Early Morning Outings

North Moon Mtn - Picacho to the East

New running program coming along swell. Re-visiting many old trails and running routes is actually quite nostalgic. In many places there are tree branches and undergrowth that have crowded out sections of trail - I carefully prune parts of it back week-by-week as the miles build. It's all oddly like slow-piloting a time machine (emphasis on slow). A stop action animation film gradually reversing the aging process of both myself and my friendly trails.

The tendons in my toes and feet are often quite sore from the new work, my shoulders ache from the arm carriage. Quite a mess, but very nice to build back what was once lost. Into the sixth week now and have shed five-lbs (solid 18mos of Dad years), sayanora lethargy and inertia. I enjoy the little is active in the early morning but the birds.

Excited for what the summer may bring.

A Return to the Trails

Winsor Trail with eastern sun and cloud

I've returned to running again. A busy work and family life shifted priorities elsewhere. Work obligations take over for months each Spring and we compounded the bottleneck this year with a second child that arrived in late March. One finds when they're away from activity that it's quite natural to settle into a state of entropy. Injury and time constraints create challenges but at the end of each day it's the inertia of doing nothing that slowly takes hold.

What is missed most deeply of course is the time spent being outside - that sights and sounds of daily adventure and exploration. I'm prodded along now with some urgency to get moving again because I've reached a hard and awkward inflection point. In my current middle-age and often workaholic state I am now void of fitness to the extent that my clothes strain at the seams, and this is something I just cannot allow. I hold this ace card - which perhaps has let me defer and delay for as long as I have - hundreds of hours of detailed knowledge that by simply lacing my shoes and passing through the front door frame I can rewind most of this entropy to a happy balance.

And interestingly I find that in my regained alone-time I think about many fascinating things that I frankly must write down (laughing).

Building a Business

It's been quite a long year. I look up...and it's October. In fairness this is likely the best month to stir from one's desk and find waiting there outside the nearby window panes.

So what the hell have I been up to? I spent my year planning for and setting up a stand-alone CPA practice. As of mid-August I had officially opened my doors for business, offices downtown, trying to make everything function properly and perform a dozen different tasks each day including retaining critical clients and proposing for and on-boarding equally critical clients. All of this required working every weekend since January and beginning most of my days at an embarrassingly early hour that at first was justified as a necessity to get me caught up on the present week, but which strung out endlessly over most of the last nine months. On Monday I completed my last major project and sat down to rest.

I'm very fortunate to have an understanding wife who encouraged me along the way. Always my strongest supporter. Her professional achievements provided equal cover for me to take this risk. I'm similarly blessed with an often alarming reserve of stamina and endurance to grind through setbacks and challenges and near-nervous breakdowns. I needed all of it, the tanks were emptied. My plan today is to leave the office early, not just before 630pm but before 300pm(!!). I'll lace up my shoes and go for a run in the intoxicating light and stern autumn breezes of an October afternoon, lose myself in aimless thought and the rewards of honest efforts.

Personal news: Recently opened my own CPA practice after parting with prior firm of 9+yrs. Massive workload first 2mos but I'm up & running.

— santafeCPA (@SantaFe_CPA) October 25, 2017

Overnight in Canyon Country Without a Tent

Rain clouds above Grand Junction 

I'm going to tell an old story of mine that comes to mind in random ways from time to time. The story is of a camping trip out near Grand Junction, CO, over a decade ago. I'd flown out from Pittsburgh where the wife and I were in full degree-pursuit mode, to join a few rowdy old friends in a float down the Westwater portion of the Colorado river.

I remember being unusually excited to be back in Colorado and drank waaaay too much on our three days on the river. Or maybe only just enough depending on one's perspective. One guy had converted the handle and motor of a chainsaw so as to attach a blender for margaritas. There was much fun had with this. On day two we spotted a dead calf floating in the water which set off a mad paddle-race between the two boats, a roaring frenzy of booze fueled mayhem to claim first rights to the floater. One oarsman was gamely trying to lasso the soggy fatality with a tie-rope. Somebody won and afterward we floated along cheering and taking grizzly photos of ourselves with the bloated little guy, his sad cow tongue lolling out of his mouth in all of them. Smelled like rotting death.

