Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:58:18 -0500 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 5 In Those Most Sincere Words of Forrest Gump, "I Have To Pee" "The wind in the wild Made a tattletale sound And a wave broke over the railin' And every man knew As the captain did too 'Twas the witch of November come stealin'" --Gordon Lightfoot "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" "SON OF A WITCH!" I hollered, silently and to myself, in my motel room. "I've only got TWENTY MINUTES to plan and pack all my drop bags!!" "And I've got DUCT TAPE STUCK ALL OVER ME!!!" Think, Kitsch, think. No, cut the tape first. No, think first. Okay, Okay. Where's the scissors? WHAT SCISSORS??? Where's the trail map? I just bought a trail map--in four parts!--at the Tourist Information booth. Where's the map? I need the map to plan my drops! WHERE'S THE FRIGGIN' SCISSORS? I have them here in my luggage from home. WHAT HOME??? Oh, that home. Right. Get a grip on it. Gitsch a gumee. Getsch dis gummyshit offa me. WHAT THE HELL AM I THINKIN' ABOUT?? Calm down. Here. Over here is my nail clippers. Good. Just in time. I'll just use this to cut the tape off. Uh, up. RIGHT! I'll cut the tape UP into luggage-tag-sized strips. Good. Small strips. That way no one will ever know how much tape I've wasted. WASTED! I AM WASTED!! Relax relax relax relax relax. Right. Here. There. That's it. That's the first tag. Stick it on the Western States bag. WHERE'S MY WESTERN STATES BAG??? Relax. It's in the bathroom. Right. It's in there for the razor. In the tub. In case all this gets to be too much for me. WHAT AM I THINKING!!! Oh, right. The bag's in the tub. Get it. BE CAREFUL THE TAPE DOESN'T GET STUCK TO SOMETHING--oh shit--ELSE... Here. Relax. I can get it unstuck from the tub. Relax. Relax. Relax relax relax relax relax relax there it's almost--oops-- okay, I got it unstuck and the bag. I got the bag. It's in the bag. Hey, cool, I've got this in the bag. WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT??? I HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES TO FINISHING PACKING! I HAVE NO IDEA ON EARTH WHERE I'M SUPPOSED TO "DROP" THIS STUFF!!! WHERE'S MY PRE-RACE BROCHURE? THAT'S GOT WHERE I'M SUPPOSED TO "DROP" THIS STUFF!!! I'm in the bathroom now. I've got the bag in the tub. I got the stuck untaped. I got the stuck tag bagged to the tape. In the bag....YES! The magic marker!!! Oh shit. I HAVE TO PEE!!! HOW DO I GET THIS TAPE OFF MY FINGERS??? OH SHIT! NOW IT'S ON MY ZIPPER!!!!!!!! I HAVE THIRTEEN-AND-A-HALF MINUTES!!!!!!!!!! NOW IT'S ON MY WATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Butch knocks on the door. "Is everything okay in there?" Cheezesiss. Am I thinking THAT loud? "Okay, Butch!" I holler as I splash all over the tank, underside of the seat, floor, T.P. roll, etc. "I just thought I'd let you know I'm ready any time you are!" Oh great. This sonuvabitch's ready already. "Almost there! Gimme a coupla more minutes, okay?" "Sure. Let me know!" "Okay!" I zip. NOW IT'S STUCK TO YOU-KNOW-WHAT!!!!!!! Relax relax relax relax relax relax. You can do this, Kitsch. You can relax relax. You can even re-relax. You can re-relax the first time. Then you can relax all over again. This is not hard. Well, THAT's not. For sure. All right. Just run a little water. Change jeans. Relax. Relax. You can do this. All is not lost. Yet. OK. Got it off. OUCH!!! Good. Now while you're in here cut a few more strips. Just stick their corners lightly to the sink. That's it. Good. NOW THROW THE REST AWAY!!!!! Only need two bags. Yes, that's what I figured all the way driving up here. Only really and truly need two. One to pick up my main light and one to drop it off next morning. Oh shit. It starts in the dark. Chuck says I'll need a light from the very start. What to do. What to do. What to do!!! Relax. Relax relax relax relax re--hey! I'll wear an extra fanny pack! Carry the light in there! I'll have it with me the whole time! Whenever I need it--I've got it. Brilliant, Kitsch!!! I unstick my watch. I wanna cry. I have less than ten minutes to drive back to the campground and follow Medium-Sized-Running-Little-Bare and her boy Schultz to Grand Marais. With Butch, too, in tow. Ah, screw it. Just do what ya can for ten more minutes, Kitsch, and then leave it. Come back later. That's it! I'll drop off Little Skin and Malt Liquor and their boy Butch at the prerace predinner prebriefing--then, while they "meet" and "eat," I'll drive back here and pick up these last few bags. Voila! Magnifique! Shit-tique!!!! The bags STILL WON'T BE PACKED! So, I throw the Petzl light in the fanny pack and leave. Maybe I'll find some help and guidance at the prerace briefing. Maybe at the dinner. Maybe they won't pick up all the damn bags till later. Much later. I'll just put my trust in Cheeses and let it be revealed to me. One quick rap on Butch's flap and we're saddling up the horses. "Here," he says, "are all my drop bags. Can I put them in your trunk?" "You got 'em all planned and sorted and labeled and shit?" "Sure do!" "Shit." Hmmm. HIS bags take up most of the room in the trunk. Hmmm! "Well, Butch," I say, "maybe I'd better plan to come back for my bags after I drop the rest of you off. What with all their stuff in here too, I don't think there'll be room for mine." "Good