Airing Dirty Laundry. (The Bad, The Ugly, and The Wonderful)

No, this post is not about me hanging up my sweaty Icebreaker shirt for the next wearing.

I had promised a post documenting The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly....along with The Wonderful. THE GOOD, was the previous post. I have fulfilled that part of the promise. Now, here's the rest.

THE BAD
Few people know that I have a bad bad problem of procrastination. Not just a silly occasional thing--I can really get myself into trouble with it. Anything hard to do or confrontational, I tend to ignore, put my head in the sand, push it back to tomorrow or next week. Sometimes it is small silly things that fester and erode into big bad things. I am not so proud of this.

I got a speeding ticket a few months back near my house. I drive a hybrid, and I am all about gas mileage and was coasting down a hill where I was clocked at 9 miles over the speed limit. I was upset about it, especially when I discovered that the posted speed was 5 miles less going one direction than going the other....on the SAME ROAD! I just knew I could take some pix of the speed limit signs and beat the charge, but I forgot my court date. A week or two later, my drivers license was suspended. I should have immediately fixed the problem, but I let it go and didn't worry about it.

A couple of months later, I was pulled over for having an expired tag. Yup, I put that off too. Very stupid. Tagging my car would have been about 90 dollars, but I just blew it off. Of course, this time, I was also ticketed for driving with a suspended license, and was given another court date to clear it up. I intended to go, but forgot. See a trend here? For quite a while, I have been driving around...insured, but unlicensed.

THE UGLY
Coming back from my Arkansas marathon, we ate in Ft Smith, and had to take HW 64 back to I-40, which took us through Roland Oklahoma. I know from years past that this is a bad speed trap. I even thought about it briefly as I drove through around 8:00 Saturday evening, but was chatting with Kathy as I drove by a sneaky hiding small town cop who was waiting for another car to stop. I noticed a white pick-up truck passing me on the right as the police car whipped out. AHA! I thought--that dude is gonna get it, but a lump of fear arose in my throat anyway.My luck was bad though, and I was the one pulled over. "This is soooo NOT GOOD," I told Kathy. I watched as Bubba got out of the car and waddled up to my window.(OK, I borrowed this pick....but you get the idea--this pic is not too far off.) "Do you know why I pulled you over?" was one of his questions after the license and proof of insurance request.
"Well, not really," I tried. He told me he clocked me at 57 in a 45 zone. (I am skeptical of this, and wondered if he maybe clocked the pick-up that had passed me.) Then he pointed out that my tag was expired, and had expired several months back.

This story goes from bad to worse. My current insurance certificate was at home right by my tag info, as I intended to get that before the trip, but....

It didn't take long for them to find out about the other unpaid tickets and that my DL was suspended, and was also expired. I must have seemed like cop candy to them! "Sir, I need you to step out of the vehicle." They directed me to the back of my car, and had me put my hands on the back of the car. I thought a frisking was coming, but they just pinched at my pockets and called it good. They asked me if I had any weapons. I told them no, and they asked if I was SURE? Nope, no weapons. Any drugs? No. I am surprised they did not search my car.

I am not sure what Kathy was thinking, or Jason and Lisa who were following us in their car. Next came the hand cuffs. OMG, they had my hands behind my back and slapped those bad boys on me. They were not too forceful, but did put the cuffs on pretty tight.I was taken to the back seat of the patrol car where I waited for what seemed an eternity. There is no leg room in the back seat, and I am a short legged dude. I had to really focus to NOT FREAK OUT. After a while (I think they were questioning Kathy) I noticed a tow truck pull up, and Officer Quickticket opened the door and asked why I took the key with me. My car is a Prius and has a remote that only has to be inside the car for the car to start. He needed that key to give to his tow truck buddy. I could not get it out of my pocket with the handcuffs, and after he put his manly hand into my right pocket, he decided to uncuff me and let me get it for him, which I did. In all fairness though, at that point he seemed to be a little more civil and recuffed me with my hands in front and even loosened the cuffs a little and set them so they could not accidentally tighten up. He said we were going to the police station and my friends were gonna bail me out. WOW!It took a long time for them to do all the paperwork. Writing 4 more citations takes time. They had a ton of questions for me. Name, address, phone #, but no SSN. What meds was I on, and what was each drug for? Any tattoos? I was waiting for Aliases....and I was gonna tell them Trail Zombie, but that question never came up.

About the bail....the amount was $800!!!! YIKES! I was truly nauseated when I heard that. Just sick. Just leave me here!

THE WONDERFUL
My awesome friends would not hear of the idea of me staying in jail. $800 dollars was scraped up, thanks to an angel of a friend. Of course, she reserved the right to SMACK ME SILLY, which I more than deserved. After an hour +/- in the jail of Hicksville, I was free to go.

I am just amazed, floored, and humbled by my sensational friends. I have heard an old saying that said true friends will bail you out of jail, and mine WILL! :-)

Now, two days later, I have spent a few hours on hold with court clerks and the DMV. I am about half way to being clean with the law. My car is tagged, and out of impound, thanks to the help of Dana and my Dad. I had to bring a driver with me to drive my car home--I did not dare drive it out of Roland knowing Cletus would radio Roscoe and they'd check me out before I crossed a county line. I have to be downtown early tomorrow to talk to a judge about some old tix. I suspect this whole mess will end up costing $2000 or more, besides two trips to Roland and a couple of missed days at work.

