I was a Guest on the NPR Program: A Way With Words!

Sunday was a lot of fun. An episode of a fun language program aired where I had called in and the hosts Martha and Grant had answered my question. The show is called A Way With Words and the hosts tackle nuances of the English language as they try their best to explain possible reasons behind the weird things we hear each other say.  My question was about how I've noticed that people give directions in vastly different ways in different regions of our country when I'm running across states.  I wondered what led to that and these two did a great job helping to explain why it happens.

To hear the segment, click on the link below, then select the last segment and my call starts about 3 minutes in.  The segment is titled AWWW 06. Enjoy!


http://www.prx.org/pieces/107016-not-quite-a-boyfriend-1384#description

Wisconsin - Michigan Run is Over! 504 miles in 16 days!

Today, August 31, 2013 at 3:15 pm I leapt into the sandy and slightly algae-filled waters of the Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron on the shore of Bay Lake State Park, marking the end of my run across my 30th and 31st states crossed on foot. Happy to be done. Grateful for the countless people who helped me out both on the trail and at my home while I was away. Blessed for my health and ability to do these trips and the awesome people I got to interact with along the way.

Looking forward to the long process of going through photos and videos from the trip and sharing them when the time is right. Thanks for your interest and motivating words throughout this latest journey. It truly kept my spirits up!

See the daily video clips from my MI WI run here!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXZhqqKwablK6JAJMZa8p7K9KIgVMgBxb&feature=edit_ok

460 miles in the past 15 days

I look at the mileage total above and I don't know how I've been able to do it. Usually the miles come easy at first in the early morning hours. Then by 20 miles and noon I start to feel a little tired but tell myself that in just 10 more miles I'll be at 30. From there it's only 10 more to 40 for a really great day. Two days ago, I ran 38 miles, about what I've been averaging most days. I'm sore at night but able to run again each morning. Yesterday my high school friend Richard Adrian came up from Ohio to crew for me on the final days of the trip. With his help, I could finally shed the 12 pound backpack I ran the first 450 miles with and he also served me cold Hammer Perpetuem and poured ice water on my head on a regular basis throughout our first day together. With that royal treatment, it was a piece of cake to run 44 miles yesterday. That only leaves about 30 miles left before the finish line of state number 31 at the shore of Lake Huron near Bay City, Michigan which I should reach by this afternoon.

For the past two days I've run the Pere Marquett Trail. It's a legend in the rail trail world and neighboring communities have seen the financial boost and wellness benefit of having a trail like this for residents and visitors and have since expanded the trail to also benefit from it.

There are custom mini-railroad station depot restrooms along the trail, mileage charts at every road crossing, maintained trail surfaces and vegetation and area service signs showing what services are available in each community and how far away they are.

It has been really great having Richard be a part of this trip. Besides being helpful, it is also fun to reconnect with him and hear about his past 20 years. Though we were running friends in high school we had mostly lost touch since then. We both found wives and each had kids and as any parent knows, that changes everything (in a good way of course). But there also seems to be a universal understanding that parents share when it comes to the experiences of raising kids and sharing those experiences now with a high school pal is a fun reconnection. Well, that, and also still joking about the massive fart that one day in high school.

Looking forward to what today holds and appreciative of all who have helped make this happen.

10 Days in Dairyland

Wisconsin sure has put on a good show for me these past ten days. I found myself dwelling on some bad news in the media the other day. Just as I was thinking that positive interactions between strangers was a forgotten era, I met Fred Lane of Amhurst, Wisconsin. All he did was quietly listen to my brief conversation with the clerk in a gas station as I filled my water. Then he ran after me outside and handed me some money for a meal. I don't actively seek donations during this run but the intent of his encounter was what brightened my day the most. "I just want to support you in this journey of yours" he said, the first words he had spoken to me.

Then today I was out of water as I neared Appleton. I prefer to approach people in their yard as a knock at the door seems to bring a heightened concern from some. But on this steamy Sunday afternoon nobody was out. I walked up to the next house and as I neared the front door, spotted a warning, "Due to increased ammunition costs, a warning shot will no longer be fired." I wheeled around without knocking but it was too late. The owner had seen me coming and he opened the door, heard what I was doing and said, "good luck in your trip", after topping off my water.

Once in town and after I got cleaned up in a room in Appleton, a friend of a friend drove 30 minutes from Oshkosh to meet me for the first time and take me to dinner. Thanks Tim (and Ritchie for the connection!).

Just one big day of running left in Wisconsin, then a short jaunt to the Badger ferry in Manitowoc. Michigan coming up!

Sometimes people say they don't understand why I do this running thing, that its not for them, or their body couldn't handle it. That's ok, because that's not the point. I just happen to be really good at running all day long and I have an odd fascination for
backroad custom mailboxes.

The point, as I see it, is that each of us should have some activity that we enjoy doing and find a way to do it from time to time - whether that's one hour a week or two weeks a year. Aren't our lives busy enough and full enough to warrant some decompression time every now and then? To decompress, I run across a state or two each year. But that's just one of countless ways to do it. Here's hoping you find your time and way. 

Wisconsin: in all its glory!

It has been an amazing first three days in my run across Wisconsin on the Ice Age Trail. The great locals have made quite a reputation on me already with their kindness, generosity and support of my run. Two locals with the Ice Age Trail on a journalist came out to send me off at Interstate Park in St Croix Falls on Friday, Aug 16. A beautiful deep river gorge make for a stunning backdrop at the start.

