Run DMZ

Occasionally, my brain and body rebels in most inconvenient ways. My mind refuses to stay on task with big deadlines approaching. It indulges distractions, like finding the right holiday photo card instead of finishing the library book due the next day. I get body aches and chills without a fever, nausea of unknown origin, headaches no painkillers can penetrate. Just weeks after a glorious trip to Maine, I suffered from all three ailments. I didn’t have the luxury of curling up on the couch or in bed for a few days to restore my health. So instead, I leeched mounting stress with useless flu meds, a few over-the-top outbursts, and one heart-stopping nightmare. This was not the homecoming I anticipated after my time in the Northeast, anchor of my ancestry and place I miss most each fall. At the invitation of a dear friend with a lovely vacation home, four of us ignored the first day’s rains to explore beautiful Bethel, followed by two days of the best hiking conditions – sunny and m...

  Talk about transparency.  Unable to sleep after indulging my Southern cuisine-depraved taste buds with she-crab soup and a collards-infused risotto, I thought I heard rain and opened my hotel’s curtains. Directly across from me was a modern, all-glass high-rise apartment complex. At night, you can look into any room at or near eye level.  First, I watched people make a late dinner, then checked later to see who was watching what on TV. I never looked out the window more than a minute; it felt weird being a voyeur even though if they looked over they could see me watching them. Around 11, I looked again -- this time to watch a rainstorm hit. Someone fell asleep with the ceiling light still on. Maybe he kept his curtains open to watch the rains too. Someone else stayed up to binge a Netflix series I had watched last weekend. A few others also appeared to still be awake like me around 2 a.m.  I’d come to this swanky part of Atlanta a day prior to participate by invita...

  A peek at my most recent adventures in New England while I catch up on all of the work and family time I missed.

Until last month, my only experience with San Diego’s only national monument was glancing down at Coronado through a thick marine layer and standing in a long line to use a portable toilet. I never ventured beyond visitor parking for fear of losing my place among hundreds also needing to relieve themselves. This is at the starting line of the annual America’s Finest City Half Marathon , held every August in San Diego. It begins at the Cabrillo National Monument – accessible that morning only by shuttle bus – and winds through Pt. Loma, Harbor Island and the Embarcadero before climbing into downtown and then up Sixth Avenue into Bankers Hill to finish the 13.1-mile journey in Balboa Park. It’s really a great footrace, especially with the first 4 miles all downhill.  I’d forgotten about Cabrillo National Monument until we decided to get a National Parks annual pass this summer and realized there was only one place to get one in person – a place surrounded by deep teal seas, silent ...

There’s a great article in The Atlantic about whether e-bikes spur users to higher fitness levels or actually downgrade their expectations. I wrote earlier this summer about how I manage my own e-bike use, which at the moment is purely recreational because I am afraid to leave it unattended, even with a bike lock, to run errands. They are just too hot a commodity in my city.   These lines in that article caught my attention:  An e-bike sure seems like a way to cheat at exercise, even if it really facilitates it. That’s been my experience; the credit my Apple Watch gives me for “outdoor cycling” on my e-bike pales in comparison to the exertion I undertake at home on the Peloton. (Apple has added an e-bike-detection algorithm in this mode, which both underscores the fact that e-biking ain’t biking, and suggests that yes, in fact, it is.)  I noticed the same thing with my Apple Watch on my Sunday morning rides. If I use the pedal assist to get up a big hill, I don’t g...

  It wasn’t until earlier this month that I learned one of our neighbors in Terrebonne is a movie star.    I recall my dad telling me about seeing it in some of his old-timey western movies, but nothing recent and certainly nothing starring actors like Kevin Costner and Reese Witherspoon. And yet, there on a plaque I read while listening to my sister puke was a list of contemporary films shot on location at Smith Rock State Park, including  The Postman  in 2000 and, more recently, 2014’s  Wild . (No, Smith Rock isn’t on the Pacific Coast Trail, but Hollywood has never been a stickler for accuracy.)   The Oregon state park is by distance less than a mile from the house we purchased once my parents both passed. But the drive takes about 10 minutes because of less direct roads and speed limits. Still, its presence is huge – for the town and for me personally. I came here regularly to heal from some pretty traumatic events. Yet the place triggers only good...