All told an out-sized level of fun was had as is the nature of most river trips, though pointedly none of these bright episodes carried the memory that remained over the years. After our days on the river I had the boys drop me off in the Junction where I'd planned to rent a bicycle and trek out into the trails outside of town for two days of solo camping. Figured I could find a way to the airport to catch my flight back east a few days later though that is its own fraught story of adventure that Colin loved to hear re-told in subsequent years.

Bike camping went well. Found the trailhead, found a campsite, stashed my gear, then got right down to the basics of riding and exploring for the better part of two days, stopping occasionally to read in the shade of a rock and sip on cold beers from my bottomless pack. The holy trinity.

My campsite was set away from the trails. I didn't want anyone to come along and decide to take my stuff while i was off exploring, particularly since everything I had with me was needed. No spare items were packed not even a tent since we shared one along the river. For this reason I also chose my campsite because there was a sliver of a rock shelter there in the form of a very tight space under a ledge. This was not an alcove or a cave but a patio sized capstone of desert rock with most of the underlying layer of sediment eroded away. The plan wasn't to actually sleep in there, only that it was insurance and peace of mind if weather were to blow in. On the second night weather did blow in.

Clouds arrived, then the the wind, then the evening darkness, and finally intermittent rain showers. Time to wedge myself into the claustrophobic peace-of-mind shelter. I found that I could lie in there with space between my body and the rock above but I couldn't roll over. It was not comfortable but it was dry. Entombed. The wind was howling and some of the more ferocious gusts would sometimes startle me awake. To my right there was a small gap in the rock that allowed a portrait view out to the shadows of trees and rock and occasional starlight above, and I stared out and thought of things and let my mind wander freely as I'd done for several days. And then I casually observed that with large wind bursts the capstone above would sway and teeter in a slow and incredulous fashion.

Initially this didn't fuel much alarm. I'd been on a couple dozen desert trips in my life, this one alone was on day five. Rocks don't just fall over out in the canyons and this one wasn't going to either. This rock in particular was keeping me dry. But nothing about this was normal and as I drifted in and out of sleep my wandering thoughts contorted and grew dark with the many unhappy things that could happen if the stone were to give way. Nobody on the planet knew where to find me. Unlikely anyone that happened along the trail would hear me and I'd only seen a handful of people in two days time anyhow. Maybe I could dig out, how long would that take? What if my arm was pinned? Before long I'd fallen deeply asleep until at some point I'd grown uncomfortable and rolled over. I woke with my shoulder wedged against the rock, remembered where I was and why I was there, and was very suddenly chilled by the horror of it all.

'jesus... don't touch the f'n slab for chrissake. Be calm, everything is just fine, go back to sleep, seriously though don't touch the rock in any unnecessary way'.

Later it happens again. It takes far longer this time to walk back the panic. The wind is really thrashing the trees and whipping sand at this point and I'm not getting much rest. I am disturbed. I'm having trouble reasoning with myself because my thinking is trending toward the irrational. Paranoia rises and falls in racing thought. I manage sleep once more, then toss and hit the stone with my shoulder for a third time - all remaining self-control comes undone. I go mad. Scrambling from the space and crying out in blind terror I'm certain that I've tempted fate a minute too long and will be crushed in this final moment of delayed hubris.

Breathing. Darkness. Wind.

Nothing happens. Nothing will happen. Nothing has changed in the camp in two days time and it's entirely likely that nothing had changed in this small area in the last several centuries. In the brief span of 2-3 otherwise ordinary and unremarkable hours, nothingness somehow begets madness.

From thirty feet away I sat with my back against a large block of crimson rock and stare at the shadows and trees and the rock shelter. Calm now but making an effort to breath evenly, collecting my nerves. Sleeping-bag pulled up to my chest. Eyes blink with fatigue, staring. Wind driven raindrops rap and drum, slowly dampening both hair and shoulder. I try to talk myself into settling back into the shelter, out from the rain.


