"Pine Needle Suppository" Week Ending 1/15/12

Sunrise. It's so hot here right now it's punishing. Brutal, brutal heat.

7am bus to the mountains. There's no laws against packing people onto these chicken-buses, so we had to stand for over 2 hours, in sweltering heat, as the bus skittered and bumped its way up a rutted dirt road to the trail head. No, you don't get a discount if you don't have a seat.

Quim, on the summit on Peine, with the now-defrosted Laguna del Alto below and our old friend Volcán Descabezado in the back ground. I wonder how tall it was before its "head" blew off?

"Never stop exploring...beer." - The North Shitfaced.

Made some contributions to THIS OTHER jaw-droppingly-wonderful blog.

Mon- 8 miles to virgen, 1:00:00. 500 ft.

Tues- 1:00:00 bike. 45 minutes weights.

Wed- AM: Torres, 7 miles, 1:00:00, 1,000ft.

PM: Same.

Thurs- 8 to virgen, 1:00:00, 500ft.

Fri- 8 to virgen w/ Steph. 1:30:00. 500 ft.

Sat- 17 miles at Vilches Alto. trail head - Peine summit - Laguna del Alto - Enladrillado - back.

5:00:00, 5, 500 ft.

Sun - AM: 7 miles, torres. 1:00:00, 1,000ft.

PM: 8 miles, torres, but returned down the road from the Virgen. 1:00:00. 1,000ft.

70 miles.

13.5 hours (w/ the bike in there, but not the weights)

11, 000 ft.

Managed to string together 2 decent weeks of training. Actually, i'm sitting on about a month of decent running, so that feels pretty nice. Yippee.

*THIS NEXT PART IS FAIRLY GROSS AND POINTLESS, DON'T READ IT*

You were warned.

Today's afternoon run (the last run of the week) started out normal enough. However, by the time I reached the woods and started climbing a bit, my guts started feeling shitty. I mean to say, they wanted to produce some shit. Hey, no big deal. So, I find a tree, center my chakra's or whatever and proceed to let loose a torrent of explosive diarrhea. It just kept coming. I thought I was going to blast myself inside out. I had no indication that this was going to be something really considerable and significant, I thought I was just going to take a shit in the woods like no big deal. Huh. Instead, it ended up being one of those really exhausting, emotionally draining shits where you feel sort of cold and shaky afterwards and like you just want to take a nap or stare off into space for a while. Even worse, I had picked a really bad place to take a shit, as there were no leaves or anything around to help deal with what had become a pretty challenging shituation splatter-wise. Hmm. Against all logic and better judgement, I grabbed a handful of fresh pine needles and attempted to use them like a whisk or brush or something and scrape my better half clean. What the fuck was I thinking? I pull my shorts back up and take a step from around the tree and gasp in pain. "Something stung me in my asshole," I say out loud. I reach down gently to confirm or disconfirm this hypothesis, when I discover (to my absolute horror) that I managed to stick a pine needle straight up my anus.

With a surgeon's steady hand, I extracted that little fucker and proceeded to have an absolutely terrible run. I don't know why I felt compelled to share this, but hey what the fuck. I can do whatever I want! ¡Libertad! ¡Arriba! ¡El pueblo unido nunca será vencido!

He's got the whole world in his hands,

Patrick.