took about 2 steps to realize I had been wrong about the snow--it was perfectly dry and the usual afternoon winds were showering snow across the snowfield that I traverse in so many of the winter runs I do. Too bad about missing the skiing, but it was great running, so no tears.

Wyoming is playing BYU in the Poinsettia Bowl next week, the result of somehow, miraculously, not ending up ranked in the Bottom 25 this year (but there's always hope for next year, so watch out Kansas!)

The last time the two teams played was in 2010. Then BYU left the conference and tried to break up the conference by taking several other teams with them in an attempt to fashion a new version of the WAC. The attempt didn't work, and teams and fans of the MWC haven't forgotten the treachery. Somewhat amazingly, there is a player who will play against Wyoming next week who *also* played on the 2010 BYU team--which goes to another reason why no love is lost when it comes to BYU out this way: BYU players are often pretty old, and on average, much older than the players they play against (because most BYU players will have done a mission.)

But BYU was detested long before 2010, and it really probably goes back to the 60s, with race issues and the Mormon Church. If you're curious, this is well worth reading: the Black 14

35 years ago Wyoming played BYU here in Laramie in a game that is known as the Blizzard Game. Wyoming won in a white-out snowstorm/blizzard. It was the first time Wyoming had beaten BYU in 10 years, or something like that. After the game, the BYU coach addressed his players and created another bit of history that Wyoming fans have never forgotten and never will, saying: "I'd rather lose and live in Provo than win and live in Laramie."

Hopefully the Cowboys will prevail next week and cap off what has been a pretty terrific season for them. But it won't be easy, as the BYU team is probably the better team. And they're a lot older.

No sun today either, though it was fine since it snowed all day long.

That's a little misleading in terms of what happened down here in town though, because for most of the day the snow was only falling at a rate of about 1 snowflake per minute. And let's face it--that's not enough to get even the smallest snow worm excited.

Up top it was better though, with about 2-3" of new snow by mid-afternoon. Even with my largely de-waxed combi skis, it was quite nice skiing, considering.

Ran afterwards until the arrival of darkness, in the still falling snow. When I got home I replenished with one of the absolute best foods for the hard striving snow runner athlete: lemon pie.

Hope to get out for a bike ride tomorrow, as the weather forecast looks promising for that.

No sun today--clouds coated the skies all day long--but that did not mean there was no sunshine in my day, because I made my skiing debut for this season. No doubt the trails could use more snow and less moose (moose tracks were everywhere), but considering the late start to the season and the below average snow amounts so far, conditions were not bad at all.

Ran afterwards and saw even more moose tracks. But never the actual moosies.

C • Have you ever run across... 9

For anyone who was worried there is no wind left anywhere, I can offer reassurances from SE Wyoming. I am about to venture outside to go running, and if I don't come back within 2-3 days, please someone send out search and rescue. For an initial target zone--should it prove necessary--I suggest that anywhere in the Nebraska Sand Hills would be a good area to begin with.

When I looked outside and saw how windy it was, my heart filled with glee at the bike ride I could take. Plus, there were rumors that Rick Perry might be Trump's energy pick. How much better could it get!! Ah, Texas--the state that never stops giving.

But I had to back off when I saw sheets of plywood and 2x4's sailing by. A mere bike helmet would be no good against such items, and what if one of them scored a direct hit and punctuated me? My innards would fill commas and slowly I would sink to the ground one final time, reduced to a mass of misshaped sentences.

So I thought about skiing, but even after some warming tea, I could not get past the thought of having to cross the Tie City Parking lot in that wind twice.

So in the end I ran trails, which was the correct choice. Once in the woods, I hardly noticed the wind at all, and was thankful to be there rather than, say, Tysons Corner.

Ran up top in the snow; saw a few mountain bikers but not much else other than a flock of crows up in some tree crowns. In places the snow was drifted up enough to make for tough going, and it may be time to take some skis and give the trails a whirl. They're far from perfect, but they were looking better when I peeked in on them in several spots today.