Related Posts:
 - Story Time: Cycling Winsor Trail Minus Shoes
 - Story Time: Trail Running with Cows in Upper Nambe Creek
 - Story Time: Parenthood with New Orleans Street Party Comparison
 - Story Time: Running, Beer, and Men in Cocktail Dresses

What It's Like to be a Parent - With Helpful Comparison to New Orleans Party

Important Dad skill: Crossing creeks with both coffee and kid

I traveled down to New Orleans recently for some wedding festivities. The friends and I brought the ruckus, rolling the celebrations out late over two nights, even high-stepping our own cocktail fueled street parade through the French Quarter complete with marching band and police escort. We went big even by our own historical standards, by accountants' standards we would have been off the charts. Straight up partied our asses off, committed fully to the task at hand. Flawless execution. The 7,000+ ft drop in altitude for myself only provided an even larger tank of fuel then normal to burn through.
Now, on my return home, not even one full week later I’m out on an evening mtb ride with a friend (also an accountant I should add). It is hot as holy hell. No wind or breeze to speak of, I’m literally thanking my good judgment for filling two water bottles before heading out of the house (usually take just one). I’m sweating sheets during the ride and this requires me to stop on several occasions to clear my eyes because I’m blinded. We are not even in the hills - no climbing, just zipping around Galisteo and pedaling madly up/down the southern stretches of the Rail Trail in Eldorado. We grab a beer after the ride and I’m definitely more filthy than average because I'm annoyingly conscious that my entire upper body is coated in a film of sweat and dust and I feel it when I move, minor actions like talking and smiling and swiveling my head. Thirty minutes later I pull into the house just in time for the 3yr old's bedtime so I walk in the door and directly into his room where I sit with him until he’s asleep. We both fall asleep of course - me in the rocking chair, layered in sweat and dust baked in by sun, he in his nearly outgrown toddler's bed. I was at the office all day and was spent. I wake up super early a.m. and on autopilot drag my broken old-man body out of that freaking chair and sleepwalk straight into the shower because I literally feel several degrees worse at this moment than I did on either of the late unsteady mornings in New Orleans the week before.
I feel that this story very elegantly illustrates what it’s like to be a parent and I wanted to share my pain with other people. Being a parent is super-fun though there's lots of discomfort and confusion and small humiliations of unusually high frequency and the occasional absence of beds or any type of necessary self-planning.
P.S. New Orleans is a riot and you should go there.
Related Posts:
- Adventure on the Winsor Trail (Sep 2014)
- Greatest Dad Wins (Apr 2015)
 - Fat  Man (Apr 2015)

Greatest Dad Wins

Been developing some mad dad skillz of late. The kid and I bike the RailTrail out to Eldorado, practice beisbol in the yard, practice beisbol at the track, discuss the cool comic heros/villains, and watch the track World Champs on the computer. He knows who Leo Messi is, Clayton Kershaw, and Mike Trout.

Turns out there's a whole other level of dad-game I was unaware of. Credit to the Desert Babe for finding this montage of dads casually preventing tragedies while not toppling their drinks. Much to aspire to here. Napping back-handed infant-save dad is good but there's an argument to be made for out-of-nowhere almost bike crash into parked-car-save dad for the win. Carry on gentlemen.




Related Posts:
 - Family Addition (Aug 1, 2012)
 - French Alps Freeskiing - Candide Thovex
 - Cobra Kai Sensei was a Dick

When an Awesome Run gets Awesomer

Visiting and running in Boulder this last weekend. Memories from my days as a student are now more than a decade past and my internal map of the area trail system is incoherent. A wonderful side-effect of such haziness is to run unfamiliar trail sections then round a bend or exit a grove of trees to a marvelous and long forgotten viewpoint. Like greeting an old friend - over and over and over again. It's an enlightened experience, especially when you're also running with an old friend.

Our Sunday long run routed up and over and through until we made a quick change in direction and cut to a little known thru-trail in a residential area. At the bottom of the hill, setup right off the footpath, were two guys dolled up in red cocktail dresses and makeup, unloading three coolers of ice and Pabst beer from a truck. It was like the day couldn't have been a more perfect day, than this. Beaming, I laugh and call out through a maniac's grin, 'we've been looking everywhere for you!'

At this, the red-dress guys frown and look confused. They were expecting a group of runners in matching red dresses to come through, but we dropped in from the opposite direction, outfit in regular dirtbag attire plus mud-caked shoes and ankles. Little of this made sense to them at that moment. In contrast and in an apex of irony, their presence made clear and absolute sense to me along with my fading memories of life in Boulder in my 20's. The badassness of hitting an inadvertent beer stop during a long run ranks quite high. To be fair, it's most likely an act of God. I may have even said this out loud, in which one red-dress guy blinked slowly and indifferently in response. Then we remembered there was an incredible amount of beer sitting at our feet and we laughed and laughed. One celebratory PBR and several hi-fives later and we were clipping down the path again, stepping briefly to the side as an impressive fleet of on-coming runners feted in red dresses stormed right on by.

