Things got packed up eventually and then I was off, in Don's car, which had a number and a colour and a car type but at this point I couldn't tell you what any of those things were. For the second day in a row I had instant coffee made from boiled water and realized my love of good coffee. This coffee was OK! Don't get me wrong. Just not what I wanted.
So off I went in the car and what sticks out to me is the memory of Don looking over at me and and saying "you know, the reason we changed around all the car numbers and colors and so on was so you wouldn't be riding with me right now."
And there I was, a man without a country. The car screeched to a halt and I was tossed into the woods, never to be seen again. Rumor has it I was raised by ticks and can be seen burrowing into camper legs on the upper trails.
Put another way, Don the schemer pulled out sheets and pens and phones and so on and so forth and at some point I changed cars back to the jeep for a while after hanging out at a gas station (and pooping! read further below to appreciate my genius), which makes sense because the all knowing Melissa had said in the morning that I should be riding with her and Don had not listened to her.
My first leg was to be 2.8 miles but I managed to do 4ish. It was due to a technique that was becoming popular that day known as "getting your ass completely lost." it goes like this. You start your leg and trot off into the woods with directions in your hands that are not exactly correct. You then miss some turns and some trails and wander around like a homeless person until you glom onto someone who happens to be be going the right way.
This is my story. Off I went on my merry way and got through the first few lines of directions just fine until I met the lady in the lake who threw me the sword. I was now king. Actually it was an overweight woman settled in a chair sitting by a large pond. She looked at me as I went by and laughed and cackled about the turn being 20 feet back and that everyone was missing it. So back I went and took.. a path. This was a nice path, clearly formed and easy to run. I know right? No way was it the right path. Duh. As I ran it, starting to slow down as I realized my error I encountered a woman from the aptly named "Buns A'Blazin" team who was coming back along the path towards me. We started to palaver about directions and two other people popped out of the brush. All four of us chatted and Bunsy seemed to be convinced that my encounter with the pond lady was key to advancement of our quest. The other two claimed that they had turned on a path back there and it looped them around to where they were now. They headed off in what Bunsy and I knew was the wrong direction. Bunsy made the call that we head back towards pond lady. So we did. Next to the path I took was, in the leaves, a tiny little wooden square on a stick. Bunsy triumphantly declared "it's here!" And off we went, based purely on her belief. I was quite skeptical. It was totally overgrown. But she seemed confident!
As we ran, her choice seemed to make more and more sense until.. 3 turns that were not documented at all. But she pushed on and I followed along until.. she was blazing (Buns-A'Blazin') along and went right past these two trees so close together that you almost felt like you should turn sideways to get between them.. I checked them out and between the two trees I spotted a blue dot off in the distance on a tree!
Blue dots were used to sometimes mark the routes. They were cunningly used just enough to get you to rely on them, then abandoned until you forgot all about them, then used sparingly again.
I called Bunsy back and she agreed, I had found the one true path. Off we went. We then passed a guy and a girl who were so pissed off they were just walking and bitching. I thought about telling them they were on the right path.. but.. I thought of the joy of advancing.. at least 4 places up in ranks and.. I said nothing. If they died out there.. my bad.
At this point I should mention our team name. Our team was called "Off in the Corner." The name is purely pun-based so that if some team is faster than us we can say they "Beat Off in the Corner." I can't nor won't take credit for this name. But I gotta admit it got some laughs. For example, I told our name to Buns A Blazin' and she loved it.
As we are winding our way along the worst marked trail of all time Bunsy hears a horn and says "well we must be at least within a mile of the end of this leg" and we both laughed. It was a 2.8 mile race!At all times we were probably within a mile of the end, it's a winding weaving trail race! So no help there but, we kept getting closer and closer to the horn noise which was a good sign.. Finally we saw the horn blower. It was Don! He was blowing it to help me out!
I then got the golden opportunity to say "well I know your buns are a blazing but I really can't let you beat off in the corner" and off I sped to beat off in the.. no wait,to finish (the race! don't be a perv). So I got our team to advance 5 places. Don was great , there were some hills at the end and he ran up and down them with me because he could tell I was flagging. I waited for Bunsy after I finished and we hugged.
Later I looked and did not see a team called Buns A Blazin' on the list! WTF. I am not sure what to make of this. To be honest, we were moving pretty slow, her buns were at the most simmering. Smoldering?
Between legs while hanging out, I talked to Aimee about her earlier leg. All sand, and she said a 93% incline! She pointed out that she had told Don "no sand legs!" before she signed up for this thing. Oh oh! Of course all legs at this point had sand in them. Still, when she killed Don later in the day and threw his body in the dumpster we all understood. 93% incline!
During the driving around, in one of the cars I rode in, Tom (or Aimee, whoever was driving) also gave a lift to a guy he knew that I will refer to as Dandy. Dandy was one dilly of a debacle, yessirree. He was alternately jabbering and comatose in the vehicle, and it made sense once I realized he was completely in the bag.
He did not know where his team was and had some drunken claims of abandonment with some mild ire but nothing that caused me any alarm. He wandered off, wandered back, and at one point came running down the middle of the dirt road with his arms outstretched yelling out " I AM AN AEROPLANE!!"
