trains

boys and trains

Published October 14, 2017

Two years ago same month bought an overnight Amtrak ticket to Omaha. Picked up my rental at the Airport, drove to Des Moines for my 50-State ‘Iowa’ marathon. Same event where I enjoyed a VIP performance of Dracula. Still a FUNNY story – LOL>

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2016. Received an email announcing the 2^nd annual Nebraska Marathon. Train ride nostalgia that day I guess. Yep, they got me. Generally I only race register 3-4 months in advance.

Friday night train (7pm ticket), no work day miss 🙂 Parked at DIA, took commuter rail to Union Station. Would be returning Sunday by air. Learned rail isn’t known for on-time punctuality. 2015: train-returned home almost a half-day late.

9:45pm Friday: Greeted on-board by a juggler, my seatmate aisle over. Nope, can’t make this stuff up.
8:21am Saturday: Tagged a ride Downtown using my Lyft app. No rental required this trek.

Hotel check-in (host hotel assured a post-race shower), bib pick-up (across from baseball’s College World Series), afternoon matinee at the Orpheum (Finding Neverland). Who knew there was so much happening in Omaha!

FOOD.

24 hour fine-dining binge. Tuna burger at Denver’s trendy Hopdoddy. Oktoberfest-celebrated with Bräts & kraut in Omaha. THEN seafood-gorged at Shucks Oyster Bar at happy-hour prices: 99-cent oysters, 35-cent peel-n-eat shrimp. FAAANNNNTASTIC!

It’s not a gland problem folks. I run because I eat ❤

Marathon in morning – might need to circle the Park twice. So much food, so little time.

: overnight train adventure

: Good Morning Omaha!

: pre-race Oktoberfest

: ‘Finding Neverland’

: happy-hour food fest

Amtrak juggler

Posted in Heartland | Tagged baseball, theatre, trains | Leave a comment

Great American Eclipse

Published August 21, 2017

Wind River Indian Reservation, WY

Coolest of nights on Casper Mountain – awesome sleeping weather [sadly, missed sunrise]. Quiet excitement/anticipation/buzz around camp – ECLIPSE day!

Listened to a group of NASA scientists speak last night at the Lodge. Crowd was a weird mix of ‘super smart’ & ‘super quirky’. My tent neighbor spoke of geothermal pulse dangers generated by nuclear weapons exploding high in the atmosphere – but able to knock out all transformers in the Midwest, which would result in hundreds of thousands of people dying from lack of electricity. Hmm… Somehow our forefathers survived without air conditioning, right? Guy passed out Homeland Security business cards with a personal gmail address. Double, hmm… Let’s imagine he was completely legit & this was Homeland Security’s new way of reaching out/disseminating National Security threats to the General Public [in a Casper WY campground] – what could I personally do about preventing a nuclear explosion 400 miles above Earth’s atmosphere? Like I said: missed this morning’s sunrise, slept like a baby. Guess ignorance is bliss 🙂

Walked/fed the Pup, broke down my tent, Jeep all packed. Horizon gazed. Sunshiny day.

Short hike over to ‘the viewing area’ – large swath of meadow high on Casper Mountain. Roadside concession stand sold hot dogs & soft drinks. A&W root beer for a buck. Heck of a deal.

10:25am: Planted my chair, sat & watched ‘1^st contact’ thru a pair of ISO-approved solar shades purchased online thru Walmart. Double-checked my paper glasses were not ‘fake’. Still, fingers-crossed this wasn’t a mass plot by China to leave half our country blind.

Hour-20 ‘til TOTALITY. Ro? Chased grasshoppers, caught a morning nap in the high grass. Happy dog.

Group of CU (U of Colorado) students showed, hijacked my solitude. In hindsight, they made the experience light/super FUN. Typical university kids, excitement/laughter/lotta noise. Two were talking plasma & NASA measuring the Sun’s corona, while another plotted to conceive an ‘eclipse’ child during the 2 minute-29 second event. Super smart, super young – LOL>

FELT a noticeable temperature change. Wind gusted. Everything happened at once.

TOTALITY.

Skies darkened, white light glowed around our extinguished Sun.

Glasses no longer necessary [next 2 minutes] – ‘diamond ring’ visible to the naked eye. Surrounded by sunset & stars, soaked up the cityscape lights of Casper below (street-lamps triggered by the mid-day eclipse). WOW, WOW, WOW!

Just the slightest of slivers & our 2 minutes of darkness, history/a memory. Day again. Bright light – piercing white light – escaped the Sun’s upper right corner. Not daybreak but insta-day, NOON. Still chilly (58 degrees), but surrounded once again by Sun.