Related Posts:

 - Not Seen on Treadmills - Busch Beer in Taiwan

 - New Belgium Brewery and Their Awesome Beer

 - Drink Beer, Support Local Trails

Fat Man

Dawn patrol with Tesuque Peak and day break

I'm only now emerging from a long dark spring. It's almost May actually, I don't know how many people know that. And it's all very bright outside. From the sun.

On the tail end of my exile I found a few precious hours to get out on my skis on Easter weekend. It was lovely though it was also the last 36hrs of the ski year which can be inherently sad.

An eclipse greets me on the first morning. Seriously, the moon was in fucking eclipse as I drove up to the basin and started my laps. Strangely, this happened a few years prior and I was literally doing the same thing.

Then after camping in front of a computer for twelve weeks straight (literally seven days a week for most of that), I got out on the bike and onto the Winsor and a funny thing happened. Completely not predictable in any way. I can assure you there was less smiling on my part.




Turns out, I'm fat. I'll need to lean on my friend Strava to get this straight.

Related Posts:
 - Lunar Eclipse at Dawn
 - Drink Beer - Support Local Trails
 - Last day of the Ski Year - 2011

Adventure on the Winsor Trail

Winsor Meadows

Had an interesting outing on the mountain bike this summer. Up at the crack of dawn with the plan of motoring up Winsor for the first time this year. Arrived at the Chamisa trailhead, rockin’ some Aerosmith (great band or best band?)*, when it became clear that a key piece of equipment didn't make the trip - my mtb shoes. Generally speaking, this wouldn't be a huge deal if I had been wearing shoes of some other type, however this was not the case. No, I had left the house wearing flip-flops for some strange reason. Effin’ flip-flops. FLIP-FLOPPPSSS!! [KAHHHNN!!] Desperation and denial stabbed at my mind: Can there be any imagined scenario in which Aerosmith wears flip-flops? No. fuck no. Not one. Well, there’s a lesson there. 

This is how this works - I have a sleeping 2yr old at home, so I have a short window at the break of dawn to run/ride/(ski sometimes) or, with searing remorse and regret I can rollover and go back to sleep. This being the case, driving back into town to get my shoes meant no long workout and probably no ride till the following weekend. An hour of running would have to replace cycling the Winsor as option A, and my mind that day was not calibrated toward running it was geared-up for cruising in the mountains on the summer’s first ride along the creek up the Winsor. 

So this happened…  >>>

There is literally a skull on my sock and a bell on my handlebars

Can’t possibly be the first time this has ever happened to someone heading out for a ride, am I right? This must happen all the time! How do folks generally resolve this kind of problem do you suppose? I reasoned that they probably just hope for the best, ignore the discomfort of missing gear, and ride - very carefully keeping an eye on toe-crushing rocks and tree branches. A very real danger that I'd simply never considered since it would otherwise be reckless to ride Chamisa/Winsor in open-toed shoes. (Sidenote: I have biked around at a party shoeless before. This is such a bad idea. I cannot caution strenuously enough how this should not be tried). 

Below Pacheco Canyon

Back to the current shady cycling story...Aside from potentially seriously injuring myself, my secondary concern was the possible embarrassment of seeing people see me riding along like a jagger in socks and flip-flops. Not a real danger, I calculated. Nobody’s going to be out this early on the middle stretches of Winsor. Wrong. I saw 23 people that morning [KAHHHNN!!]. 15 cyclists, 6 hikers including a woman who stopped me to ask if there was water up-trail for her dog, and 2 runners. I’m certain of this figure because I counted each one, my face screwed-up in a sideways cringe of awkwardness at each addition. 

It all worked out for me in the end, although I couldn't handle the steep climbing that leads up to NORSKI. I did see two ptarmigan (grouse) in one section, got too excited then veered off trail crashing into some bushes. There were also a few slips in technical sections where I pedaled out of my flop and had to avoid the pedal-whip-into-the-shin hazard. A very acceptable level of harm, all things considered. And it all makes for a good story as well as an important takeaway to share with others - that a cavalier attitude toward footwear has the potential to ruin your entire week. You’re welcome.

