Training Log Archive: Swampfox

Yesterday skiing up top was a bit chill(y) and today was chill(ier) yet--8F back at home, and without doubt a couple of degrees colder up top at the ever beckoning and balmy Tie City parking lot. There is a local legend among pagan Laramites that Tie City is the place where Alaskan wolves will trek to when climate change makes it too warm in Alaska.

It probably wouldn't have felt so cold except that a) it's still early in the season and I am not yet properly seasoned for this early dose of winter chill, and b) there was some mean breeze out of the east, and getting started by heading straight into the teeth of the wind beast isn't an optimal warming up scenario. I suppose I should also acknowledge c), that I can be pretty wimpy when it comes to cold, so what I really need to do is to (taking a cue from the latest trend in oratorical flourishes by candidates in the Republican presidential race) simply toughen the fuck up. I feel warmer all over already.

All that said, the skiing conditions quite nice, especially for November, once you got used to having no feeling in your toes, nose, ears, and hands. No snow snakes, and just a few places with newly wind felled beetle trees.

C • No feeling in your toes, nose, ears, and hands 5

Went skiing at Happy Jack in very foggy conditions. Driving both up and back was not easy due to the fog freezing on my windshield, and I assume what was happening to me was happening to all the other drivers, too, so some nervous driving.

The trails had been pretty well carpet bombed by moose tracks.

I went up top to ski and run, except that halfway up the canyon it dawned on me that I had a lot of stuff with me, but I sure didn't have my ski boots. So the rest of the way up I was just going up top to run.

Which actually worked out pretty well. Within about 15 minutes of starting out, and running along a snowshoe trail through a mix of pine and fir forest, I saw something black in the snow up ahead. It looked like it could be a particularly dark stump. As I got closer, it began to look more and more like a large jacket stretched across something, maybe some branches, almost looking as if it had been arranged like a shelter. As I got *really* close, like 20' away, I stopped, looked more carefully, and recognized finally what it really was: a bull moose, more or less curled up. It wasn't moving. Was it dead? I whistled at it, doing my best go at "Spoonful". I'm not a good whistler to begin with, and even for me this was a pretty bad effort.

That did the trick: the moose awoke, and craned its head around until it saw me. Then it stood up, which took a long time because it was a very mighty big bull moose. And only 20' away! But it didn't seem all that disturbed otherwise and it just stood there, looking at me. I looked back. Then I started taking some steps away, and then I continued running.

That was neat. But it got even better, because on the way back, I saw two more big bull moose.

In all, I saw 3 moose and only 2 snow bikers, which is an exceptional moose-to-snow biker ratio by any standard.

The new Bottom 25 rankings are out, and things are not looking good for Wyoming. With a bye last week, they remain ensnared in 5th place. Two of the teams ahead of them have winnable games (meaning they have at least a 5% chance of winning--remember, these aren't very good teams!), but the other two have almost no chance to win. Plus, Wyoming itself is looking at a winnable game against UNLV.

With the season so close to being over, it's impossible to think of what might have been. If only Wyoming had run out the clock and headed for the lcoker room when they got the ball very late in the first half against a superior Nevada team. Instead, they scored, and that play right there will probably go down as the play that cost them any realistic shot at the Bottom 25 title.

What if! If only! But you know the old saying: if unicorns were lima beans, then nobody in Silicon Valley would go hungry, something that is extra apropo as we approach the day of traditional turkey dishes.

I went for a quick ski to take advantage of mild, very pleasant and sunny conditions, following that up with the real advantaging--which was an O' run at Remarkable Flats. It was the first day in several that the Happy Jack highway was at last enough de-iced so that it wasn't life threatening to drive along.

While I was skiing and approaching the far end of the trail net, I spotted 2 unfamiliar, kinda stick figures but not really totally stickish figures up ahead. They were standing at what would probably be *the* optimum spot to stand if you were an ISIS operative. After determining they had no automatic weaponry on them or any grenades--though I could not rule out the possibility of suicide belts--I skied up to them and requested their identification. Which they handed over.

I examined the identification carefully, noting the shoddy construction paper they were made of, the extensive use of crayons, and pictures of santa claus and a bunny rabbit, which in no way resembled the people in front of me.

I passed their papers back to them, while informing them that: "These are the worst credentials I have ever seen in my life." They wouldn't have passed muster in Casablanca.

Anyway, they turned out to be ex-runners on the UW XC team (or so they claimed), and now enrolled in graduate programs at the university. Before meeting them, I literally hadn't seen any runners out on the trails during winter in years; I think almost anyone who might have once been running on snow trails rather than skiing is now snow biking instead.

Remarkably Flats was remarkably fine as usual, and I have to admit it was nice that the winds were down to levels that would be considered a merely normal breeze even in more civilized areas of the world. Plus the sun!

The best thing, though, was what I saw on the way home, after sunset: a large meteor fell through the sky from behind me, traveling in the same direction I was headed, and moving relatively slowly and seemingly pretty low in the atmosphere compared to the typical meteor. The glow it was producing was quite bright, and somewhat pulsating. To judge by it's altitude before it passed out of sight behind a ridge, it wouldn't surprise me if it reached ground.

C • Meteor reporting page... 1

Skiing was on tap today what with sunshine and beckoning blue skies, and so I headed up top. As I was putting on my skis, I glanced up the trail and caught sight of a familiar stick figure--the unmistakable outline of racer X8A7--standing still at the base of the Campground Loop. And I knew what he was doing. How many countless times have I seen him standing there, motionless, trying to decide to go left or right, weighing the pros and cons of either choice? It would hardly seem to make any difference, since either way you go, you end up at the same place on the far side of the loop. Or, if you just keep on going around, eventually you come back to the starting point--it being a loop--and you can make the other choice then if you like.

But I recognize the symptoms and fully sympathize, and am perhaps just as susceptible to the same affliction, having once long ago fallen prey to the same disease. Once you take the introductory course to Geology--"Rocks for Jocks"--you are never the same again.

So I skied up to X8A7 and said hello and asked him: "Stuck again?"

He said yes.

I said: "We've been over this before. You know it's just a loop. It really doesn't matter which way you go."

X8A7 just nodded his head. I sympathized.

I said: "Do you want to talk about the weather?"

Neither of us said anything for a while, except for when someone would ski past, and then we would both say to the them: "Hi, hi, hi." If a dog ran by, we didn't say anything to the dog. No sense in antagonizing a dog on the ski trails.

More time passed and then I said: "Do you want to talk about the government?" It seemed like a promising topic of conversation, but we just stood there saying nothing for a while again, except when other skiers came by, when again we would say "hi, hi, hi."

Finally racer X8A7 asked if I wanted to ski. That was quite startling, since I hadn't even been there for much more than 20-30 minutes of indecision time. I cautiously said that would be fine as long as he didn't race me into the ground (after all, he is racer X8A7, and not tree sloth X8A7), and with that he immediately headed uphill on the right leg of the loop.

I think it was the quickest I've ever seen him make up his mind about which way to go on the loop, so for AP purposes, put it down as a PR.

We spent almost the entire time while we skiing talking rocks-for-jocks type stuff, you know, like rocks and minerals and stuff, except for when we were talking about the weather and the government. Good times.

After X8A7 was done (he started earlier than me), I skied for a while longer, and then switched gears and ran for a 100 (miles? days? minutes? probably minutes) on snow bike trails. There were some new beetle trees down across the trails I ran on, felled by the high winds either yesterday or the day before. Except for on packed trails, running up in the forest at Happy Jack is already pretty near too difficult, because of the depth of the snow that has fallen over the past week.

Lots of bikers were out today, and already I have the impression that snow biking is going to be up again in numbers this season. Mountain biking is way more popular in Laramie than even beer drinking and country music, and it is definitely carrying over into snow biking.

Yesterday was looking auspicious for the start of my personal ski season, but the Road Gods had other ideas, and a wreck (or wrecks) on I-80 had eastbound lanes closed much of the day, including the latter part of the day, which is when I would have gone up to pantomime skiing while mostly in actuality desperately trying to stay warm (it got unseasonably cold as the day wore on.) So that was that.

Today went better and therefore became the day of the start of my personal ski season. I pantomimed for about 40 minutes before things starting to feel more comfortably like some semblance of skiing, and at one point I even passed a pair of dogs that had stopped to sniff something (another dog's pee?) at the base of a beetle kill tree. Of course, they weren't wearing skis so they were at a speed disadvantage anyway.

The best part though was the wind, which was rippin'. Actually the best, best part was the rippin' wind had blown in so much rippin' snow across the rippin' entrance to the parking lot that I made the wise decision to park across the highway rather than risk the entry to the parking lot and/or risk being trapped inside the parking lot. That meant that at the end of the day instead of walking a nearly impossible 50-100' into the death winds, I got to walk more like 300' into the death winds instead. Bonus!

Some things at Happy Jack never change.

Very nice to see the trails already have very good coverage, better than they had last year a full month later into the season.

A low of -7F for the day added to the wintry feel.