Both yesterday and today were mild enough (+32F) that I was encouraged to go out road biking and brave the forces of the winds. And then ran snow trails afterwards, also both days.

Had to hurry back from running today though, in order to make a Cowboy basketball game against Montana. The game ended very unusually: the game was tied, and Wyoming in-bounded with 30 seconds left. They let time drip down, and then ran a set play for a shot in the pain, but Montana had that defended, so the guy with the ball kicked it out to another Wyoming player who took a shot for 3, which went in just as time expired. The lights flashed, the buzzer sounded, and it all looked good until the officials called a technical on Wyoming for a player from the bench running onto the floor after the game was over. What??? But what had happened is that the lights had flashed and the buzzer had sounded for the *shot clock* and not the game clock, which, while nearly the same, were not exactly the same, with the game clock still showing 0.8 seconds.

So Montana hit the technical (1 shot), and had 0.8 seconds to in-bound and score. But the in-bound pass the length of the court sailed out of bounds, and then all Wyoming had to do was to in-bound the ball for the win, which they did.

I've never seen an ending like that before, and it was just unusual that the shot clock and game clock were so nearly in sync and with the game tied. What made it doubly weird was that almost nobody at the game could figure out what was going on, since there is no explanation given by the official or game announcer of what foul was called, what the officials saw, etc.--whereas if you're listening on the radio, then you're getting constant updates from the radio announcers (though sometimes they're in the dark, too.)

C • Radio 3

Went running in the cold and was not attacked by moose. A man and his dog up in Jackson, WY were not as lucky. Well, I guess the guy was lucky, too, but his dog definitely wasn't. 3 moose attacked and the dog almost didn't make it; probably set a new world record for vet bill.

I wonder if even a dachshund would be enough to make moose think "wolf!"

Cold at the start of the day--about -18F as I was eating breakfast on my patio. I suppose I could've had breakfast indoors, but then a perfectly good patio would be going to waste. Later it got up to a balmy 18F by afternoon, and in comparison, it did *feel* balmy. That was some cold breakfast...

It may be only a little after 10 o-clock in the morning, but at -2F, it's cold enough that it is already possible to declare today as the new Coldest Day of the Season So Far! Congratulations, December 7! You;re the champ! (for now)

C • Freezing... 1

As predicted, it never warmed up today, despite clear skies most of the day. I went running on trails in mid (late) afternoon, and ran until after sunset. It was -3F when I got home, and with clear skies + still air, it will get very cold overnight.

There were a few inches of new snow up top, versus just enough to get flat surfaces almost covered here in town.

I see in the news that there is a possibility of a severe polar vortex sweeping in next week. Hot diggity! That would be so awesome!

I see the University of Massachusetts at Kansas City is playing #3 Kansas tonight. Normally I would give UMKC some odds (though not big odds) of upsetting the Jayhawks, but not tonight, because they are playing on the Kansas home court, where Kansas is all but unbeatable.

That's what you call poor scheduling. Quite often when teams tell their players they have scheduled them to play Kansas at Kansas, the players get in touch with legal assistance to begin the process of drawing up a will.

C • Amazing the things that you... 2

Temps never got out of the teens, but the wind most assuredly did, so Dec 6 gets the crown of Coldest Day of the Season So Far! Better enjoy it while it lasts, Dec 6, because it's going to be even colder tomorrow.

Went running anyway, because otherwise what kind of an example would I be setting for the soft, unmotivated, out of shape orienteering youth of today? (Naturally I am thinking of PG when I write this.)

Was pleased to see two school busses in the Tie City Parking lot, and extra pleased to see two school busses worth of ski youth huddled together for warmth in the same parking lot. Of course that is utterly futile behavior--there is no warmth whatsoever to be obtained in that wind blasted asphalted desolation on a cold winter's day.

C • Silly kids 6

Temps were forecast to hit the lower 30s today, but it was one of those days where the high for the day is achieved one second after midnight. From there, it was down, down, down.