Old crossing at Bear Wallow, now much improved

Guerrilla-built drop above Pacheco. Since removed by the NFS

Firecracker penstemon

* I kid, i kid. Zeppelin will always be the best band, Halen a distant second.

Related Posts:

 - Trail Running on Winsor

 - Chamisa Trail
 - Scouting NM Running Trails by Plane

Gunning for a Big December

Dorothy Stewart Trail and the Sangres in morning light

Strava tells me that my running mileage for the year is at a disappointing 409mi. The good news is that I have five weeks to adjust this total. I've come up just short of 500mi in both of the last two years. This is humiliating enough to admit without adding a third year and 50% more failure to the total. Gotta bring it home with 20mi weeks in December. A pathetic goal but every journey begins with the first step.

Mini-Dirt running with Waltz and
mini-Waltz

I opted toward a long mtb ride yesterday morning rather than the annual Turkey Trot, but later I brought the little one out to the race (Atalaya) thinking he'd enjoy all the activity. Well, mini-me went crazy with the running. I'd peg his morning running at close to 2mi in random loops, back-and-forths, and roughly half of the Kids 1K race. He got away from me once so that he could run through the finishing chute. He got away from me a second time which prompted an abrupt announcement to my friends, "Shit, I lost the 2-year old". I found him though. He was running. The little fella actually cried later on our walk to the truck because 'I wouldn't let him run'.


Related Posts:
 - Mileage: How Much is Not Enough
 - Year in Review 2010

Rogue Accountants

Chama River - few hundred yards south
of the CO/NM border

So I put up a new personal record this week that may stand unbroken for years to come.

I spent an evening during the holiday weekend outdoorsing, camping, and emptying a few barley-pops with another CPA. In an uncanny chain of events I got out later in the week for some mtb on Dale Ball with another friend of mine, visiting from out of town, who also happens to be an accountant.

Three accountants, doing dope stuff, all in the same week. A fleetingly rare occurrence, duly documented for the memory banks.

Easter Pilgrimage - As Interpreted by Endurance Athletes

El Santuario de Chimayo

Dwell in Santa Fe or the northern Rio Grande Valley long enough and one will soon associate Holy Week and the coming of Spring with the Easter pilgrimage of the faithful to the holy Santuario de Chimayo. It's a lovely custom - serving as a marker of seasons, as a nod to our rich local culture and the old ways and a tight connection to the land around us, and as a personal affirmation of faith and re-birth.

For most that choose to undertake the pilgrimage, the trek to El Santuario begins just north of Pojoaque. From here the road to Chimayo is maybe 14 miles. The more adventurous (often those seeking a greater level of devotion or religious piety) will begin closer to Santa Fe, leaving Thursday evening and walking through the night. Some literally bare crosses that they've fashioned together for their journey. Though less common, solitary pilgrims can be seen earlier in the week making the journey north along I-25 from places as far south as Bernalillo. A remarkable image of humility and grace.

Early morning, along the ditches of the Rio Grande

East near Cochiti and Tetilla

Now these are long stretches to cross on foot. Which is really the point of it all I suppose, to stretch oneself and bend the mind to look within. When studying the longer routes though, much of it breaks down to just walking for miles along the shoulder of a trafficked highway. There is little here to inspire, and romantic images of the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela are quickly retired.

But this is where a few big-mile guys from these parts approached the Santuario pilgrimage with a new vision. Why not run it? An all day trek from Santa Fe is then shortened to several hours. If it's viewed as a run, why not add a few miles so it can be run off-road? And the leap-of-logic coup de grace - if we're going to run from Santa Fe why not just run it all the way in from Albuquerque?

And that's what they did. Friends Espo and Houghton routed a course from the north valley of Albuquerque along the ditches and Indian Service Roads, up and over La Bajada and the path of the Camino Real, across the Caja del Rio, then east along the Rio Tesuque in Jacona and up the into the foothills of Nambe, finally turning north once more through the ghostly barrancas to the Santuario.