  Go anywhere in Central Oregon, and you will learn that every natural attraction is the result of volcanic action. The snowy peaks that populate an otherwise flat landscape? Volcanoes. The mountain people love to ski and snowboard? Volcano. The birthplace of American rock climbing ? Created from volcanic activity. Every nearby butte is a cinder cone created from magma bubbling to the surface. Even the waterfalls in my previous post  originate in ancient eruptions.   One of the best ways to take it all in also happens to be one of my all-time favorite places to visit when we're in Oregon:  Newberry Volcanic National Monument  outside Bend. The national park itself is huge and located within the Deschutes National Forest. When I say huge, consider it encompasses more than 54,000 acres of water features, lava and obsidian flows, hot springs, and unparalleled views. Even more amazing: the 1,200-mile volcanic area is still active from a seismic and geothermal stand...

We visit Central Oregon annually, and this year we elected to focus on fun for the three days we were there. I thought I’d devote the next few blog posts to some of the best places to hike in the Bend area, starting with a natural feature the Pacific Northwest is famous for: waterfalls.   Granted the waterfalls are spectacular along the Columbia Gorge on one side of the Cascade Range, but the Deschutes River is an impressive rival and can be experienced with less auto and foot traffic (if timed well). With all of these, bring water … and in the summer, bring plenty of it.   Tumalo Falls (outside Bend) North Fork Trail at Tumalo Falls   Day pass : $5/vehicle Restrooms : Portable toilets in picnic area near trailhead Let’s start with the big one:  Tumalo Falls . It's the photo that opens this post, and it's photographed more than any other I’ve seen. That's because of both its beauty and because it is  accessible for people who don’t typically hike (or even walk)....

There’s  a delightful piece on NPR about the joys of riding a bike  – not for personal records or trophies, but just to depressurize and stay healthy. Several years ago, I would have fast-forwarded such a segment, being one of those with feet firmly planted on the ground. Now, I get it.   The first time I experienced the highs and lows of cycling was when I bike-commuted to work. My job at the time was 10 miles from my house at the terminus of a 12-mile-long bike path adjacent to a freeway.  I purchased a hybrid bike I christened Penelope (because she had a pink and black frame). I only commuted in late spring and summer when it was lighter for longer because it wasn’t safe to ride alone on dark evenings. ( Or sometimes early mornings .) It also meant I arrived home around 6:30 p.m. soaked in sweat from riding mostly uphill on fat tires in blistering Carmel Valley heat.   But I loved that period of my life and especially the practicality of the bike. I wasn...

Spend any amount of time with me and you know I make frequent trips to the bathroom at home or restrooms in public. Since COVID, I’ve become more squeamish about portable toilets, but if that’s the only option, I’ll hold my nose and not look down. I can’t recall the last time I peed in the wild, but it would have been on a long hike years ago.   Sometimes the urge is real, like after drinking a large, iced tea while running errands. Other times, I’m convinced seeing a Women’s Room generates a Pavlovian response – I really don’t have to go now, but I can easily be convinced otherwise because relief is right there, right now.   I wrote during the early months of the pandemic about the quandary outdoor exercisers faced with so many public restrooms shuttered to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. But since the world’s reopened, something else has happened:  Publicly accessible restrooms have continued to dwindle in numbers .   Here in San Diego, public restrooms w...

Back when I first launched this blog, I was a guest on 91x’s  Resurrection Sunday , a program then hosted by the late Steve West. Sundays were my long run days, and I spent hours listening to West, including an hour of “Hey Mom, I’m on 91x!” with a guest deejay decidedly not from the industry.   I “auditioned” by first filling out online the 20 songs I’d play, which not coincidentally were Steve West’s favorite songs along with a few rarely played tunes. The legendary disc jockey called, we talked, and I was booked for that weekend’s show. I gave several shoutouts, including to my fellow San Diego Track Club runners then training for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon.   At the following Tuesday track workout, one of the run leaders told me he’d listened the entire hour. “You only picked one good song,” he said. “But it was a good one. I’d listen just for that one song.” That song was Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.”   I’ve loved that song since the first time I heard it...

I do not know the origins of Pip’s name. I’m sure my mother came up with it. It fit her perky personality as a pup and it helped she answered to any variation. Pipperdoodle  when around designer dogs.  Pipperoni  when scavenging food that fell on the floor.  Pippo  when she gained too much weight. And  Pippen , which I always thought was her actual name until I saw her AKC papers.    Notice I’m using the past tense. Pip isn’t here anymore.   For the past week I’ve moved through days in a quiet state of grief. Bawling over an abandoned, half-eaten cheeseburger in her food bowl—her final meal, it turned out. Sobbing when removing her favorite blanket and leftover treats. Sniffling after tossing her medicated shampoos and unused prescriptions and giving another family our scented poop bags and extra-large pee pads.    It didn’t seem right to remove all the void reminders so quickly, like she wasn’t worth mourning. But Tuesday was trash...