Saturday, 16 August 2003

Dad and I went out to get him a scanner yesterday. This morning, after Jackie and Katy headed out to their classes, Dad and I hooked his scanner up and figured out how to make it scan pictures.

Once Dad was happily scanning, I went for a run.

You'd think I'd have learned by now the fundamental fact of the Kal-Haven trail: It's uphill all the way from the lake to Kalamazoo. I know that, but it's easy to forget that it's true not only over the course of the trail as a whole, but over each segment of the trail as well.

My plan was to run 4 miles. The trail passes pretty close to Katy's house, but there's no really good parking where the trail crosses the roads, so I drove to the trailhead and parked in the parking lot.

I ran for 24 minutes as the outbound leg, which I would normally expect to be about 2 miles. As soon as I turned around, though, I was dramatically reminded of the aforementioned fundamental fact. It was just barely uphill, but that long steady slog was wearing. I usually do the second half of the run just about as fast as the first half, but a second 24 minutes saw me well short of the end.

Tired and sweaty, I decided that was about as far as I felt like running. I slowed to a walk and then trudged on back to the car, a half mile or a bit more. I don't know if I ran farther than 2 miles on the downhill half or the run or slower than a 12-minute pace on the uphill half. It was a good workout, though.

I was surprised at how busy it was. The parking lot was half full when I arrived and more than three-quarters full when I left.

There was an interesting mix of people on the trail.

There were lots of family groups, many with children or dogs or both. The dogs were well-behaved, except for one handsome (if somewhat stout) basset hound whose owner couldn't control it.

There were quite a few bicyclists. Some in family groups, some couples, a few lone riders. There were a couple of larger groups, both all-male, that I suspected of being a team out for a training ride. As I was approaching the end I saw several tandem cycles heading down the trail with blind riders on the back seat.

It's good to see the trail being used.

Once I was back and showered, Dad and I spent some time finishing up a core fraction of the web site. Late in the afternoon we uploaded the files. There are some problems--I don't like the way it renders in Safari. I'll do some more work on it tomorrow.