idea." "Let's ride." He climbs into his van and I get behind the wheel of my rented whatever-the-hell-it-is. All new, of course. And all sticky. He follows me to the campground and there's Sylvester and Tweetie sitting already in the front of pop's truck. "What kept ya?" hollers Schultz. "Shipwreck," I say. "Just let's, you know, drive, okay?" He and Little (possibly even less) Bare (if that's possible) drive off first in line. Then me. Then Butch. Little B. reaches out and waves. I'm lost in thought and it doesn't even occur to me to wave back. Now I need to explain one or two uninteresting features about the terrain we're traversing on top of. First of all, this is a one-hundred-mile race and it's fifty miles to Grand Marais. We start in Silver Bay (where we're starting from right now) and we finish in that other town (where we're driving to right now.) Hmmm. How can THIS be? (Are YOU asking ME? You know perfectly well I'll give you a perfectly unbelievable explanation. You trust me. You know I've delivered in the past. You see no reason why I should somehow not exaggerate or embellish upon the truth right now. Right?) Hah! The Superior Hiking Trail TAKES THE SCENIC ROUTE! This sonuvabitch winds and twists and meanders halfway to Manitoba before it EVER gets close to Grand Marais. I just thought I'd explain that to you now, seeing as how we're driving past all these infernal road signs saying stuff like: "Grand Marais--44 miles." As I'm driving along with tears in my eyes. As I'm chugging constantly on my half-gallon of Gatorade that I picked up at Zippy's Zupermarket after my breakfast that noon at the Northwinds Cafe next door. So, like, I'm explaining all this to you in my mind as we drive. I'm taking lots of swigs off my half-gallon bottle. I'm enjoying myself. The sun is out, it's a beautiful day, ol' Gitche Gumee is resplendent on my right, and I'm going through anaphylactic shock as I realize that our "trail" is NOT going to be next to Lake Superior. Oh no. Then it would only be a 50-mile race. And then, of course, it would be straight. And flat. And, no doubt, constantly interfering with commercial shipping. Oh no. The Superior Hiking Trail is somewhere waaaaaaay off to our left. Somewhere waaaaaaay up there on top of those cliffs. Somewhere back in those woods. Somewhere where the moose all are. And the wolves... Suddenly we're all stopped. Dead. Stopped dead in our tracks because of, yes, ROAD CONSTRUCTION!!! Oh, Cheese-zits. Oh poi. I look at my watch. I scrape some more sticky stuff off. I realize, I think, that we're not going to get back to the briefing any too soon. We're not going to make it early enough for me to drop off my riders, race back to the motel, and finish packing my bags. I take another swig. After, oh, only about FIFTEEN MORE minutes the flagman lets us pass. Oh wow. One whole lane of the two-lane road is being fixed all at once. We now have to take turns with all the other yokels coming south into the town we've just driving out of. Ah... but also into the town WE ALSO will soon be TRYING LIKE HELL to return to, too. I look again at the watch. I scrape again. I swig. I'm cool. I'm getting ready for the race. I'm hydrating. More road construction. More slow-downs. More traffic than I've ever seen in my life on one lousy two-lane tree-lined tourist-trap rural route. This is gonna take forever. (Which I'm sure is your very same sentiment, gentle reader, as you realize "this sonuvabitch has taken FIVE WHOLE CHAPTERS to talk about this ridiculous foot race--and he's not even at the start line yet!") But now, more importantly--and stuck in traffic as I am and following along in an inviolate and unstoppable procession of three isolated and non-communicating vehicles with me stuck right in the middle-- I HAVE TO PEE!!!! Wellllllllllllllllllll! Will our hero wet his pants? (Don't forget, he changed. The other soaked ones are back at the motel. So, of course, they would be useless to change back into now.) Will there be any MORE delays in getting the caravan to Grand Marais? Will there be a place to pee THERE? Or will the high school to which they are headed be surrounded by hundreds of neighborhood houses full of law-abiding Minnesotans in their "neighborhood watch" mentality sitting there staring out the window--just WAITING for rapscallious young people to try peeing on their parking lot??? (Guess I'm let off the hook there, eh? I gotta be damn near older than Cheeses.) Stay tuned next time, high school parents and other good citizens of this fine country, and--if you don't call the police--"The Further Adventures of Pissman and Pourin'" will return shortly with Part 6. [Another Author's Note: I was right. A gentleman who apparently knows the trade wrote back after my last episode to explain that duct tape really wasn't invented to seal up ducts. It was just some thick, fabricky type stuff to, apparently, stuff in and around these ventilation passageways as added insulation. Or something. And the stuff LOOKED like duck's down, so that's how it came to be known as "duck tape"--and NOT, as we ultrarunners have been abusing the living molting cheezesiss out of, "duct tape" as it's erroneously spelled today. Just thought I'd pass that clarification along to you. Have a nice day!] "Kitsch" Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net