"I'm not alone"

"I wish I was / 'cause then I'd know / I was down because ..."

What a day. Not much on the streets but snow -- very pretty snow, but just snow -- and camera troubles make for a frustrating run. I guess you get what you pay for. I paid $35 for a faux Flip video camera and it's a little finicky. The on/off button has a 3-second delay (you have to hold it at least that long for the camera to power on or shut off. And sometimes it just won't power on. Maybe the batteries are low. Maybe it's just cheap. Glad I didn't pay the $90 list price. Not to settle for thwarting me with power problems, the darned U-Video camera decided to not save any of the stills I captured today. Not to fear, I returned with my good digital camera and retook the images I wanted.

What do you do when the street ends? Well,
some folks make tracks off-road!

That is until I dropped the thing in the snow! Yeah, I stopped to photograph a sign I had shot with the U-Video and when I removed my glove for a better contact with the shutter button, the lanyard slipped off my wrist and the Nikon went into the soft snow. I quickly retrieved it and did my best to wipe off the wet stuff. I kept it powered on during the ride home so as to minimize moisture infiltration. Gave it a good wipe-down and lens-cleaning when I got inside and left it lens open on the register for a couple of air cycles to ensure it got dry. I think it's gonna be OK.

Anyway, the leg/butt/hip felt pretty good today. It's not perfect, but I can run. That feels good. I gained weight and felt crummy in the week without exercise. It dawned on me this morning, though, that I could have kept doing sit-ups even while I wasn't in the running regimen. D'Oh!

Energy drain?

So there it is. Other than trouble, a rather uneventful run. It was beautiful, though. Snow was falling; big, white, soft, pretty flakes. Like a moving picture postcard a la Harry Potter. I shot some video of the sun sparkling on the fallen snow, which I'll try to post later. The only other thing that caught my eye was the variety of street signs I ran past. (I almost wrote "ran into," in the colloquial sense, but I didn't want anyone to think I actually ran into a sign.) OK, so that reminds me of a story from my trip to Sweden in 2004. On a drive around town with my first host, Bobby Hommerberg, we were winding through a park and came upon a runner steadying himself against a lamp post as he stretched his hamstrings. Bobby felt compelled to defend his countryman by explanation: "He's exercising. I don't want you to think all Swedes go around f***ing lamp posts." What a riot.

Interesting juxtaposition.

Today's Stats

Temp: 16 degrees F

Distance: 4.3 miles

Treasure: 3 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

Fire on the Mountain - Rob Thomas

... More trouble. iPod went silent. When I checked, it had completed shuffling through all 409 songs in memory, so I hit shuffle again to start over. Trouble is, that then deleted the play history. Thus all I know is the first and last song today. C'est la vie.

Something's Missing - John Mayer

Why Ain't I Running?

Well, Garth, it's pretty simple: I'm sore. Hence no run today and no blog post until now. I've had a pulled glute or groin or something around the right hip/upper thigh for a few days and while I ran Monday and Wednesday, hoping the exercise might stretch out whatever was paining me, today I recalled the advice I read last week about listening to your pain (forget that old "No pain, no gain" mantra).

But why should a day off the streets stop me from writing? It shouldn't, so here I am. Of course without a run and without any lost and found to comment on, I'm a bit at a loss for words. How about biking? Even with muscle strains I manage to ride to work every day. It is my preferred mode of transportation. Winter riding is new for me, though. I started last year. Actually my first cold weather ride happened about six years ago when we were short a vehicle after I ruined my Toyota engine by running it out of oil. D'Oh!

Not wanting to inconvenience my wife with a rude awakening at 4 a.m. to drive me to work on a frigid January morn, I bundled up in long johns, Broncos jacket, scarf, hat and gloves and braved the cold, snow and ice. It was about 16 degrees that morning. I arrived at the railroad crossing on North Prairie Street and the gates were down. Not only that, but the blasted train wasn't moving. I waited. And waited. And I waited some more. Finally realizing I couldn't outlast the locomotive in this standoff, I started pedaling in hopes of finding an open crossing. About eight blocks east I finally made it across at Henderson Street. Then it was backpedaling, so to speak, another eight blocks to Prairie and then to The Register-Mail.

Not quite the same effect as the driving shot, but it works.