Like nothing I’ve EVER experienced.

Great American Exodus

Departed at 12:30pm, arrived home at 12:45am. Hundreds of thousands of cars on ONE highway.

Tag, Arkansas family – you’re up next. TOTALITY!

The next total solar eclipse in the Americas comes on April 8, 2024. Totality first touches Mexico, enters the United States at Texas, cuts a diagonal to Maine, and visits the maritime provinces of Canada.

Although it has been a long 38 years since the last U.S. total solar eclipse before 2017, it is a relatively short 7 years to the succeeding total solar eclipse in North America. Perhaps we should call this the Great North American Eclipse.

: solar shades & root beer

: 1st Contact

: iPhone thru $2 Walmart shades

: just a crescent left

: mid-day TOTALITY

: 8 miles on rugged dirt, ’til BNSF ‘railroad’ cops called in armed support — declared access road was PRIVATE property

: departed at 12:30pm, arrived home 12:45am

: April 2024

Great American Eclipse

Great American Exodus

Posted in Rocky Mtn West | Tagged night-sky, trains | Leave a comment

Wilder Pageant

Published July 14, 2017

Elbert & Aspen, 2 big mountain hikes. Mental fixed, done retreating. Back to marathoning.

Days after Bighorn, laid out my path for 100. Had already registered for six races, 3 more needed to hit my target in Dublin. Travel costs, proximity to home, days off required [from work] – add NO repeats. Thus far, all 91 marathons have been unique/original runs.

Lake Okoboji. Midwest humidity, 90+ degrees. Ya’ll know how I love heat, ARGH!

Friday morning flight. Said I’d never fly Frontier again but for $60 (one-way), I’d live out of my carry-on. 3-hour drive from Minneapolis. Lunch stopped in Mankato, 2 hours on flat farm roads ‘cross the Iowa border to bib pick-up. Motel check-in (another $49 bargain) in Spirit Lake then my Midwest adventure began. Hmm…what to do in rural Iowa?

An hour-half north & west using a handful of rural state roads, crossed back into Minnesota & entered Walnut Grove. ‘The’ Walnut Grove – as in, ‘Laura Ingalls/Little House on the Prairie’ Walnut Grove. Even bigger? Once a year (each July) the town celebrates with a series of events – biggest being a live outdoor performance, known as Wilder Pageant. Called, tickets available – heck yeah, I’m in.

First stop: Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum on [aptly-named] Ingalls Street. GREAT collection of both Wilder’s books AND the television series. Outside stood a replica of the Ingalls’ dugout sod home. As a kid, LOVED the show…however, was even a BIGGER FAN of the books. ‘On the Banks of Plum Creek’ (centered in Walnut Grove) was my personal favourite of the series.

Between 2^nd & 3^rd grade my family moved ‘cross country. HUGE life adjustment. Lived out of a camper while my dad built an add-on structure (lived there 3 years). Wood stove, no toilet, no running water. Dad went thru a series of assembly jobs, laid-off each winter.

Rural town, new school, tough times. Poor family, no money. That year, my 3^rd grade teacher read a chapter aloud [once a week] from ‘Little House in the Big Woods”. I was HOOKED. Reading became an escape, I was a mind traveler & the library was FREE. [could be] Transported far from my family’s struggles, their squabbles ’bout money & later divorce.

Inside the museum, a photograph of Mary, Laura & Carrie. A newspaper clipping (dated June 1879) reporting Mary’s illness & sudden blindness. An audio recording of Laura (from the 1950’s), interviewed by a newspaper reporter in Mansfield MO. Real people, real lives.

5 minute drive away, visited the Ingalls Dugout Site. $5/car to visit a sign by a creek, on a rural farm. No regrets 🙂

Car napped an hour before Wilder Pageant. Gates opened at 7, local singers entertained at 8, play began at 9pm – titled “Fragments of a Dream”, show’s 40^th anniversary. 2 Acts, 16 scenes. An older Laura (age 70) narrated the Ingalls’ story: family’s arrival in Walnut Grove, building the local church, fighting a plight of grasshoppers & Laura’s schoolyard fights with Nellie Oleson.

(FUN FACT: the infamous ‘Olesons’ were actually the ‘Owens’ – learned many names were changed in the books)

Well done Walnut Grove, well done. Sadly, left the land of many mosquitoes (Minnesota) between Acts (left at intermission). Long day, lotta hours logged in the rental. Hour-half return drive to Iowa (late midnight arrival), marathon in the morning.