Marc framed by the Jemez skyline

Kris stands on the La Bajada cliff bands, Sandia skyline

I know all of this first-hand because I was asked to help pace them in from Nambe, at the very end of their twenty-two hour 92 mile pilgrimage. My aid wasn't pacing in a literal sense, but rather as mental company to ease the temptation for them to quit. Houghton had actually blown-up in the Caja and had to abandon at 70 miles. Friends met them near Jacona and helped guide Espo up to Nambe where we joined and ran through the night into Chimayo. It was midnight, a partial moon was lifting over the mountains, and as we moved along we passed walkers that had come out to make their journey after finishing a full day of work. We turned and entered the gate into the Santuario at 1:30am. It was stunningly beautiful, and remains so in memory three years later. Quite the experience. I think of it often this time of year and am very satisfied to have finally made a story of it.

The Nambe Barrancas and the last segment to El Santuario

random shot of Espo looking like a badass

Marc had no visible reaction when entering the Santuario. The guy was well past drained and had been for hours. He later told me he wasn't quite right for several weeks afterward, the experience perhaps etching itself permanently into his being. Houghton, distraught that he couldn't complete the pilgrimage with his friend, returned (from Albuquerque) the following day to walk out the remaining 22 miles of footsteps. And the ancient rewards of the pilgrim and the theme of the Easter season are replayed. And what was once aged and old...becomes new once again.

Related Posts:
   Espo's original run-report here
 - La Luz Trail Run Recap - 2013
 - Fair Chase, Antelope Hunting on Foot
 - Armijo Runs to an Olympic Trials Qualifier


View Santuario de Chimayo Pilgramage - NM in a larger map

Pipped at the (By)Line

A cool writeup on New Mexican milers was published yesterday over at BringBacktheMile.com. These guys do a stand-up job of promoting track via its most exciting race. They've compiled lists of all the U.S. sub-four milers; records lists; chronological and progression lists; and now lists by state.

What made the New Mexico writeup so rad was that it was my work - highlighting Aragon, Young, Maas, Krummenacker, and McNiff. Got me fired-up to see these guys get the spotlight on a more heavily trafficked corner of the web. The writeup also outlined the history and difficulties of running a sub-four mile on New Mexico soil, drawing from another post I penned just a few months ago. A shame that the article didn't link directly to my writing since I had layered in all kinds of additional detail and anecdotes and lists to ramp things up to Defcon-1 level of cool.

The story got attention, and tweets and emailed links and shares and pluses - very rewarding. All except for one glaring error right at the end of thing:

My name is not Ben.



Related Posts:
 - New Mexico's Four Minute Milers
 - Sub Four Mile at Altitude
 - The Tough Guy List

The Passing of a Friend

Close friend of mine checked out three weeks back. A mishap in the mountains ended his days. He was a ski patrolman up at Wolf Creek, an erstwhile Durango river guide who boated the Grand Canyon, well traveled, very well read, a highway man with few possessions who lived a helluva an admirable life. We had countless adventures together over the years including my first camping trip and first river trip. My first real river trip anyways. Walked the butterfly forests of Mexico together after picking him up on the side of the road in the mountains outside Mexico City.

I had never considered a trip up to Durango or southwest Colorado to be anything other than an anxiously anticipated adventure, but for now at least there is a dark sense of loss. Can't see how a visit will quite be the same again. Sutt is off to bigger and better things on the other side I suppose. It is a somber and unwelcome day when one must say goodbye to an old friend.

Patrolman Sutt

Capitán Sutt

Mileage: How Much is not Enough?

Holiday miles

I'm always keenly aware when I haven't been getting outside regularly because my body seems to age an extra five years and my energy levels tank. Negative feedback loops take hold. A review of my activity logs only confirms this slide in fitness. When I downloaded my end-of-year mileage last week (while smackin' through a box of Christmas cookies, natch) I wasn't happy with the year I'd rung up. Witness the falloff:

2010	Miles		2011	Miles		2012	Miles		2013	Miles
Run	1539		Run	1050		Run	442		Run	481
Bike	316		Bike	1677		Bike	1213		Bike	504
Total Hrs:	262hrs		Total Hrs:	361hrs		Total Hrs:	193hrs		Total Hrs:	129hrs

I couldn't even hump it over the 500mi mark at year end due to an ill-timed tweak in my achilles. What have I become? It appears I've become a marshmallow (or maybe a box of cookies), that's what.

The mileage over the last four years tell a story - Years 2010 and '11 were outliers since I was training for and running marathons. The marathon in 2010 was completed much faster than in 2011, for obvious reasons. In 2011 I upgraded my mountain bike to awesome, then bombed through 3000 miles of trails over the next eighteen months. This year's less-than-impressive totals are a reflection of a busy life, the somewhat unhealthy result of months focused on professional exams and the addition of a smiling baby boy around the house, one who prefers to be ridiculously cute all the time then to being buckled into a running stroller.

