Special Place

Down the pavement, I come. Wow. Seems a lot warmer than when we kicked this one off about five hours ago. Lookit. There's a mile mark on the road. Thank you crazy cyclists for those permanent lines. OK. "4." That's miles to the top. Quick math ... 2.7 miles away from done. Don't check your watch and there will be no ... need ... to ... 4:50:20 ... ack ... 19:39 final 2.7 cracks 5:10:00. What the hell. Here we go. Third gear. Fourth. And over to fifth. Nice and smooth. Hot feet. Quick steps. Relax the dots on left shoulder, right shoulder, bottom lip. There. Good. Loose arms. Soft hands. Floppy cheeks. Floppy, floppy cheeks. California Highway Patrol, baby. Chest up. Hips forward. Push off. (Wait. Whoa. Been forever since that came around. As in the college days.) Rhythm. Rhythm. Find the sound. Squish squish squish of the worn-down Vomeros. Yes. Good. Little more forward lean. Not too much. Yes. Nice. Drop the shoulders just a bit. Find the notch. Oh. Right there. Hell yeah to pullups, baby! Is that another mark? Wait. Whoa. "6." 6? I blew past 5? Holy ... Here it is. Watch check. 5:04-something a little fuzzy. Go. GO. GOGOGOGO. Now. CHP. CHP. Every step. Relaxrelaxrelax. Man, this hurts. Not even a race. Why doing this? Everything hurts. Not sure how much more I ... can ... NO! Shut it. You got this. It may have been 500 years ago since the last time, but it's still the same. YOUR choice! YOUR. CHOICE. C'mon. NOW. Go. GO. GOOOOOO. Annnnnd ... woosh ... no. more. hurt. There's Vince. "Hey Vince." I think I just scared him a little with that grunt or whatever that noise was. Slowing some now, but still no pain. Daggone. I did it. No. more. pain. Haven't been here in what seems like forever. Remember why? Yeah, I sure do. The next couple hours are gonna suck. Maybe the next day. Or two. Know what? Worth. it. My truck. The line. 5:09:48. Sweet Jesus, I'm finished.

The Long Run Game

From my log … with the definition of "long run" being at least 2 hours of Time on Feet.

2011 numbers as of 6/30/2011 were 92 long runs for 307 hours.
2012 numbers same date were 92 long runs for 309 hours.

For perspective, let's take a gander at 2003, the year I launched the Long Run Game. Here we find 100 long runs and 316 hours. For the year. Yeah. The whole year.

Lucky me.

2012 Three Days at the Fair

189.7 miles covered in 72 hours

221 laps of the .85whatever loop

7 more laps than last year

58 hours spent on my feet

12.25 hours time spent tossing, turning and sleeping

1.75 additional hours off my feet

1.5 hours, the rough estimate of how many MORE hours I was out there moving this year compared to last year, when I covered 183.5 miles.

78 reported high temp

39 reported low temp two nights. Next year, don’t pack like you’re heading to Nags Head in August!

8th overall place. This year’s total woulda been 4th last year

4 people I spent significant amounts of time with out there. Special thanks to Fred Murolo, Steve Tursi, Melissa Huggins and Bob Ring for all the laughs, convo, shared suffering.

23:00 The rough equivalent, says RD Rick McNulty, of my final 5K

0 inches of rain

1 more life-changing deal

So here's the thing ...

I have really, truly tried to do it. Be all bad. Be hard-nosed and tough. Set a goal and be serious about reaching it. Rock out and reach for the stars. Grab for the epic. Man up.

Three Days at the Fair is May 10-13. I've been saying 200 miles for awhile now. I've been writing it down. Tweeting it. Blogging it. Dreaming about it. Using it as a number during visualization.

Truth: When it comes right down to it, I got nothin'. Not really. Not like so many of my awesome, bad-ass ultrarunning friends.

I have been saying since this time last year that I really, really, REALLY want 200 miles. That I'm gonna work and toil and bust my gut and suffer like a dawg and do whatever it takes to push through the pain and misery and smack that 200-mile barrier square in the face and make it bleed red all OVER the place.

Reality check: I really don't care about 200 miles. Or even getting as far as the 183.5 miles that I did last year.

Absolute truth: I just want to have a good time. Laugh a bunch. Hear some good stories. Maybe tell a few. Push the pace every now and again. Walk sometimes when it's a bit too hot or when somebody needs a friend for awhile. Eat some yummy food. Take some great sleep breaks and then get up and walk a lap or two and then start running again. Surprise myself a time or two. Make a couple new friends.

Here's the thing: I want to totally embrace as many moments as I can stand from 9 a.m. next Thursday through 9 a.m. next Sunday. Run when I feel like it. Walk when I feel like it. Go until I'm ready to fall over with sleep, and then wake up when I wake up and do it all over again.

I'm about as fit as I can be. I'm stronger than I've been in forever. I'm running with more joy than I can remember. All systems seem to be poised on "Go."

OK, so maybe I have a goal after all — to soak in as much fun as possible.

U100 Finish Number TWELVE

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be sitting here. Twelve Umstead 100-mile finishes. Twelve.

And this 12th one was the most fun of all. No suffering. No nausea. No sleepiness. No blisters. (Note to self: Dude, keep on getting yourself sub-23-hour fit and then go at snail's pace. Wayyyyyyy more fun this way!)

Joy joy joy. This one was all about joy. Umstead at its purest. Umstead at its absolute best.

