With my knee feeling better yesterday I went for my noontime run. I was a little apprehensive as I did my stretches, thinking I might get a quarter mile or so only to have the pain return 10 fold. But that never happened. With the wonderfully fall-like temps we're having, I've been able to gradually increase my mileage. Yesterday was no exception. I hit the three-mile mark. I haven't run three miles since I quit training for Mt. Rainier.

Once I had gone three quarters of a mile, I knew I could at least pull off the first lap. As I started up the hills on the second lap, I was a little surprised to discover I still felt pretty good. Finishing up my second lap (2.5 miles), I decided to go for an extra quarter mile. Still feeling good, I decided to continue back to the track start for 3 miles. It was a great feeling. Soon (I hope) I should be able to do a 5K run if I want. That would be pretty nice.

The park I run in during my lunch is 1.25 miles long. It's also one of the more hilly areas of this part of the metro area, with lots of little hills and valleys.

Today I brought one of my backpacks to work with me and stuffed it full of packing peanuts and four 5-pound bags of rice. I wore this while dragging my tire. I could only make one lap around the park this way. Eventually I will be dragging a tire loaded with an additional 20 pounds while wearing a 50-pound pack. Sounds like some kind of torture, doesn't it? Additionally, I plan to be able to make 2 laps (or 2.5 miles) in about 40 minutes while wearing these modern torture devices.

I didn't go work out Thursday. Instead I spent the evening with a guy named Mo who talked a lot about the Toyota Prius (more about that in a second). Friday night I didn't work out because Katie, Nanda, and I made our way to the Zoo Amphitheater here in OKC to see one of our favorite local bands, The Flaming Lips. After standing in one spot for five hours, my left knee began to ache a little. Just ever so slightly. Saturday I didn't work out either. I worked at Yukon Recycles for three hours, and then went to the church to help out on some maintenance projects. Then lastly I went with Katie to pick up her new Prius. At the end of the evening last night I realized the pain was still there.



Have I worked out today? No. While at church service this morning I noticed my left knee hurting yet again. But it's only noticeable when nothing else is distracting me from thinking about it. Of course I'm not positive but I believe this is due to the concert Friday night. My hope is that the pain (though slight) will be gone by Monday around noon so I can go jogging and take advantage of the cool weather. I need to get back into the gym soon too. My plan is to begin to hit the gym every day now with alternating days of weight training and cardio training. All of this, of course, is contingent on my knee feeling just fine.

But boy was that concert great. During the opening number, Katie turned to me and yelled, "It's so pretty!" I laughed, because just 20 or 30 seconds beforehand I had been thinking the exact same thing to myself. I think the Flaming Lips put on the most visually interesting show I've ever been to. We saw them in 2003 at the OKC Coca Cola Center and were just blown away. This show was equally as good. If you've never been to see them, make an effort to rectify that. You won't be sorry.



On a side note, today Katie and I watched the documentary "Fearless Freaks" about the band, and couldn't help but notice that the filmmaker shows the street signs of the intersection where lead singer Wayne Cayne lives. And it is exactly 1.72 miles from our house here in OKC. I don't know why it strikes me as so weird that a famous rock musician should live in an area of town just 4 minutes from me. And that the house that he lives in is in what almost everyone I know would call a bad part of town. On our way to Katie's grandmothers for dinner this evening we decided to do a drive-by viewing. And there in the middle of the street, with no guard dogs, or privacy fence is Wayne's house, quiet and simple and small.

We had a little quiet moment in the car a little after that and I thought to myself. "Wow! I have more respect for this guy than any other famous person I can think of at the moment." That feeling hasn't worn off.

As I went through the nightmarish hallways of America's public schools, I quickly learned that different was not only bad, but would in short order get you hurt. For the most part this deterred me little, and I continued to fly my freak flag for all it was worth and for all to see. But the older I got, the more I realized some of the benefits of looking and talking like everyone else. For instance, conformity pays better than nonconformity. People with the cute and cuddly phrase "Fuck you!" tattooed on their foreheads may find that minimum wage isn't easy to come by. On the other hand those who can competently swing a golf club while wearing business casual clothing are occasionally in positions of power with good pay. I would argue that among the top ten percent of wage earners in the US almost none of them have "Fuck you!" tattooed on their foreheads.

With the lessons of conformity beaten into me (literally), I've been afraid to look up from the path as I make my way around the park dragging my tire. Fearing I might see the confused face of Gina Schmitt from 8th grade glaring at me for thinking tires were in fashion, I keep my gaze fixed on the pavement. Or what if a 12-year-old Jimmy Klutz was standing just off the trail waiting to pound my face to a bloody pulp for disgusting him with my pathetic attempt to get into shape. Suffice it to say: I've been ashamed of my tire-dragging. Ashamed of being different from everyone else jogging along the same track in their corporately branded exercise attire. But as was the case in Jr. High, I have been persevering, swallowing my pride, and dragging my filthy dirty tire. Brandishing my mark of Cain for all to witness.