Have I learned a lesson? Oh please believe me, I have!

LOViT!!!!

I learned about the Lake Ouachita Vista Trail (LOViT) Marathon a year ago when a group of us went to Sunmart and my friends Randy Ellis and Rob Phillip instead went over into Arkansas to do this low-key trail run. The Arkansas folks put on several great trail runs that are no frills, no t-shirt, no medal, no entry fee, no whining events. The cool thing is that they are always fun events, great courses, good aid stations, and the price is right....just a couple bucks in a donation bucket is all that is asked.

I had got on google and found a motel that seemed close to where the race start was. Google is great, and I was even luckier than I thought as the lodging was only 1 mile away from the race.However, the above picture WAS NOT the motel. It was an old concrete block building, which would have been great in the event of a tornado. The windows and doors were drafty, and did I mention it got down to 17 degrees during the night? When we arrived, only 15 minutes before 9:00, our rooms were ice box cold. No need to turn the heat on if no bodies are inside, right? The old wall heating unit ran for an hour before it was warm enough to undress for bed. BRRR!

It was a not-so-restful night. Not sure why, as I was not at all nervous about the race. We turned out the lights around 10:30 and at 12:30ish, I stumbled across the room to turn the heat DOWN. The heater was slow to heat but was doing a better job. Then, I kicked off all the covers (I was wearing PJs) and snuggled my head as close to the icy single paned window as possible to try to keep my body temp cool enough to go to sleep.

Someone's I-Phone started blaring at 6:30, and that along with the noise of several winter bass fisherman right outside my single pane window, woke me up....no chance of dozing back off.Jason and Lisa, who I shared the room with, were getting ready going through the ritual of applying tape, body glide, butt paste, tights, Icebreaker apparel, and such. Notice the nice ambiance of the room.We had adjoining rooms with Susan, Caroline, and Kathy, and their room was no nicer than ours.

Our whole group before the start.

Chewing on your glasses....a nervous habit?

Without a lot of fanfare, the race was off. A marathon on trails. Oh there was a bit of road to start....maybe a quarter mile, and then all the sweet single track you could ever want.And several great view of the lake....hence the reason for the name of the trail I would think....A lot of the trails were covered with leaves. These leaves hid a few rocks and roots. I was able to readily find these hidden roots and on a number of occasions did my best to dislodge them. However, the score was 79-0 in favor of the roots. A couple of these encounters sent me sprawling to the ground. More on the second crash and burn later.

Caroline and Susan motor up a pine needle cushioned trail.


Lisa running strong early on.

Jason and Kathy took off like a shot, and other than seeing them after the turn-around, I did not see them until the finish.

I'll probably go a little overboard posting pix of the trails, but these trail were that good!Throughout the day, we saw nice park benches installed at various places deep in the woods along the trails. I marveled at the trouble someone went to to put these benches in. Someone hiked materials miles and miles on the trails to set these benches, and there were at least 20 of them.Lots of wooden bridges too. Notice the whitish rocks lining the trail. These rock, I am guessing, were some kind of quartz. Some were impressive enough I gave thought to taking a souvenir, bit my tights had very small pockets. Not a good idea.
Friendly aid station volunteers....gotta LOViT!

Onward, up one short climb and down another.Not all of the race was on single track. There were a couple of short sections with gravel roads.

About a mile before the turn-around, we came to a very significant hill. I think the website called this a 450 foot climb. I think it was considerably more than that. There were several switchbacks in the climb, and this section was also some of the rockiest trails we encountered. Still fun though.Caroline takes a breather on the way up.Susan bombs the downhill on her return trip.

A cool tree....would work well as a goal post.

Another short section of jeep road. These sections were quite runnable, and it makes me think I could run a PR here if I showed up rested.

Another bridge, another bench.

Last major climb of the race. 25.5 miles, and less than a mile to go.

In these smaller races, basically when people finish, they might stay and chat for a bit, and then they go home. That's a given. Slower people like me don't have a whole lot of crowd support when trotting across the finish line, but Kathy and Jason were there to cheer us on. Also, Phillip Carr, the race director was there to congratulate us and record our finishing time.
I think they put on a great race. having such a nice bunch of trails to run on makes the job easier. The course was well marked--the LOViT is marked with white blazes, and the major truns were marked with yellow ribbon and arrows. We did miss a turn at one point but it was due to chatting and not paying attention. This is definitely a race I'd do again.

Day 4

It's the 4th day of Thanksgiving. Usually by now, I am SICK of turkey leftovers, and feeding the remainder of the leftover dressing to the dogs who never get tired of rewarmed food. But this year, I have yet to have a bite of the traditional bird. I feel so un-American!

I am in the start of a streak. Since the Rt 66 marathon (and actually since the day before) I have not missed a day of running. That's 8 days straight. No significantly long runs (except the Rt 66) but I did have 2 runs totaling 14.4 miles on Thanksgiving day.