That wasn't exactly my idea of a fun morning commute. Now, however, I relish the peace of a snowy, early morning or late night ride. Under our new morning paper schedule I don't do the morning ride, though I did last winter. Still, the quiet of the dark, the skisshhh of fresh snow under bike tires is about the same at night, so I still can enjoy the solitude of winter biking. And finally I've managed to capture somewhat of a self-portrait in the saddle, as requested by my friend Jane after I used a self-portrait from behind the wheel of my car driving home from Macomb for my Facebook profile pic.


iTunes Playlist (shuffle)
Here's what I've been listening to while writing tonight:
Desire - U2
Take a Chance With Me - Roxy Music
Detox Mansion - Warren Zevon
Holiday - Madonna
Hit Somebody! (Hockey Song) - Warren Zevon
Yet Another Movie - Pink Floyd

When the night has come

"And the land is dark / And the moon is the only light we'll see."

Even a half moon on a cloudy night is amazingly bright when the ground is covered in snow. So it was at 2:45 this morning when I headed out. Why was I running at quarter to 3 in the morning in the middle of winter? Not sure I can answer that adequately. This much I know: Wednesday is a run day; I was awake, having watched "1408" for the fourth time in the past six months; and, to quote my old college buddy Les Plume, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

I figured I could run and then hit the hay rather than vice versa. Somehow that seemed a better plan than sleeping then running. Can't explain it.

The Wells Fargo drive-thru on North Prairie
Street shines brightly in the night. Why?

 The down side is that conditions and circumstances led me to resign myself to a straight run -- no photos, no video, no picking up trash; I didn't even look for stuff. I just ran. It was cold and night and I just wanted to get it done. The up side? Virtually no traffic. I was passed by maybe three vehicles, even counting the stretch of Henderson Street, one of Galesburg's busiest thoroughfares. That was really nice. I'm sure the few drivers who saw me, though, were puzzled by the appearance of a runner in the night.

For lack of anything to post from the run, I'll share some phone photos shot from my bike the past few nights. A couple kind of contradict today's opening lyrics, but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

The Holiday Inn Express is where my friend
Chris stayed when he would come to town.
The purple lights make me think of him, too,
because his middle school nickname was
"Purple," I think because he wore it a lot.

Today's Stats

Temp: 16 degrees F

Distance: 4.65 miles

Weekly Total: 10.15 miles

Treasure: Nothing but peace.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

Black and White People - Matchbox Twenty

I Don't Wanna - The Call

Anything But Ordinary - Avril Lavigne

Hold On To The Nights - Richard Marx

Oh Girl - Paul Young

Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd

Love Song For No One (live) - John Mayer

Interlude No. 1/Play It All Night Long - Warren Zevon

Hung Up On You - Fountains of Wayne

Ghost Train - Counting Crows

No Better Place - Fountains of Wayne

Over the river and through the woods

... To Grandmother's house we go.

The river was Cedar Fork, there were no woods, just train tracks, and the we was me and my legs. But we did see Grandmother's house today. I headed south for the first time. It wasn't really planned, but when I saw the past due  water/sewer/refuse bill on the kitchen table, I figured I could drop it off at City Hall during my run, even though I'll be biking downtown later for work. You know what they say about variety and spice and all that.

Just a few blocks north of my grandparents' former home on South Seminary Street lie the BNSF yards. Coming out of the yards are tracks seemingly in all directions, so the streets nearby are cut repeatedly with rails. It's confusing in a couple of places because of split lines. The untrained eye doesn't know if a train is headed toward the crossing to the left and curving off on the more direct northern line. Of course it was just my luck that the train was taking the left track.

I ran in place for a couple of minutes but I always feel like an idiot doing that, especially when there are people in cars watching, so I headed around the block. But it was a long, slow freight, so I continued east on Knox Street to Day, then south to Third Street (farther west on that little street sits the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg). Then I zigged down Chambers and zagged along Fifth to Seminary. Across the street, just a couple houses south of the intersection stood the house I once knew so well.

My sister and I would stay there when our parents went off on motorcycle trips in the summer. I would sneak into my grandparents' bedroom and stare longingly at the beautiful guns in the cabinet he made. I mowed the lawn and the neighbor's yard with my grandpa (he always let me drive the riding mower while he trimmed with an old Lawnboy). We did Thanksgiving there and Christmas and watched "Hee-Haw" every week. My wife and I lived there for four months when we moved back to town, before we found a house of our own (with the help of my parents).

Stairway to Heaven? "You shall not pass!" 