Digging into the numbers is a disappointing exercise: 500 miles a year (or 481 without the rounding) is not a lot. This is ten miles a week or just two measly runs a week. Hardly even running really, that's glorified jogging. If you can't even find the time to get out and do what you enjoy then you're just too busy - some number of extracurriculars will need to be cut from my current schedule to correct this. The broader metric is even more convincing: 129 hours in one year - which includes ski outings, snowshoeing, swimming, etc. - is less than three hours a week. That is not enough and I know this even without parsing numbers in a log because I just generally feel like a schlub. When the beer doesn't taste as good as it used to, it's because of a drift toward schlub.

Holiday aesthetic

So there's the outline of my new year's goals and resolutions, supported by numbers to better measure my progress. Does your view of the new year include finding time to do more of what you enjoy and less of the path of marshmallow? Hopefully so. And we will raise a cheer to our new found ways as the year fades to winter once again.

Related Posts:
 - New Years in the Sierras: 2012
 - New Years above Taos: 2011
 - Year in Review: 2010

Thanksgiving Power Rankings

Do you see? All the lights!?

Four day weekends are highly under-rated. I thoroughly enjoyed mine and will now rank all the marvelous stuff that happens when work is not on the calendar:

1. Green chile turkey stuffing
2. Cranberry sauce with candied orange
3. Christmas lights on the Plaza
4. Rosemary mashed potatoes
5. Early morning mtb on a snowy Rail Trail
6. Collecting firewood with the toddler
7. Huevos rancheros with friends
8. Some Megan McCarthy cop movie that was hilarious
9. Planning a winter yurt trip
10. Oatmeal cookies

Fever of Unknown Origin

Interesting story about a different kind of suffering:

Came down with a bad fever earlier this month. It sorta blinked in and out for a couple days, made me have to scratch my start for Big Tesuque which was upsetting. By day five I was in the ER certain that I had the plague. They told me I was badly dehydrated.

Later that week I was back in the hospital for a battery of blood tests. All came back negative, including influenza. In fact, according to every test they ran I was in perfect health except for my temperature which had spiked over 104deg. They packed ice bags on me and found me a room for the evening.

Apparently you treat an illness caused by virus with advil and ice packs, which is just as bad as it sounds. I had the Desert Babe administering the advil and thermometer and ice, so that was a big plus. Silver lining in the ordeal was that what I had wasn't contagious. The fever and virus ran its course and my white blood cells eventually reigned supreme. End tally was three weeks of lying in bed half-mad with a raging illness thinking about how I could badly use a life insurance policy. Good times.

High Desert Dirt Turns Three

This week is the third anniversary of the writing-mapping-sporting project we hastily named HighDesertDirt. Started it up September 30, 2010 as a procrastinating diversion from CPA study work. At the time I had been inspired by a few online posts I'd come across written by Jacob Waltz over at santafetrailrunner (now on hiatus). Turns out there were other folks on the trails.

'I could do that', I thought.

'I could write dozens of stories about where I run and what I see. With a few interesting writeups this might even net me the occasional free beer!' There was little to no downside to this idea.

So I logged in and started writing about trails and beer and running, sometimes biking, other times skiing. Readers seemed to like the maps, so I started mapping a lot of the places I'd adventure to (not the super-secret stuff though). Race reports were (and continue to be) the most popular content so I find room for that and link it back to other content. I've met loads of interesting like-minded people, learned to code in html, found Twitter, and now see the Matrix of linked outdoors interest in Santa Fe. The complimentary beer may never materialize, but far better, I had the chance to meet Tony Sandoval, a huge hero of mine. And one writeup even led to a letter and signed photo that arrived from Joan Benoit, frea...king...Joan...ie...Ben...oit. The beer equivalent of this is much more than I could drink.

A very rewarding experience so far. There are many more stories and trails out there. Gotta get out and get after it.

FIRST

High in the Indian Peaks, CO

Been reading too many local trail blogs and wondering why i don't start one of my own.  Sometimes it seems disrespectful to an awesome trail or an awesome day out if it's just kept to oneself rather than passed around and shared.  Here's hoping that will be less of a problem from here on out.