Just a quick note: I'm borrowing the title of my post here from a great This American Life episode.

Work has kept me incredibly busy lately. Though I've been (promoted?) to Director of Marketing, I still have many of the same duties at work as I did before. I'm not going to go on about work here, but we have a lot of new equipment that has had me generating loads of promotional material for it as well as learning how to operate some of it. In the last four weeks I probably skipped about a dozen lunches which mean I missed numberous opportunities to go for my lunch time slogs. I'm hoping (it's really more like praying) most of that is behind me now.

What I want to talk about most is the OVERWHELMING amount of encouragement I've received from complete strangers. Well, actually, I'll let them tell you. Here's email from a couple of people I met on the Oklahoma River Trails.



And this one,



I was almost moved to tears to read such kind sentiments. Knowing that I might inspire someone to try climbing a mountain like Rainier is an awesome feeling. And having someone who spent a few minutes to find out what you're doing only to turn around and volunteer to hike up Mt. Scott with me as I drag my tire is about as good as it gets!

Say what you want about the "Fly Over" states, but I wouldn't trade the people here for the world!

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.

Now, about that tire. A few months back when Alpine Ascents had its Denali cybercast up and they were running expeditions on the mountain, the third team that flew onto the mountain named itself "Brownie and the Legal Limit" (more about names later). When the team did their carry up from camp 2 to camp 3, the team leaders made this comment on their cybercast:

"Kick (which I believe should have been Rich) says thanks to his wife for making him drag the tire up the mountain. He said it really helped him make it up today." Most people don't know much about the day-to-day process of climbing a big ass mountain, so it may come as a surprise to you to learn that a person must drag a sled laden with about 100 pounds of equipment behind you while wearing a 50 lb. backpack. I don't know about you but I'm not yet ready to do this day in,day out, much less at 16,500 ft. above sea level.

But this gave me the idea to actually drag a tire around the 1.25 mile long path at a nearby park in Edmond where I work. I have been running and walking in this park now for about 2 years and it's a wonderful place to spend your lunchtime. Why not expand my repertoire of noon-hour self-flagellation to include tire dragging? So I decided to give it a try.



First thing was to get a tire. This proved pretty easy. All I had to do was ask around at work. It seems everyone has an unwanted tire they'd happily give you. A coworker brought me a good-sized tire. I then went to my local Lowe's store and bought the riggings, which consisted of 2 eyebolts, some washers and nuts, 3 cheap little carabiners and some rope. To attach this odd contraption to me, I used a retired climbing harness and cut the leggings off of it. I collected all of this together in one spot (my garage), grabbed a power drill and bada bing, bada bang, I'm ready to start dragging a tire.

With 30 days of 100 plus degree weather over the last two months my daily run in the park might have appeared to be more like an exercise in masochism than a practice of physical improvement. My run in the park today was made so much better by the beautiful 71 degree noon time temp. Today I was able to double my average summer mileage, by the simple reduction in temperature. I don't know how simple it is or isn't, but I was loving it none the less.

The worst part of training during the summer months is the heat. I don't get tired so much as hot. And after about 15 minutes of running in 106° heat my head is pounding and I start to see double. My clothes are literally dripping with sweat as am I. My mouth is so dry from breathing that I dare not try to swallow for fear of choking on the tissue as it sticks to itself in the back of my throat. By the time I get back to work from my hour long jaunt outside I'm little more than a specter of the person I was before I left.

I'm often warned about being outside in the brutal Oklahoma summers, by both my wife and coworkers. But the regularity of workouts is without rhythm. For instance, yesterday Katie called me at 11:00am and asked if we could meet for lunch, which I was more than happy to do. But afterwards I wondered if I am putting my ability to climb Denali and my life at risk by not having gone running. After all the number of days I have to train for this climb are finite. And as far as I know there is no prohibition on sushi in the works for Oklahoma. That said it was a good lunch and I always enjoy time with Katie.

So this brings me to the decision I've made. I will do some form of training every day in between now and the time I get on the plane for Alaska. Today I ran at lunch. Tomorrow I will drag my tire around the park (more about this later). And then a trip to the gym. And so on and so forth. Until I am climbing up into the thin air of North America's highest mountain.