When I first started at The Register-Mail, my dad and I would meet at Grandma and Grandpa's every Thursday for lunch: pancakes, meat loaf, hash and eggs, spam and mac 'n cheese, vegetable beef soup ... sometimes graham crackers with frosting for dessert, but always cookies. Grandma wisely and lovingly kept the spinning corner cupboard well-stocked with a variety of cookies: sugar cookies, fig Newtons, chocolate chip, Oreos, all stored in coffee cans with tight-fitting plastic lids to seal in the freshness and ward off staleness, though that was rarely a serious threat given my appetite for cookies.

Grandma and Grandpa moved to the nursing home years ago. Grandpa died five or six years ago, Grandma's still there. The neighborhood is changed. Also gone, several blocks north at the Seminary Street "subway," is Helen and Mead's Millionaire Hill retirement hotel. Only the memories and some steps remain. That's the way it is. People and places pass, life moves on. All we have are the memories. 

Today's Stats

Temp: 27 degrees F

Distance: 5.5 miles

Treasure: 31 cans; 2 gloves (a pink knit "magic glove" and a firefighter's glove! How cool is that?).

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

Walk Walk - The Call

Mr. Bad Example - Warren Zevon

Lebanese Blonde - Thievery Corporation

We Can Work it Out - The Beatles

Shame - Matchbox Twenty

Carmelita - Warren Zevon

Don't Let Me Down - The Beatles

These Hard Times - Matchbox Twenty

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Eight Days a Week - The Beatles

What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy) - Information Society

The Show Must Go On - Pink Floyd

Your Time is Gonna Come - Led Zeppelin

Broken - Lifehouse

Argue - Matchbox Twenty

Lenny/Man on the Side (live) - John Mayer

Stop - Matchbox Twenty

I can honestly and sincerely say ...

... that the devil had nothing to do with this next song, a song entitled "Snowblind." - James Young of Styx, "Caught in the Act"

That's right, we have snow again. OK, not really enough to make one snowblind, but there were diminishing flurries when I started out this morning. Already it's lunch time, though, so this is just a taste of things to come for y'all.

Speaking of honesty and sincerity, I have to say it was a lackluster day for scavenging. I really only found a variety of tracks in the snow and three measly cans, and those were picked up a block from home at the very start of my run. Rest assured, though, that I will update this post again tonight with some fun stuff. Trust me.

Being new to blogging, I'm not sure if this is proper form, to add to an original post hours later. Should I be making a totally new post? Hopefully you who read regularly will check out the update. I promised it would be worth a revisit. So I will give you a video. I've learned a little more about how to add audio and how to diminish the original soundtrack (to eliminate my huffing and puffing). And talk about exciting, this video, while crazy jumpy and of rather limited scope, was shot on my new Sharper Image U-Video camera. I lamented last week about missing out on the sale at JCPenney, but a subsequent trip to Peoria netted the gadget on sale at the store in the mall over there. Yea!

Alas, I'm still learning and I haven't mastered the steady-cam technique, so it's a little like "The Blair Witch Project." And sorry about the glitch on the lens. For the soundtrack I grabbed the aforementioned song intro by James Young from Styx's live album "Caught in the Act."

Today's Stats

Temp: 21 degrees F

Distance: 6.5 miles

Weekly Total: 16 miles

Treasure: 3 cans; 2 cool painted mailboxes; several tracks in snow: squirrel, rabbit, car, bicycle, dog, human.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

This Land is Your Land - The Waterboys

Supermodels - Kendall Payne

Get Back - The Beatles

The Secret Marriage - Sting

Looking for the Next Best Thing - Warren Zevon

I Want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles

Just the Way You Are - Billy Joel

Good Times Bad Times - Led Zeppelin

Angry - Matchbox Twenty

Hey You - Pink Floyd

The Night Before - The Beatles

I've Just Seen a Face - The Beatles

Heartbreak Warfare - John Mayer

Bent - Matchbox Twenty

Have a Cigar - Pink Floyd

Help! - The Beatles

Big Shot - Billy Joel

Comfortable (live) - John Mayer

Rest Stop - Matchbox Twenty

I gotta roll, can't stand still

The alternative lyric starter today was The Rolling Stones'
"Turd on the Run," inspired by this culinary commentary.
Having never drunk Budweiser Select 55 (low-cal beer), I
can only assume it tastes like crap.

