The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

I had a hard time with the title because it was such a diverse and spectacular run.  I think Tim said it was more like a field trip.  We did a lot of playing.  We had Highland Cows, pigs, a super-friendly border collie, snowmen, snowball fights, trail exploring, and blood.

Mindy and Tim were waiting in the parking lot when I pulled in.  All of a sudden Alan was there.  It took me a second to realize he had run there from his home.  I was getting my gear together feeling a little slow (Rick and I had a fun, late night out in Portland on Friday), when Dora pulled in.  The conversation was mostly about the unexpected snow we were experiencing.  The roads had started to get slick.  We weren't worried about the trails, but that is would switch over to rain.

The group set off at an easy pace; we planned on running long.  I had 18 in mind.  It was our typical chatter.  Crossing the first bridge on the Connector, Alan commented on the beauty.  That's when we learned he'd never run the Connector to the power lines before.  It's fun to see it through fresh eyes, although we usually do a good job appreciating the scenery.

The power line "road" was frozen.  It was much easier running than the mud the previous weeks.  We were bopping along just fine till all of sudden I was down.  The snow hid some ice.  My left leg went out straight ahead of me while my right leg folded under me resulting in my knee hitting the ice really hard.  It hurt.  A lot.  Crap.  Everyone was very patient while I needed to walk for a while. I think it was right around the bridge before crossing Elmwood Rd.  After a short walk, I was able to run again.  It was still pretty painful, but Alan said if I needed to I could jump off the run with him at the next road.  He was heading back to his house; it would be shorter than running back from where we were.  It was good to know I had options, but by the time we got to W. Pownal Rd, my knee was runnable.  However, talking with Alan about where that road went, we realized it was part of the Animal Loop.  We were very close to the Highland Coos!!!  We were all on the same page and up for a short branch off our trail to visit the wonderful beasts.

We were rewarded with the owner being out and more than willing to allow us to visit and share with us lots of knowledge about her animals.  Not only did we get to check in on Maisy, Errol, and Iona (the cows), we met a very handsome, friendly pig named Rory.  All the while there was a super happy border collie getting Tim to throw a tennis ball for her.  We were meeting the second pig when Ian, Zak, and Daren (was there another person?  I'm not sure) came running up the driveway.  They'd followed our footprints.  Ian said, when they saw we'd turned off onto the road, he knew exactly where we were going.

By then we'd spent so much time visiting the animals, we were all cold.  It was time to get moving.  Alan parted ways heading off with Ian's group who were doing a shorter route.  Mindy, Dora, Tim and I headed back to the power lines to resume our journey to Pineland.  When we reached the railroad tracks, we had a choice:  head down the tracks to Pineland as planned or continue on the powerlines.  None of us really liked the idea of the tracks, so we opted to explore new ground.  While very pretty for power lines, it was also very marshy.  Much of the "run" was bog jumping.  We decided on our turnaround when we came across a swampy area that looked like it would require us getting pretty we to cross.  By now, my knee was starting to get pretty stiff.  The hills hurt both up and down.

It wasn't too far after we turned around that Tim discovered that the snow was packy.  The first few snowballs were thrown.  And a very little, very evil snowman was born.  Tim gave him red berries for eyes.  Yikes!  He also had a little snowdog.  The knee was even stiffer for the stop.

After we crossed Elmwood, and were maybe 1/3 of the way down the final stretch of power line, one of us noticed a trail going into the woods.  We were still in the mood for exploring.  It was probably a well-traveled snowmobile trail in winter, not single track at all.  It was pretty straight.  It was way better than power line running.  I correctly guessed that it would be the very "road" that is briefly on our regular Connector trail right where the TMs made the little rock "bridge" when we were helping work on the trail.  Nice.

When we got back to the Boundary Trail, I (my knee) required walking which gave us more opportunity for snowball fights!  The biggest fight was, fittingly, on the summit.  We also built another, non-evil, snowman.  From there it was down the Switchback, kinda skipping a lot of the switching back.  Now how do you cap off a run/adventure like that?  Edna and Lucy's, of course!

very swollen, the color just developing

14.5 miles of fun