The thing was, I was watching... and he wasn't actually an aeroplane. I don't want to put the kibosh on the dude's claims but he was clearly a guy running drunkenly down the road with his arms outstretched. No jet engines, no propellers. Besides, planes don't talk in real life! I wasn't born yesterday. He may have fooled some people but not me.
My next leg was just as challenging as my earlier leg but this time I was ready. As Rob said later, you had to be like a native american guide. He was way better at it than me but I was doing the same things he was.. looking at how many footprints, what direction they were going in? Listening. I got a little lost but not much. What got me on this leg was my own legs. I tripped on.. myself? At some point and took a shoulder to the sandy trail so fast I don't even remember anything other than my F bomb and being back on my feet. I finished the run without any further mishaps.
Dandy was at the beginning or the end of this leg, cavorting around drunkenly, not sure where his team was. At one point he produced a beer bottle that didn't have the twist off cap and talked one of his teammates who showed up into popping the cap off with his teeth. Then Dandy walked over and gave the beer to a girl and the guy who has just risked his teeth looked over and said "Motherfucker!"
I found Dandy's exploits amusing because he reminded me a lot of the antics I saw on another relay race, the infamous "Dances with Dirt" race. That one is just a one day event and a lot of the participants seem to be drunken fools, while this race had mostly sober fools during the day then drinking later :) (nothing against Dandy but he kind of stood out among all the sober non hyper runners).
At the end of this day we got to park next to some people who had a keginator right in their car with their own brands of beer and mixed drinks.I cop to pretty much manipulating the people with me into hanging out there and getting some free beer and mixed beverages. I mean how could I pass that up? A relay race with fellow runners who brought kegs full of their own beer to share? How often does that happen? Not often enough, that's for damned sure. Melissa was a great sport about it though and didn't abandon me. I even got to tip beers with a chick I saw on day one who had a kids cartoon running tech shirt and odd stickers up and down her arms. Makes sense that she was on this team actually. I forget if a hasher was on this team or not, but I met some pseudo hashers the next day.
Anyways after this we hit a bar for some food, if I recollect these details (it's all a jumble I am still sorting out) I will put them in later. And then another school with an even better shower, I forgot to mention that, and I put up my tent by myself! WTF. Epic win for team me.. then sleep, but knowing I was getting up at 4am the next morning! Ug. My resources were pretty much depleted.. I could tell Sunday was going to be rough on me.
Next up.. the final day of GLR 2015! (unless you choose to scroll down)
Warning:
The rest of this blog is about Pooping In The Woods.
Read at your own risk!
The following picture is unrelated to GLR. It is used as a buffer between non-poop discussion and poop discussion. After asking yourself "why would anyone have the following picture taken?" (it's a question I feel has no legitimate answer), if you choose, scroll past it to read all about runners/pooping/woodland pooping. Not super gross, just.. inappropriate for those who don't really want to proceed. Otherwise feel free to take this opportunity to bail on this blog and proceed directly to the blog about day 3. - Mgmt
I "learned a lot" about pooping on this fabled day. Specifically the fecal sub genre of deep woods pooping. Although admittedly I did not poop in the woods myself (see above for my clever gas station pooping stratagem), I was told by a few people exactly how woods pooping is done. And if I ever have to, I am now armed with this secret knowledge. It involves knowing how to sit with your back against a tree. "Have TP will travel" is the slogan for you, BTW.. .I heard a few horror stories about guys who had wiped with poison ivy leaves..anyways all "good info" to know but I was in no hurry to learn to poop in the woods in upper lower Michigan! Aside from poison-ivy-bum syndrome or just soiled running shorts, I would imagine that's a bad area of the body to have the infamous Michigan Tick infiltrate!
However I feel I must share the cautionary tale of the poop trap just in case you are in the mood for a forest deposit..
As I stood waiting around for runners I overheard the following conversation:
Guy 1: "Yea don't go back there man.. There's a tire and... I dunno man.."
Guy 2: "A poop trap!"
At this point I couldn't help myself, I had to know more.
Me: "Did you just say a "poop trap?" WTF is a "poop trap?""
Well apparently, any trail runner worth a dump knows that pooping in a tire is the way to go in the woods if you are lucky enough to find a tire. Keep in mind though that you take your ass in your own hands if you do so because it could be a "poop trap." I was laughing hard enough to miss the exact details but I am pretty sure the fear is that a ferocious genital-and-buttocks chomping nasty could be lurking in the tire, perhaps pacing impatiently.. absolutely ready to leap up and .. YEOOOOW!.. *or*.. maybe you end up sitting in someone else's poop? I don't know much in the poop trade but (butt?) I do know this, I will never defecate in a tire. Amen. So it is shitten. I mean written.
Side note for you scientists and thinkers out there, why in the hell are there tires in the woods? Accidental Happenstance or Poop Trap Conspiracy (PTC)?. Every time I see a tire in the woods I am going to wonder.. is that a "poop trap"? Are we in PT country?
I should have asked those guys if they had heard of any poop trappers in the area, and/or to tell me what they knew about the poop trapping trade. Instead, I said nothing.
My question to you, the reader (bathroom reader?) is.. the next time you see a tire in the woods.. will you rush over and take a poop in it? It's your call! Of nature. When Nature calls.. don't get poop trapped.
What a shitty way to end this blog entry. Badump DUMP.
Next up.. the final day of GLR 2015!
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