Thank you, Led Zeppelin. Lyrics from "Black Dog," off "Led Zeppelin IV." Why? Because today I saw a ginormous black dog as I came down Park Lane Avenue, right by the corner of Seminary Street. Scared the crap out of me. I was scanning the roadside for cans and goodies to my left, and when my eyes came up to scout the T intersection, I spied the huge black pit bull snuffling around a yard, unchained, maybe 20 feet away. I immediately averted my gaze, lest eye contact provoke his interest. After rounding the corner I continue to look over my shoulder for the next block and a half to make sure Sirius hadn't decided to give chase. (Yes, Potter fans, I know Sirius wasn't a pit bull.)

By my reference to Park Lane Avenue, locals will know I took a different route today. Starting out on the commercial loop up Seminary Street to Carl Sandburg Drive toward Henderson Street, I split north up Lincoln Park Drive on a whim and out to Lincoln Park. It was a pretty, scenic jog, though not as inspiring as it is in spring or summer. Along the way I spotted two herds of squirrels stuffing their already fat bellies to carry them through the rest of winter. One bunch in a yard on Sandburg Drive broke as soon as I approached their vicinity and scampered up a tree. But the quintet in the park behind Park Lane Drive (the private road that parallels Park Lane Avenue) kept placidly munching away.

Best of all today, I tried out my backpack idea. Grabbing my Sierra Club freebie out of the closet and a plastic shopping bag to serve as a liner, I headed out prepared to fill up a sack and carry it on my back.

I love bags, backpacks, duffels, even coats with lots of pockets. My wife says I'm amazingly good at compartmentalizing, though it wasn't a compliment in context at the time. But she was onto something. I like containers and places to put things. Backpacks are awesome because they have pockets for separating stuff and some have pen/pencil slots and key clips and iPod pouches and phone pockets and D-rings for hanging stuff on the outside. I'm even a little obsessed with crazy little mint and candy tins as containers for stuff. 

Anyway, the Sierra Club rucksack worked great! It's a top-loader with a flap and drawstring closure, so it was easy to line with the shopping bag and fill at intervals as my hands got full with a few cans or treasures. That bag is the primary reason I succumbed to the Sierra Club's come-ons: $25 bucks for a good cause and I get a free pack to add to my collection. I renewed to get a weekend duffel but it hasn't arrived yet (maybe I missed out because I sent my money after the promised five days). 

HOLY COW! It just arrived! No foolin'! Daughter No. 3 just came in with the mail and as she's walking in by me asks, "What's the Sierra Club?" I was so excited I didn't answer her question until 5 minutes later. And hey, nice duffel -- and it inverts to zip into itself for compact storage.

Back on track... My favorite pack, however, is a JanSport rucksack I received as a gift probably 20 years ago from my best friend Chris Farrar (God rest his soul). We never exchanged gifts regularly, but a couple times he sent me things out of the blue. The rucksack is grey with a leather bottom and lots of lash patches for cross-country skis and crampons and such. I don't think they make the model anymore. Chris knew of my love for backpacks and I must have mentioned wanting a JanSport, so he just up sent it to me for my birthday one year. Another time he expressed dismay at my admission that I'd never seen Disney's "Fantasia," and subsequently sent us the VHS for Christmas as a family gift. We treasure it still. I miss you, buddy.

Sorry, ladies, I don't think this will fit
your husband/boyfriend.

Today's Stats

Temp: 21 degrees F, warming to 30 by shower's end

Distance: 6.5 miles

Weekly Total: 9.5 miles

Treasure: 1 Colt 1911 Target AirSoft pistol (missing pieces and apparently inoperable); 1 non-retractable utility knife; 1 Durex condom (wrapper split at seam); 1 Honda hood/grill emblem (broken frame); 1 grubby washcloth (good shop rag for wiping the oil dipstick); 2 Miller Lite logo thingies (one circular, one a clover); 1 quarter (1965); and 33 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)

Last Beautiful Girl - Matchbox Twenty

Roll With the Changes - REO Speedwagon

I Can't Quit You Baby - Led Zeppelin

Same Old Story - Garth Brooks

Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon

Ramble On - Led Zeppelin

Fisherman's Blues - The Waterboys

Things Can Only Get Better - Howard Jones

I Will Follow You Into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie

No Such Thing (Live) - John Mayer

Time and Time Again - Counting Crows

City Love (Live) - John Mayer

She's a Beauty - The Tubes

Boom Boom Mancini - Warren Zevon

Goodnight Saigon - Billy Joel

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You - Led Zeppelin

She's Got a Way About Her - Billy Joel

I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You - Colin Hay

Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles