Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 12:52:13 -0600 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 11 The Honeymooners, or, "Bang! Zoom! To Da Moon, Alice!!!" "Honeymooners find the beauty, excitement and fine accommodations on the North Shore for a relaxing, fun-filled journey." --From "North Shore Drive of Lake Superior: Vacation Travel and Accommodation Guide" ("Serving Vacationers for 62 Years: 1937-1999") [A publication that looks like it was printed in 1937, with only those other two numbers changed since] As you might imagine, we (my fellow stumbling, bumbling ultrarunners and I) had a lot of fun with what we now saw pitched, or perched, high atop that Gitche Gumee cliff late at night, or early in the morning, within the first three miles of the start of our race. For there, on the ground on the perch on the ledge on the brink, was this tent. Honest to God, a totally zipped up pup tent with just NOT a whole lotta' wakin' goin' on. "How 'bout THAT?" I call to the guy in front of me as we stumble by, by tramping RIGHTNEXTTOIT so as to avoid plummeting to our own deaths by tramping too close to the edge. "Yeah," he grunts. "Can you imagine hiking and climbing to the farthest out, most remotest point on the map of Minnesota and pitching your tent on the very top of the highest cliff--only to have a whole damn stampede of crazed ultrarunners trample your camp in the middle of the night!?" [Author's note: I'm wordy even when I'm out of breath.] "Yeah," he grunts. "What if they're newlyweds!" "Yeah," he grunts. "What a sign of bad luck this would be, eh?" "Yeah." "What the hell kind of an omen is something like THIS??" "Yeah." "Do you suppose they're still asleep?" "No." "Yeah. Didn't think so." "Yeah." "Of course, if they are, they're gonna wake up talkin' about havin' one helluva dream last night, huh?" "Yeah." [Author's note: Isn't it clear here that we're both having a lot of fun? See? Didn't I tell you?] "This dude's gonna wake up and say, 'Honey, I had the strangest dream last night.'" "Yeah." "'I dreamed somebody was roller-skating in a buffalo herd.'" "Yeah." "'And it was a STAMPEDING buffalo herd!'" "Yeah." "'Imagine that! Here we are perched on top of this cliff! There's no way in the world a buffalo herd could stampede up here.'" "Yeah." "Hey, buddy." "Yeah?" "Can you say anything besides 'yeah'?" "Yeah." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah, but it ain't only us." "It ain't?" "Nope. Ain't you forgettin' there's about three times MORE 50-milers comin' up behind us?" Oh my God. I had completely forgotten that the Superior Trail Endurance Run was actually TWO [click] TWO [click] TWO events in one. "And Certs is a breath mint," he calls back. "HUH???" [Ooh. Guess I must not have just been *thinkin'* this stuff, eh?] Well, it was all true of course. We "hunnerts" had our start time at 5 a.m. Meanwhile all those only doing fifty miles would have their start at 6. And as my guy in front so aptly pointed out, I knew there was destined to be many more 50-milers today than "hunnerts," like us. So now I'm thinkin'--and I know darn well I'm *only* thinkin' at this point because the guy in front has left me in his dust, and several more runners have come up behind, and THEY have left me in their dust--hmmm, if those campers are late sleepers, man, they are REALLY gonna have nightmares! Whimsically I think back to my own amorous misadventures. I actually "did it" once high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. But that was in broad daylight, and it was so long ago that running itself hadn't even been invented, let alone ultrarunning. We were all by ourselves--for sure. It was fall. It was beautiful. And it was romantic as hell, I thought. But that's not what SHE thought. There was only filthy dirt and lumpy rocks and scratchy leaves on the ground, and I'd completely forgotten the blanket. Never mind the fact that I was engaged to her at the time. The whole wedding was called off and she never spoke to me again after that. Hmmm. It's now some months later. Do you suppose whatever woman was in that clifftop pup tent with whatever guy that was in there with her is still speaking to him? I've asked this very question to several people since then, and this is what they tell me: "Don't be crazy, Kitsch. It was probably two Boy Scouts. They were there for the merit badge, not love and romance!" Well, sure. And it might not even have been two of 'em. It could've actually only been one. And not even a Boy Scout! It was probably just some fugitive psycho-killer who went over the wall with enough dirty linen to make himself an inconspicuous shelter. "I can't seem to face up to the facts I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax I can't sleep because the bed's on fire Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire