Training Log Archive: Swampfox

An article in the NY Times today about spiking coronavirus cases across the United States singles out Douglas County, KS, as an exception, mentioning that the county is the home of Lawrence, KS, which in turn is best known as being the home of the KU West Campus, which is in turn known for occasional mountain lion sightings and UROs (Unidentified Running Objects--"runners" running at night in bizarre, random vector fashion with a space beam attached to their foreheads). Lawrence is also known for a local landmark, Ulrik's Hill, which one local resident, Sammy Hagar (not to be confused with the Van Halen Sammy Hagar) points out as being: "Not so much a hill, it's more like a slightly less flat spot."

The article does hint that continued mask wearing and social distancing could be one reason for the unusually low case rate, but curiously omits any discussion of the link between unusually high bean consumption in Douglas County and transmission rates of coronavirus. Per capita bean consumption in Douglas County is believed to be among the highest of all counties in the United States.

The NY Times also declined to use the article as an occasion for a PSA reminding all readers that chili does *not* contain beans.

C • Covid and Lawrence 4

Ran a number of trails at happy Jack yesterday surveying damage from the storm, and added in some more trails today while running. Lots of trees down and broken, mostly smaller aspens and pines, with a nice helping of beetle kill trees here and there as well. But did some digging for quartz first, for that extra good upper body workout/exhaustion. Or maybe it was just my spaghetti arms giving out too quick? And then, for some reason, I could not stop thinking about RC words, like RC Cola, and for the final RC word, I ended up with recurrent, as in Recurrent Baby.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gzp5gmumfc68sz0/Recurren...

C • RC Cola 2

Intervals.

I meant to note earlier that bitterbrush started blooming on June 6, which is about 2 weeks earlier than used to not so long ago. All due to sunspots or cosmic Jesper 2 Rays or some such explanation, no doubt.

Anyway, for now, while it blooms the air is incredibly sweetly scented up in the hills wherever bitterbrush is found.

Ran off-trail in the NF; where I was running at the 8000' level and near the east edge of the NF, all the new snow had melted by mid-afternoon. Higher up, at Happy Jack, there was still a lot left.

It ended up snowing in amounts ample enough to close the interstate until about noon or so, and looking up at the hills in mid-afternoon, it looked like a lot of snow was still on the ground then. Here at home it was somewhere in the range of 6" to 8" when I woke up this morning. Driving up to run in deep, heavy snow at Happy Jack in June was all but irresistible, yet somehow I managed to restrain myself. Instead, I stayed low and biked around town several times, surveying all the storm damage--massive amounts of cottonwood branches came down. About 1/3 to 1/2 of town had power knocked out as well, though I think it was mostly back on by the end of the day. I am guessing that sooner or later it will warm up again, but for now I would settle for a little less snow. I have a bad feeling the orange groves around Bosler are not faring well right now.

Bara en typisk sommar dag i lilla Laramie.

C • lilla Laramie 5

Okay, it's snowing outside and it's June 8--that's a new record for me. And not just snow, it's thunder snow, the best kind of all!