Today as I started my tire-towing torrent, I caught sight of a couple of women who looked to be cutting across my path. Looking up quickly to gage my speed against theirs to ensure their insults would be out of earshot, one of the women made eye contact with me, smiled and gave me a thumbs up. The cool thing, she looked like she would have been popular in school to boot. I smiled in response and gave a slight backward jerk of my head as though to say, "Sup."

As I passed the duck pond a little later, I caught sight of a guy walking. He wasn't racing, he wasn't sauntering, he was keeping a nice even pace. I decided I wasn't going to lose sight of him for the remainder of my tow. It wasn't easy. At one point I simply couldn't do it any longer. I was breathing so hard drool began to run from my chin. How's that for looking like a geek? I paused, wiped the spittle from my chin, took a few deep breaths and went back to it making up the lost time on a downhill section of the path. I never lost sight of the guy. At the end I went to put the tire in my car and do a tire-free lap. To my embarrassment the guy went to the parking lot too. He stopped to wait on me. I was a little scared pulling up even with him. "Now that's impressive!", he said. "Are you training for something?"

I was blown away! And as I wiped the slobber from my chin, I babbled some nonsense about climbing a big mountain in Alaska. He complimented my pace at which point I said I was just trying to keep up with him. We both said our good byes and I loaded the tire into the back of the Honda.

I belong to a gym in Oklahoma City... Oh what the hell! I'm a member at All American Fitness and Racquet Ball. The thing with the stairmasters is that when I joined the gym they had six of them. During a short hiatus of working out, one of them disappeared. Which as I'm sure you know leaves five. But in the last few months two of them have become broken. So if you're keeping track, that leaves three. Three stairmasters for the entire membership of the gym to share. This means that on any given day, when I pull into good ol' All American at about 5:30pm, I can expect all three of the machines to be occupied.

Not to mention that there is a 20 minute limit for occupying one of the surviving machines. I've tried not to violate this rule out of common courtesy. I know that this is not the case with many of the individuals who share my desire for some sweat time on the coveted steppers. I've witnessed one woman in particular who will set the stair master to manual and go on it until it suits her fancy to dismount from it.

Anyway, this has had me thinking about how I can accommodate my training program's hill climbing requirements while living in "Flatland" Oklahoma. I considered purchasing a used stepper to stick out in the garage so I can go on it without concern. Only, used steppers are about as prevalent as dodo birds. I looked into buying a new one, only they cost about as much as my trip up Denali will. Forty two hundred at a local retailer.

But I think I may have found an alternative. I took my car to have the oil changed this weekend and decided to go get breakfast while it was being serviced. This meant I would go past a local mall. I decided to see if the doors were open at that early hour, knowing that many such establishments allow the nation's grandparents to enter and become Mall Walkers. The doors were open as expected and, as I passed through the mall, I noticed that the escalators were on. I was halfway out of the mall when I realized I could hop on the down escalator facing up and do a stair-masterish workout without a line or a 20 minute time limit. Provided Mall Security doesn't run me off.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Alpine Ascents teams on Denali give themselves names like "The Frozen Chosen," "Team Roadkill," or "Mambo Mafia." Just a quick note: All of the above are real names taken on by Alpine Ascents teams; the last is from a team that climbed Kilimanjaro this summer. I don't know how the tradition got started but I know that taking on a "trail name" is nothing new. People have been doing this on the Appalachian Trail (AT) for decades.

This brings me to my own failed bid to thru-hike all 2,168 miles of the AT. In 2000 I found myself jobless, recently jilted, and a little jaded. So I decided, "This is the perfect time to try to thru-hike the AT." That is, to start at the beginning in Georgia and continually hike until I reached the end of the trail in Maine. That April my dad drove me to Amicalola Falls State Park, Georgia.

I'd done a tone of reading about the trail, the hikers and "trail life" in general. I knew that thru-hikers eventually adopted trail names, and this was one of the ideas that seemed really good to me. I would become someone else for a while. A new person, with a new name. Many people come to the trailhead with a name already picked out. One of the people I met did just this. He had taken on the personification of Grasshopper. I asked him how he had come up with the name and he explained that it was a nickname given to him by a friend. Others had long established names. OAB was one such hiker. OAB was short for "One Armed Bandit." He'd had a stroke many years before and it had left his left side paralyzed. But as soon as I learned about the tradition of "Trail Names" I knew that the truest and most meaningful names had been given. Like Little Green Turtle. He earned his name for wearing a bright green back pack, being short in stature and hiking the trail very slowly. I wanted to have my name given to me. I wanted to earn it.

Now I've been hiking and camping since 1992 and had put in some serious miles. I had a Colorado 14er under my belt when I went to Georgia. And I'd been above tree line on more mountains than the average person can name. But the endless up and downs of the Georgia section of the AT began to do a number on my knees. Mind you I'd never had any problems with my knees before, so this came as something of a shock to me. After a week of the endless ups and downs, I had knees the size of softballs and a gimpy walk to match.

It was then that OAB brought up the fact that I hadn't picked out a name yet, and suggested Festus. You know, the character from the TV show Gunsmoke who had a gimpy walk of his own. Only I didn't hear him very well and replied in shock and confusion, "Fester?" When the laughing and jeering ended, I was Fester.