Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Went running late in the day at Happy Jack, and got involved in a Search and Rescue operation. I might write more about this later, or not.

C • Rescue or Recovery? 2

The weather was a spot-on repeat of yesterday, but the day itself was anything but, marked by a string of oddities, several of which I will mention:

1) I was out in my yard in the late morning, doing some gardening, when I noticed a 4 x 4 buck mule deer strolling from one neighbor's yard across the street to another neighbor's yard, where it helped itself to some flowers. Deer do come into the neighborhood occasionally, but more often in the winter than summer, and only late at night--at least as far as I knew.

The behavior of this deer was thus unusual to begin with, and it wasn't in the slightest concerned about the attention it gathered as it went along. And it was the gauntest deer I've ever seen around here. My guess is that it had CWD.

One neighbor wondered if she should call Fish and Game, so that they could take care of it--in a veterinarian kind of way. My guess was that, yes, if they were called, they would come, and that they would surely take care of the deer. But not in a veterinarian kind of way. Wyoming doesn't even take care of its own citizens in a veterinarian kind of way (still adamantly against medicare expansion, as being some kind of evilness or worse.)

2) Then, driving up the interstate, I saw a flock of wild turkeys right by the interstate. I've seen that in other states before, but never here, not until today. Turkeys are always cool to see.

3) At dusk, running towards Browns Landing, I heard a bull elk bugling up ahead. Just past the footbridge there, the trail enters a large open meadow that is almost like an amphitheater, and at the far edge of the meadow I could barely make out a group of about 20 elk. I stopped, and just for fun decided to bugle back--not that I can bugle, unless you count something so atrocious that it shouldn't count and should more properly be penalized. Maybe it was so shockingly bad that it disrupted the bull elk's ability to act right, because its head jerked over to see where the sound was coming from, and then it started to walk in my direction. I let it get pretty close before I unfroze, and did several jumping jacks. One jumping jack would have been more than enough, because the elk bolted away like a super skinny electric eel, spooking the rest of the herd in the process. It was lucky I wasn't a hunter.

4) But the take the cake and blow out all the candles oddity was seeing that Kansas thoroughly crushed Rutgers. They looked exactly like you expect a Power 5 team to look!!! What the hell is going on??? And it's only by the barest fluke of luck that Kansas is not sitting at 3-0 right now. Maybe they have sworn off all the nutritional crap and are feeding their players Pop-Tarts instead, just like the Alabamas and Clemsons, etc. do. I saw a calculation a while back that for Kansas to have a 50-50 chance to go 3-0 for any stretch of games, it would take nearly 98,000 seasons. That's a lot of football.

C • a good day 2

There was still a good bit of smoke from the Silver Creek in the valley, but at ground level it was almost entirely contained within the extreme SW part of the valley, and otherwise the main smoke plume was many thousands of feet high overhead. As has been typical for all week, the smoke plume became much darker and larger as the afternoon wore on.

Ran down the Crow Creek drainage late in the day and saw 5 cows, several beaver, and, right as dusk was falling, 2 people. Of these things, the people sighting was the unusual one. I hardly ever see folks on this particular trail, which is odd, given the beauty of the location. Maybe it's simply a matter of fewer people being familiar with that trail and the trail network associated with it.

Another sunny, dry, and very unseasonably warm day.

C • People 5

Another windy, sunny, dry, warm day, with smoke blowing up big time out of the SW by early afternoon--the entire valley was blue with smoke, at lest the parts that weren't totally opaque.

Realized the smoke couldn't be coming from the smallish fire near Fort Collins, and some searching online revealed it must be from the much larger Silver Creek fire down towards Kremmling.

Tomorrow's weather promises to be more of the same. As each day goes by without any rain, the odds increase that the next precipitation that arrives will be frozen. The skiers would be happy, the bikers not so much. I try to go with the flow and accept whatever comes.

Biked and ran, and kept things at a very low intensity level out of respect for the smoke.

While biking in the afternoon a smoke plume to the SW was growing noticeably thicker and larger, and by late day the wind turned enough so that some of the smoke began entering the valley. Not sure if this is an older fire, revived by wind, warmth, and dryness today, or if it is new, but I'm thinking new. Forecast for the next few days are for more of the same--windy and warm.

I've had some PF in my right heel for much of the summer, mostly at a very tolerable level, but the running on Sunday left it really sore later that evening, and it's been slow to get better since then. I've been running, but have been taking it pretty easy. Lots of people are running these days (towards the general election in 8 weeks) and I doubt they are taking it easy.

Headed down to the scrap yard with 34 pounds of aluminum cans, the vast majority of which were gleaned from the forest. That should be enough to build a few more airliners.

Legs were heavy today and one heel quite sore from yesterday. So I leaned on biking. Quite warm out for the date, and things feel quite dry again. It rained late in the day following the Monday races a week ago, but already it seems like it was months ago since the last rain.