When I went out to run, it was 19F in town (colder up top), enough colder than anything I've felt so far this season that it felt chilly. A full fledged Wyoming wind provided the so-sought-after cutting edge, delivering the unmistakable message that it is indeed now winter here. Inside the forest and with the protection thereby afforded from the full force of the wind, it wasn't bad and in fact felt refreshing compared to the 70s experienced in SC just a week and a half ago.

I noticed quite a few trees down that had not been down 2 weeks ago, a testimony to some windy days in between now and then.

After spending most of the day re-obtaining order over the accumulated disorder resulting from my absence, I headed out in the late afternoon to sample some trails up at Happy Jack. This time of year, here, "late afternoon" equals anything after 3 o-clock. And in reality, it would be almost more accurate to classify anything after 3 o-clock as the "too late afternoon". Anyway, I headed up when I felt I could.

I didn't know what to expect, and what I found was a pleasant surprise: a good 6-10" of snow cover in the forest, with most of the ground covered by the upper end of that range. There were ski tracks, bike tracks, snow show tracks, and even a small amount of terrain that had been rolled to pack the snow. But to my eye the skiing looked pretty marginal unless you really were impatient to get started, and had some classic skis that were beat up enough that you didn't care much about the bottoms. In contrast, the running was great! All the bike packed trails were perfect. And nice temps, too, in the mid 30's, enough to take some of the edge off the wind.

Ran until after dark. Saw 4 skiers, 6 snow bikers, and one set of footprints that looked suspiciously like a swampfox had been out, too.

Got back home in the early evening after a road trip to the hinterlands, the outlands, the southlands, the trafficlands, and then back. In the nighttime it was hard to see how much, if any, winter there was, and the bright glare of the stadium lights (Wyoming football was underway) didn't help, but here and there I thought I could make out small amounts of snow by driveways.

The main purpose of the trip was to continue my ongoing research in the contrast in what many people say they like versus what they really like. For my examinations I have been concentrating on turkey consumption. It is truly remarkable how many folks exult over the roasted turkey at Thanksgiving, saying over and over how much they love it as the main course, but even love more the leftovers, and love most of all the carcass and the wonderful things that can be done with it. And yet the *only* time these same people ever buy a whole turkey and roast is at Thanksgiving, even while turkeys are available year round in supermarkets everywhere. And yet we all know that in truth turkey meat is quite bland, only slightly tastier than, say, ordinary sand. One of these years the movement to replace Thanksgiving turkey with Thanksgiving pizza is going to take off in a big way, and, when it happens, there will be no looking back.

On my way out, I adopted a route so that it was convenient to stop off at Hawn St Park, which remains one of my favorite O' venues. It's always fun to run at Hawn, and it would be a lot of fun to go back there for a big national event. As it is, it's a lot of fun (for me, at least) to stop there and even just run trails. If I had to live in Missouri, I would try to make it work so I could live close enough to the park so I could pop out the door and be in the park in a few minutes.

On the way back, I didn't stop at Hawn again, but I did detour through Lawrence, KS, and spent a very pleasant evening with maprunner and spike. We had pizza--reminding me again of how Thanksgiving is going to change in the not too distant future--and finished off with some chocolate chip cookies, which I had transported all the way from the trafficlands (read: northern Virginia) for that express purpose.

In between, I spent a few days with kissy and the always ferocious Black Beast. That was fun, and in a way a visit back to the past, as she lives in a townhouse identical to the townhouse a block or so away where Don and Marit Davis used to live. While I was there we visited the Bull Run battlefield and while I might not have run like a bull, I did have a fun time there running like a swampfox, running through some parts of the park I hadn't been in before. (I believe QOC still has access to a portion of the park, and I noted with some irony as I ran through that quadrant of the park that it appeared to be the case that of all the corners of the park, this part had the worst forest with other parts had lovely forest that were splendidly wide open; but all the better to develop proper toughness, one might suppose!)

I don't remember whether it was for dinner that day or another, but kissy made some incredible vegetarian steak that I would have insisted had to be the real thing, had I not known otherwise. It was *amazing*!!! Who would have believed such a thing was possible? And to think she bought it at a nearby 7-11....

Fun trip.