Today,
I will extend
the running streak
and maybe
put a halt
to my turkey cravings.

Should be
an interesting
taste test.

Thanksgiving without turkey! (Osage Hills Trip on lower part of post)

Kind of an odd Thanksgiving this year. Dana had to work a 12 hour shift at the hospital. My Mom had surgery yesterday and the witch doctor hospital barely had her skull stitched up before sending her home. She was/is still groggy and we decided to do the traditional dinner thing later in the weekend.

A annual tradition in Tulsa on Thanksgiving morning is the Von Franken Run. This is a fun-run around Zink Lake, and the only entry fee is a sack of non-perishable food for the Salvation Army. I was able to sneak out some pickled beets, along with some other veggies. Dana actually packed up a bag of goodies enough to feed an army....well, a small army. Ok, it would feed 2 or 3 people if they liked veggies.The 400-500 people running came up with around 4,000 lbs of food for the less fortunate. I think we did good.

It was a picture-perfect morning without a cloud in the sky. Temps were in the mid 30s at the start, but not a bit of wind. What a nice day to run.

Jack Wing, the voice of nearly every big race in Tulsa, and Dan Threlkeld handled the emcee duties. Dan was a popular fellow, delivering such good weather.

A whole gang of RW/TATUR peeps awaited the start of the run. Sandra's headband says it best. Burn a few calories early to offset that extra serving of turkey-and-dressing! Have the 2nd piece of pecan pie, you'll need another afternoon run.

Even Rock Star Ed bought into the calorie-pre-burn theory.



After the run, three of the running stores in Tulsa, including RunnersWorld, donated lots of give-aways and Dan drew and called numbers. It took quite a while to go through the stash of t-shirts, running socks, and water bottles.

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After the morning run, my nephews John and Jeff and I went north through Bartlesville towards Pawhuska to Osage State Park to run the trails there. I had been there a couple of times a few years back, and remembered the trails being ok....not great, but worth an occasional trip. I was thinking you had to use your imagination to string 5 miles together. Either there are more trails there now, or I had missed some of them in my past trips. After looking at a crudely drawn map, we found a way to sting a loop together that used all the trails in the park, and still see a few cool sights along the way.We started with the cabin trail.Some of these trails are merely mowed swatches across a field....not my favorite kind of trails, but there was not a lot of this, and they were smooth and runnable.

Straightaway, eagle-eye John spied an, um, an eagle. Sorry for the pun. It was down this steep wash which featured a 10' drop down some wet slick rocks. Funny how the camera seldom picks up the steepness of an incline.Actually, what he saw was a vulture feeding on a dead hawk. Here, he holds up the remains of the big bird that was being eaten by another big bird.

A stream., Sand Creek I think, runs through the park area. part of the creek is muddy and ugly, but parts of it run through large boulders and has more the look of a mountain stream.

Across the stream was a large outcropping of limestone towering in places 100 feet or so. These bluffs seem to have a few caves, or at least small crevices. We debated crossing the stream but there was the matter of this sign.Oops. Well, you guessed it. The Five Man Electric Band said it best. Maybe I'll YouTube the video.There were several caves, but this was the biggest one we found. Most were big enough for industrious field mice, or timber rattlers during the summer.Any kind of good running pace was blown traipsing back and forth along these bluffs. But we were not thinking about anything but having fun.Recrossing the stream, John and Jeff tried to install some new stepping stones.

John takes a break after heaving large stones. (He still got his feet wet!)

A cool diversion from the trails. This stream has running water except in the very driest days of summer.Mussels anyone?


We did a little climbing on a trail that was well maintained, and then it got a little technical.Yes, the trail goes there.

There were several trail spurs leading back to the river highlighting bluffs like these.Of course, the boys had to climb down to a little shelf 30 feet below on the face of the bluffs.

After that, we left the river and headed towards the other end of the park/ We ran through some bottom land on a long loop that seemed to be cut and maintained by a John Deere.

If the sign says don't do it, John is gonna do it.

Another trailhead, and more climbing.
Further up the trail, we came to this natural amphitheater.

Nearing the top.

From the Lookout Tower.


Now the boys can never say I never let them drive.

Getting late in the day. I wonder if there are trails on the other side of this lake.

The sun rests on a tree limb before retiring for the night.

We found a mountain bike trail that was new to me. At 4:00, we started out down this twisty winding single track. I am guessing it is a loop since we came to a T-intersection about a 1/4 mile in. I looked at my watch and garmin and decided we would run out for 30 minutes and then if we did not loop back, we'd turn around and come back. We went a little over a mile, and the trail continually turned further and further away from the trailhead, so I made the decision to turn back. I have been out on new trails after dark without a light, and it's not fun....especially when the temperature drops like a rock when the sun goes down. I want to find out more about this newish bike trail. maybe it goes on for 10+ miles....would be a great run.

Now, it is 2:00 Friday morning. I still have had no turkey and dressing. Dana did bring me some potato casserole, sliced ham, and a sweet potato dish from work. YUM!

Hope everyone had a great turkey day. I loved mine,, even without turkey!