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Collegiates West Loop

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

AT, Buena Vista, BV, CDT, Clear Creek, Collegiates, Collegiates West Loop, Colorado Divide Trail, Colorado Trail, Coney Island, CT, DIA, high school reunion, Hope Pass, La Plata, Mike O'Neill, PCT, Robert Graham

mt-princeton-coloradoI leave for the airport in another hour or two.  I will pick Mike up this morning from under the Southwest Air Arrivals sign at DIA.  His Southwest Flight 4316 from Austin arrives at 10:15am and he should be standing there by 11am.

I’ll bring along a photo album of my 500 mile Colorado Trail hike with Rob from three summers prior for Mike to peruse on the drive to Buena Vista.  We’ll take Hwy 285 which I find more scenic than I-70.  The two routes are equidistant.  I plan to begin telling tales of the danger and pain that Mike can expect over the next week of backpacking.  For instance, I’ll inform him, “Trailheads invariably reside along creek beds so that, regardless of direction, you begin hiking uphill.  Your calves go numb after a half hour and never really thaw out the rest of the day.  Whatever remains of your burning thighs is completely shredded on the subsequent thirty minute downhill.  All you will think about for the next eleven hours is dinner to refuel your unsustainable calorie burn.”  Mike will no doubt attempt to change the subject but I’ll maintain this dialog the entire three hour drive to BV.  I’ll watch for the color to drain from his face when he spots the massive 14ers that will dominate our windshield coming down out of the canyon into BV.  I’ll tell him these are the foothills to where we’ll be backpacking on the Continental Divide Trail further west.  If Mike begins to feign altitude sickness, I’ll change the topic to dinner.  “Want to do Sushi tonight?  There’s a place on East Main Street called Asian Palate.  They pour a wicked Saketini.”

Unicoi GapI would of course only treat a good friend so poorly.  I met Mike in 1976.  Both our families recently relocated to Texas for jobs.  Mine from Iowa.  Mike’s dad worked for IBM and they moved down from Poughkeepsie.  Nearly everyone’s parents worked for IBM in our high school as IBM was turning off the lights in their New York factories and joining the sunbelt, tech crowd in Austin.  We first met on the football team.  Then basketball.  Then track.  We both realized we weren’t big enough for Texas football and joined the cross country team our sophomore year.  Running turned out to be our sport as we lead our team to State our senior year.  Making state in Texas is like making global in smaller states.

Mike went on to UT but later joined me at Texas State to run Cross Country for a year.  I believe he double-majored in either accounting or finance and information systems.  Mike, Rob and I got into triathlons after college for maybe a year or two and trained together.  Mike soon married, had kids and moved to Atlanta for a job.  We went twenty years without seeing each other until my firm acquired an Atlanta cyber security company and I began to travel there.

We hook up with Rob (trail name La Plata until he completes the CDT) in BV.  La Plata has solo through-hiked both the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Appalachian Trail (AT).  He section-hiked the Colorado Trail (CT) with me over a six month period in 2011.  This new 80 mile section of the CT that we intend to backpack coincides with the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) along the western side of the Collegiates, so La Plata is killing two birds with one stone.  He’ll hike the section south of Monarch Pass earlier today while Mike and I are driving.

CT and CDTRob moved to Texas his junior year, meeting Mike and me during our sophomore year – on the cross country team.  Both of Rob’s parents were IBMers.  Ironically, I’m the only one of us three to work for IBM now.  Perhaps not so ironic.  La Plata was an intense hiker even back then.  We nick-named him Trail Master during one of our storied camping trips to Pedernales Falls.  La Plata obtained his EE from UT and worked a few years for Lockheed before going back for a masters in education in physical fitness.  He married, moved around a bit – Seattle, then Portland – before settling in Colorado.  We’ve been hiking together since.  We always would say, “We need Mike to join us.”

Mike and I will find La Plata somewhere in BV.  We’ll shuffle his car to the trailhead atop Cottonwood Pass and descend back down to BV for dinner.  Mike and I will have lunched earlier on the road trip in Baily at Coney Island.  La Plata has a stealth camp setup near the Arkansas River where we plan to ensconce for the night.  Sunday, we’ll head for the Twin Lakes trailhead to launch an epic backpacking excursion.

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Exotic Runs

03 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Austin Marathon, Barón De Barbón Rioja, Canyon Lands Half-Marathon, DIA, Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, Grand Junction, Mt. Garfield, Schaefer Beer, Warrior Dash

This is me two years ago on top of Mt. Garfield.  I drove out to Grand Junction to give my ole buddy Rob a lift to DIA.  15 minutes to the right of my outstretched hand – stage left – lies Grand Junction.  We couldn’t drive for more than 15 friggin minutes before Rob told me to pull over for a 2000 foot climb up the ugliest approach of eroded foothills I’ve ever seen.  If you’ve ever driven along I70 into Grand Junction – you know what I mean.  The place looks like the end of the world.  Of course, that’s just the base, once you get going the terrain changes dramatically.  It might look like the land before time from I70 but this part of Colorado has got some outstanding hikes.  This was the genesis of my current fitness kick.  That round belly underpinning the 88 on my shirt is now half gone and this year I entered a few road races.

I’ve already captured this summer’s running events.  What’s racing around my mind now are next summer’s possibilities.  I have some wicked opportunities.  There isn’t much talk of pedestrian turkey trots, people are proposing some weird shit.  This week alone was suggested the Warrior Dash in Copper Mountain and the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in S.F. Bay.  WTF!  I couldn’t swim 1.5 miles at 18 when I was negatively buoyant.  What are my chances now that I’m a boat anchor?  A high school cross country buddy is even suggesting the Tough Mudder in Vail.  Or he might have been suggesting the Tough Mudder in Austin, but good Lord; is this all the result of having completed the IPR in Ouray/Telluride.  Apparently that run brings out the crazy talk in people.

But I kind of like it.  I don’t intend to do any of these nut-job events, but I like thinking about doing them.  And the really cool thing is I can at least afford to register for and travel to these spectacles if I so desire.  It’s not like 25 or 30 years ago when my pals and I would race unregistered to instead put our money towards a post-race six-pack(s) of Schaefer Beer.  Although the stakes have been seriously raised.  It’s not unusual for event registrations to cost upwards of $100 nowadays.  And let’s not leave out the cost of towing along the family for a night or two in a comfy world class resort.  So if I do choose do run any of these exotic events, I’ll need to choose wisely.

I’ve already entered the Austin Marathon in February 2011.  There’s a plane ticket or two.  But I’ll stay at my mom’s house for that run.  And I’ve entered the lottery to run the Canyon Lands Half Marathon in Moab next spring.  Those two runs will start the season off for me, and you have to admit – they’re pretty damned cool events.  After that, I don’t know.  I have fantasies of becoming competitive in my age division.  That sort of implies I’ll focus on 10Ks.  And I’ve been thinking about an ultra trail run, but I will settle for some cool hiking if plans come together to reunite with some old friends next summer.  I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but just thinking about it has kept me entertained while I quaff this bottle of Barón De Barbón Rioja 2004 Reserva.

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