Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 11:31:35 -0500 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 24 Us Carlton Pokers Would Rather Hike Than Ditch "We're lost, but we're making good time!" --Yogi Berra "The Yogi Book: 'I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said'" (1998) [Editor's note: Unfortunately everything hinted at in the author's last submission, entitled "Uncle Sam's Trillion Dollar Ultra," proved true. The Internal Revenue Service, in typical bloodless fashion, actually did mistake the piece as a whole for a red flag and summarily hauled him in for an audit. Following an adventure more grueling than Barkley, Hardrock, and Badwater combined, Kitsch finally e-mailed this Part 24 from federal prison.... Apparently, the IRS didn't "buy" his deducting that entire 1999 summer vacation to Colorado on Schedule C as paying "dues" to write his just-released M&B magazine article. It was ruled that he could only deduct that portion of the 1999 dues as went into that part of the article he wrote in '99, and carryforward the fractional percentage which pertains to that part of the article he rewrote in 2000 to be amortized over the next 19 years. But when he filed his amended return, the IRS checked the official '99 Hardrock finishers' list, didn't find his name there, disallowed the entire deduction, figured his "correct tax," assessed a late fee and penalty, and, when he could not pay this, put him away in the same slammer where they housed Pete Rose, pending an appeal to the Ultramarathon Hall of Fame. Kitsch is afraid that, when the IRS discovers this too is a fabrication, he may remain behind bars for quite some time. He asks that you please contribute what you can to his bail fund.] "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." --Yogi Berra "The Yogi Book: 'I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said'" (1998) [Author's note: Something new! From here on out we have audio-visual aids. Yes! For this chapter, please point your browsers to the following web address: http://www.shta.org/Photos/p034.htm If you click on the straw-chewing dude laying back, knees bent, hands behind head, and gazing up lazily at the sunny sky--that's not me. Stop clicking. The Superior Trail 100 trail does not summit Carlton Peak and, frankly, neither did I. Besides, it's about to start pouring rain.] Let's review. I'm into my 24th chapter and I'm not even halfway done. The 50-mile turnoff (hence the halfway mark) is halfway up the side of Carlton Peak. Carlton Peak is the highest point in the entire state of Minnesota. Governor Ventura, the lowest. A guy named Kitsch just passed me. I'M named Kitsch! Both my water bottles are empty and the next aid station is well PAST the 50-mile turnoff. Otherwise, we suppose, all the 50-milers would be hanging around the aid station and never turn off. Or get out of the way. It's been a glorious sunshiny day all day. But it's getting to be night. And the guy who passed me predicted: RAIN. Anybody who's anybody has already passed this point. The 50-milers are undoubtedly all done by now. I must be the last bloke on the course. Except for my three followers (apostles? apostates?), Hardrock and Coco and Jo, I must certainly be in last place. And, if you noticed at the top of this piece, I no longer feel like singin'. I can't even get to my pacer yet. She's undoubtedly in the back of her camper-van, with her main blade Heap Chef Hatchetman, having lunch, supper, AND dessert--even though I've not seen a grocery store within 44 miles of here. And I don't have poles. I don't have spikes. And I'm expected, very soon now, to climb halfway up the highest peak in Minnesota. Never mind not singin'. I just want to lie down and cry. I'm having a bad premonition about a tax audit. I brighten a little when I remember my coach's story. My coach. I believe my coach was Chief Crazy Horse in a former life, and they're currently blasting out another mountain in South Dakota to look like him. When they're done, he'll be wearing a threadbare Sunmart one-size-fits-all baseball war bonnet, faded Mississippi T, and hoisting both Hardrock water bottles in defiance in front of him--and they'll both be as empty as mine are now. Never mind the fact that they're stone and weigh 800,000 tons apiece. That, you can take for granite. My coach had told me about the time he was running along for a long, long time with a 50-miler runner a couple years ago in this very same race. Crazy Horse, of course, was on the 100-mile trail, although at the time neither one knew what the other was doing. "Hey," the other guy finally said, "the 50-mile turnoff oughta be along here somewhere, don't ya think?" "FIFTY-MILE TURNOFF!" my heroic chief roared. "Man, didn't you see it? It was right in front of your face. We must've passed it five miles ago!" Then my chief looked at me when he told the story. "I mean, this sign was pink and orange and striped with ribbons all over it, and it was set right in your face at eye level. You'd have to be brain-dead to miss it, Kitsch!" "I guess he must've been brain-dead," I said. "Nah," said the coach, "I was. I was only doin' the fifty that year too." I smile in spite of myself. I tell myself: "I won't miss that sign. I won't miss that sign." Of course I won't. And I'll probably see it and turn off, too, completely forgetting that this year I AM DOING THE HUNDRED!! While I'm thinking all this, the terrain changes. I'm climbing again. Up and up and up I go, heeling-and-toeing boulder after boulder, surmounting rubble upon rubble, gasping ever gasping in the much thinner air of fifteen hundred feet. Then the trail turns positively ugly. The boulders get HUGE, the steps get ridiculous, the narrow space between canyon walls gets even narrower. I suddenly feel giddy--like Minnehaha, the poet Longfellow's convenient Indian of ridicule. Except, of course, that Minnehaha was an Indian squaw, and I, for sure, ain't very brave. I cast my gaze upwards as far as the eye can see. There, suddenly in the distance of, oh, thirty meters (give or take), juts out the peak of Carlton Peak. I look straight ahead and there's the sign: "50-Mile Finish ---> (THATAWAY)" It's not such a big sign either. Maybe, oh, thirty centimeters (give or take) with one or two slashes of pink day-glo paint. In blacklight at a frat party, I'm sure it'd look "boss." But out here in the twilight, halfway up the Carlton top, with not one smoker in sight, it just looks like a small hand-painted sign. Could be easy to miss. Especially if you're not even drunk yet and STILL brain-dead. I resist the temptation to turn right. I cast one last glance at the towering majestic moss-capped peak above me and then one fast glimpse at an even rockier trail leading down the incredible mountainside beside me (thinking the whole time about how, at the 50-mile finish right now, they're having a real beer chugging brat party with all kinds of cool smoke coming out of a grill) and then press on. My destiny is not fun and merriment this evening, nor the giddy slap-happy conclusion to another brilliant day of ultrarunning. No. My destiny is pouring rain and soggy misery and the forlorn continuation of another whole NIGHT of endless hiking, nasty slipping and sliding, and falling forever flat on my face when the whole deluged trail turns all at once to mud. But... ...that wasn't to be the worst of it either. Wait'll I tell you about losing my shoes! Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll... How does THIS figure into our hero's day-glo painted hydration system, sports fans? How does THIS impending disaster restore electrolyte balance and speed muscle recovery? And how in the name of Noah's Ark does THIS chicken Injun propose to hike for fifty more miles over sharp pointy rocks and mountain-sized boulders completely BAREFOOT??? Is this "an option," or what??? Well, it is still an "unlikely" adventure after all. And we'll have a fresh new excuse made up for you, too, next time Kitsch sends us another one of his cliff-hanging installments--from jail. Stick around for Part 25, soon to be given an early release for--not good, but maybe--not too bad behavior. Kitsch Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net