Sunday, August 23, 2015

An Essay: On My Summer Break I Ran Across 3 States!

Fall is back to school time and my kids love catching up with their friends on all they've done over the summer.  My own work gets back in gear when school bells start chiming again and my summer report sounds different than the others.  I ran 500 miles across three states in June.


After the bad ankle sprain falling off the highway while avoiding an oncoming RV in the attempt to run across Oregon in 2014, I healed and headed back to the exact same spot this year.  An old friend from summer camp, Dylan, picked me up at the airport and drove me 3 hours to my start and it was on his birthday! Such a great guy.  And since it had been 15 years since I'd seen him it was great to see the smart businessman he has become.

Dylan and I caught up on the drive to the coast and he dropped me off a mile from the location of my accident last year.  When I got to the spot, I was extra careful this time. Imagine if I had fallen off the road a second time, a year later, and would have required another year to recover.  The highway is so narrow on a 1/3 mile section near Ten Mile Creek north of Sea Lion Caves on Oregon's Coast, that when a car comes by, I had to stop running, step off the pavement, over a deep weed filled ditch, and find a sturdy rock on the slope of the roadway to stand on, out of the way of the oncoming traffic. In the third of a mile,  I had to step off the road four times to allow vehicles to safely pass me.

The remainder of Oregon only took a few days and I greatly enjoyed meeting and staying with locals. For much of the trip, I had arranged to stay with host families through a free social media lodging site called Couchsurfing.  It's like AirBnB without the money. People who love to travel and hear from travelers agree to host you for free! Provided you sound legit, have a reason for being there and can be a good houseguest. These are all marks of a solo ultra runner, obviously.

I finished Oregon safe and sound at Astoria, on the Columbia River. The next morning my host drove me across the 5 mile bridge to the start of Washington.  I continued running north across Washington along the coast and had more wonderful experiences with hosts there. I also had a near phone-fatality. I had some leftover ice cream the morning I left a rainforest and for giggles, I decided to take a picture of myself eating my ice cream while overlooking a waterfall 25 feet below the road under a bridge. Somehow, I don't know how, and there were no eyewitness accounts to explain this, I dropped my iPhone while taking the picture of my ice cream with the waterfall in the background. Dropping it on the ground would have been bad enough, but as it fell towards the road just a few feet down, it bounced off the toe box of my running shoe, sprang forward and I watched it tumble end over end into the deepest pool at the base of the waterfall three stories down. Plunk.

It was so surreal. I can run without a phone, for sure, but it had my flight information. My contacts, most of my maps, and going forward without that would have been difficult.  I figured it was a goner. It was in a waterproof case but I didn't have the headphone jack plug installed so that was likely letting in lots of water.  Nearly an hour later I had stripped down and dove down 9 feet to the bottom of this deep pool in very cold snowmelt stream.  As I lifted my phone up out of the water, the screen illuminated and a notification appeared letting me know it was my wife's payday.

My host was on the shore filming me with my GoPro and making sure I didn't drown and caught the whole thing, included me, screaming at the top of my frozen lungs, "It STILL WORKS!"

I arrived at Cape Flattery, the extreme northwestern most tip of the United States a few days later.  It is a dramatic location to end such a run. The setting is a wooden observation deck on a bluff overlooking a 200 degree churning ocean more than 200 feet below.

A college running friend, Debbie, arranged to pick me up later that day and I enjoyed seeing another friend from 20+ years before.  Now having run across Oregon and Washington, it was almost time to head home but first I decided I had enough time before my flight to actually run across Idaho as well. The northern panhandle of Idaho is only 80 miles wide and there is a world-class rail trail across the entire thing.  I caught a flight to Spokane and had planned a shuttle to the Montana border but a host in the area offered to pick me up and drive me there. That was a 7 hour favor and I was very appreciative of their help.  Idaho only took 2 1/2 days to cross. I have mixed feelings about such a short crossing. Earlier I had hoped to run across it twice to make up for such a short route. The southern, wider end of the state is also beautiful but nearly impenetrable with thick forests and few roads or services in any route that I would have taken.  My overall feeling on the topic is this: I'm running across 50 bloody states. Some will be longer than others.  Colorado, for instance on the American Discovery Trail was nearly 800 miles across.  I think I'm ok with Idaho.  And the people I met in those three days was incredible.

I again used my GoPro to shoot footage of the run and this time made an extra special effort to record my interactions with those I met.  The editing process is underway and I hope you'll be pleased with the result when it gets done later this fall.

Bye for now!
Brian

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