This trail joins a rail trail called the Gandy Dancer for the first 20 miles. It was great: bridges, groomed, shaded and easy. Then in Luck, I really was. See the short video to see what treat awaited me there. When I was burning fumes to get to Cumberland for the night, a nice family pulled over to cheer me on. The dad and mom brought me deer fly repellent strips, the daughter had knitted me a bracelet and the son told me how he ran 200 miles suing recess in 1st grade! Pretty great.

Then while eating dinner at Nezzy's Sports Bar and Grill, the staff asked for my signature, took my picture and bought my pizza. Then they drove me to my motel! i don't think it gets any better!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TJI4n2P9cNY

It's time to RUN!

There is excitement in the air. Nervous excitement. The kind that makes you sick in the stomach but also curious what the next few weeks will bring.  One quote I go back to when I'm about to begin another state run is from my master's program in school administration, "Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior."  I sure hope it wasn't Dr. Phil that said that. I think that would kill it for me.

This run that starts in a few days will be the 30th and 31st states I have crossed on foot. I haven't been stopped yet so perhaps I have a good chance at these two as well.

For this trip, I tried using a new crowd-sourcing website to get donations to support the trip.  The site is Kickstarter and if you haven't spent some time looking at the different projects there, please do. There are many amazing, creative, and inspiring projects happening all the time there. People can pledge anything from $1 to $1 million but as a group of supporters, projects get funded. The only catch is that the project has to create or produce something tangible and the funding goal has to be met before it is successful. If you tried to raise $1,000 and only got $200 in donations before your deadline expired, you wouldn't get anything. However, you can exceed your goal, which is something I never thought would happen to me.  Especially on my first Kickstarter.

I set up my project on Kickstarter and designed the funding to go towards the filming portion of the run. With camera equipment, soundtrack support and audio mixing, these costs can get expensive. I set my goal at $1,900. By the time the project deadline arrived, I had raised $3,327.  That's 175% of my goal!

What was most surprising to me was who the backers are.  Prior to using Kickstarter myself, I thought that all of the backers for projects there were random strangers staring at computer screens late at night, just looking for things to excite them. Not the case with my project.

Almost all of my backers I've known personally for many years.  They are not runners themselves (most of them anyway).  They are not even film documentary buffs.  And they are certainly not the 1%.  But they are very good friends and from their outpouring of support, I gather that they are deeply supportive of my project to run really far and share the experience with everyone through film.

That is incredibly humbling.

My gear is ready. I will begin the run in St. Croix Falls at the western terminus of the Ice Age Trail at 8am in Interstate Park on Friday, August 16.  In less than 17 days I will hope to run 600 miles, arriving at the Michigan / Ohio border by Labor Day with a whole lot of gigabytes of great video to share.

With eager anticipation!

Brian

WYOMING VIDEO IS DONE!

Man that took a long time to do.  After a long run of 500 miles, the first thing I don't want to do is sit down and watch it all over again in tediously long video clips.  It's just like lemon juice on the wound.

So I let some time go by. I soak in the comfort of being around my kids and wife again. I get back into my job. And then, suddenly, it's summer - I'm on a 6,500 mile road trip with my kids and I find myself tinkering around with a few clips here and there late at night after they've gone to bed.

This is my running shirt's original design,
created by artist Ricky Sprague.
It's a covered wagon shoe.

This Wyoming video is my second attempt at a short documentary, following last year's Nevada Ultra Run video.  The first one seems to get good reviews and I enjoyed the process. I'm getting much more confident at using iMovie and nearing the finished product of this Wyoming video, I found myself wishing I could do certain things that iMovie wouldn't allow.  I used to laugh at people who smirked that Mac programs were limiting for the user. Now I find myself making some of the same claims. I still think that iMovie is the best "out of the box" movie making software available for new users, but I'm learning more about another program that I'm eager to delve into: Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro is the industry standard for video editing. That just sounds like an awesome thing when you say it with one finger pointed down at the table and tapping out some of the key syllables.  Don't forget to rock you head back while you say it too, for emphasis.

One of the themes of the film is the
preponderance of No Trespassing
signs in Wyoming, which this office door is
making fun of. 

What started on this documentary as a string of mostly unusable video clips that were even putting me to sleep, slowly took shape into storytelling form.  I love the transformation of using varying amounts of camera time, slow motion, still frames, quiet soundtrack, and gentle transitions to create a feeling and enable a story to surface.  It's magic.

There were a few scenes I had to cut out that I regret were left on the editing digital trash can floor: there was a short clip of myself riding a snow fence next to the highway in a moment of delirium.  It was out of focus and shaky.  There was a brief encounter with a male sex toy on the side of the road. It was gross.  Battery pack included. Ew.  Great clip. Not helping tell the story. At least, not this story. Someone else's story, certainly, but not mine.

For the second time I've used music from Creative Commons. I'm starting to find favorite music artists and love the feel of their tone in my running shots. One of them is State Shirt. The other is Et_.  Both are featured in both of my recent documentaries and I think they work very well.

Probably the only thing I'm not particularly happy with is the resolution of the final video on Youtube. In some browsers it looks much grainier than I would like.  I tried to upload it with the highest resolution but I'll have to check it again and make sure something didn't get changed.

I have a feeling my videos would be viewed by a wider audience if they were shorter. I don't want to short the hard-core ultra trail runners who really want to see the whole story, but perhaps one thing to consider is a shorter version, say 8 minutes, and the full length director's cut for each state.

Until then, you gotta sit through the entire 16 minutes.

Enjoy!

Click here for the video of the 500 Mile Wyoming Ultra Run Along the Oregon Trail!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7INQ6a4LUCI