Hey Ah'm, uh, psycho-killer, Unh-uh-uh-UH-uh, unh-uh-uh-UH-uh, better... Run run run RUN run a-waaaaaaaaaaaay!" --The Talking Heads, founded and then abandoned by David Byrne, TIME magazine's Once-Dubbed Renaissance Man These are lovely lyrics you can easily hum to yourself as you trip delightfully along some extremely horribly rocky ground which you can't see because your light has dimmed because you're using a very old battery and there's STILL a half hour to go before sunrise. And you sing these sweetly enlightening lyrics softly to yourself because you're happy. Not, of course, because you're ready to kill someone at the EverReady factory. "Shit! I thought I put in a FRESH battery yesterday!" I hollered to no one in particular, because there was NOBODY there. "Didn't I do that before going to the pre-race meeting?" It's times like these during an ultra, like, maybe about twenty minutes after the start, when you really and truly do start feeling all alone. Like maybe you're the last-place runner in the race. Like--worse (when it gets really late in the race)--you're the last human being left on the planet. It's still totally dark. You're all by yourself. You're in a really thick, dense forest. You can't see beyond the beam of your light. And you can't help but imagine all those wolf and bear eyes out there in the shadows looking straight at you and thinking, "Breakfast!!" But these thoughts are good. They help you pick up the pace. The light I am carrying I'm not actually "carrying" at all. No. It's literally a "head light"--a good-size beamlike contraption that's attached to straps and a battery case and worn on your head like a coal miner's light. Except the coal miner's light is usually attached to a helmet, and my thing is stuck to the back of my backwards souvenir baseball cap from Madison, Wisconsin. (Long story there. Uh.... no. I'll save it. Till later, of course, when I hit another bad patch of "writer's block" and don't have a clue about what I should say next.) Well, screw it. The damn battery's dying and the hat never fit good anyway. Which is why I always kept it in the car, so it could get sat on by all my passengers. Which is why I noticed it just before leaving home and was able to switch it to the back seat of my rental car. Which is even now parked in the Mary McDonald Elementary School parking lot off Edison Blvd.--never to be seen again. Or, at least that's what I was feeling right now, surrounded like I was in the Haunted Forest on my way to the West Witch's castle to try and barter for her broomstick. "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!!" I holler. And again, even more loudly this time: "I'm not in Kansas anymore, Auntie Em! I'm in Gitche Gumee surrounded by Flying Monkeys and all manner of other such fleet-footed creatures as race through ultramarathons and leave me behind in their dust!" "HELP ME, AUNTIE EM!! LIKE, I'VE TOTALLY LOST TOTO TOO!!!" You may think, now, in the comfort and safety of your own home, that such rantings as these are clearly indicative of a deranged mind, but I will assert to you that it is not so. This is clearly indicative of no mind whatsoever. No, that's a little joke. I just threw that in there because it's not time yet to get to the first aid station, and I haven't a clue as to what I'm supposed to say next. Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll... Has it finally--FINALLY--happened, fans of Radio Mystery Theater? Has our hero finally actually lost HIS marbles, too? Who is he calling out to in the middle of the dark in the middle of the night all by himself in the middle of the forest in the middle of Minnesota? And who, for the love of Mike, is AUNTIE EM??? [Author's note: Remember that the heyday for radio could well have been before "The Wizard of Oz" was ever filmed. Of course, it *was* an old movie, wasn't it. Actually I think it was released right about the time the "North Shore Drive of Lake Superior: Vacation Travel and Accommodation Guide" happened to be printed. Oh well, forget that. There is no "time." We've already argued that--ad nauseam--all over this Ultralist. So, if there is no time, then I am not hampered by such constraints as chronology or sequence. And it is then perfectly logical for our radio announcer here to never have heard of "AUNTIE FRIGGIN' EM"!!!] Be sure to stay tuned next time when "The Further Adventures of the Tin Wordsman and Alice, His Sexy (but imaginary) Moonbound Sidekick" will return again with (natch) a further adventure. ["Lovers Who Don't Exist"--next Oprah] So can I puhleeeeeze talk you all into coming back for Part 12? (This is just the dark part of the story. We will ALL be enlightened, I'm sure, when the sun comes up.) (I hope!) Kitsch Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net