Thanks to those who ran with me. Thanks to those who volunteered. Thanks a ton to Team Gaylord, Tammy Gray (!!!), Beth Minnick (!!!), Fred "Doom" Dummar,  RD Blake Norwood, assistant RDs Joe Lugiano and Rhonda Hampton, Sally Squier and her crew at AS1 and Dorothy Hunter and all the rock stars at AS2, and everybody else who had a kind word, rang a cow bell, hollered my name, called me a baby and told me start running again. One amazing day and a bit.

Here's some of what I hope I'll remember forever ...

 • Getting longtime friend Bill Burns through much of the second half of his 8th lap when he was completely fried. Met him at AS2 while he was having some soup and looking like death warmed over. Talked him into getting out of that chair and going for a little walk. Walked and walked and talked and talked with him until I was pretty sure he couldn't stand to hear the sound of my twang any longer — and by then he only had a bit less than 2 miles left. Topics covered: NFL football. College admissions process. Hinson Lake 24-Hour tales from years gone by. The irony that we probably talked through these very same matters LAST year when I picked him at that that very same place and in about the very same shape. Burnsie is pure stud. I am proud to call him my friend.

• Seeing Jenny Nichols in cruise mode, complete with her award-winning smile, several times out there on the course as she rocked and rolled her way to a 22-hour finish. Your hugs out there were solid awesomeness. So impressed with the way you took care of business for your first 100-mile finish, rock star. Make that first of m-a-n-y!!!

• Lending a hand to my friend Linda Banks in her big ol' time of need late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, whenever that mondo thunderstorm decided to finally break bad and throw us a couple right-left combos. So I'm heading up the hill after that unmanned aid station that's at 3.5M/10.75M on the loop and is complete with port-a-johns when I see a runner up ahead in the distance looking back. Wait. Is she screaming? Pick up the pace a bit and, oh my gosh, it's Linda Banks. And she's kinda freaked out. Sorry about my headlamp in your eyes. What? Your pacers? You've gotten separated from your pacers? They think you're still in one of the port-a-johns? Oh. Tell you what. I'll double back and get 'em. So off I go. To mass commotion as I pass group after group of runner and pacer, each of whom think I've lost my freakin' mind because I'm heading in the wrong direction. And can't really hear that I'm asking, "Yo! Are you Linda Banks’ pacers?" because the wind is howling. Finally, I make contact with the pacing pair, and back we go. Was maybe a half-mile round-trip. Didn't affect my "race" at all really. And totally, completely needed to be done.

• Absolutely nailing the fueling for the first time in for. ev. er. Being so steady with a gel every 1:30, nibbling on a baggie of Chex mix with cheese cubes and dried fruit all day and night (!!!), slurping chicken broth throughout the dark, and staying with steady consumption of Gatorade, decaf sweet tea and water. And MAN did those two plain hot dogs with no buns taste awesome midway through that last lap.

• Amy Surrette doing the LAST FIFTY MILES with horrible blisters to knock out her first 100. Susan Dummar clocking a PR and then finding out several days later that she needed emergency gall bladder surgery! 

• Sprinting the final half-mile with the world-famous and completely fabulous Toni Aurilio. Crying like a baby along with Team Gaylord hard dawgs Rob Colenso and Bob Gaylord as they rushed Toni up and down and up to her 23:57 finish line. Toni clocked 24:11 last year and really, really, really wanted a sub-24. To be lucky enough to be along for that final push -- even though I still had another lap to do myself after that -- has to be among the highlights of my running career. Thank you for  letting me share in your amazing spirit, dear Toni.

• Being so full of running for my 8th and final lap. Deciding when I would run and when I would walk the whole time. Running the final 1.5 miles without stopping.

• Having a smile on my face for almost the entire 27 hours, 2 minutes and 53 seconds.

Some Umstead thoughts

from me are here.

P.S. Prediction: Jenny Nichols is gonna have Umstead begging for mercy!!! :)

Stuff I'm Chasing

Here's some of what's on my mind these days ...

• 65 pushups in 2 minutes. Did 60 on Saturday. Hard, this test. Fun, too.

• 200 Miles in 72 hours. Last year, I notched 183.5 miles at Three Days at the Fair 72-Hour. Way proud of that total, but there is a lot of room for improvement there. I slept a LOT across those four days (9 a.m. Thursday to 9 a.m. Sunday), and also spent a significant chunk of early Sunday morning on my tush waiting for a cold rainstorm to pass by. The sleep breaks make sense. The sitting was wimpy. This year, my hope is more movement and less wimpy.

• 25 pullups in 2 minutes. My best so far is 23. Very, very hard -- this one.

• Another Umstead 100 finish. I have 11 of 'em at Umstead 100. Here's hoping that I find that much-beloved-to-me finish line sometime early morn this April 1.

• A 15-second Crow Pose. 'Nuff said here.

• Keep the streak cooking. Coming up on 5 years. No plans to take a break. Plenty of time to rest in and around each day's session. Plus, superb motivator for those days when weather or a ridiculously full life schedule make you question the sanity of heading out the door.

• Really Long Thursdays. Been coming in late on Thursday mornings for awhile now. Great opportunity to punch out 4-plus-hour runwalks without getting in the way of weekend family jazz. And now that high school hoops season is about gone and ref duties with obligatory late nights have diminished, these can stretch to maybe 5 hours now and again. Way psyched to keep these rolling and package them with ...

• A couple marathon finish lines. Washington's Birthday Marathon this coming Sunday and Shamrock Marathon -- hello 5:00 pace group co-leader!!! -- in mid-March. Super excited for both of those as significant bricks in the wall for Umstead and 3Days72 and ...

• 100 miles of Reddish Knob Road. There. I said it. Don't know that it will happen this summer or even this year, but this one has been calling to me for some time now, and it needs my answer. From the Briery Branch Reservoir outhouse to the Reddish Knob parking lot is 6.7 miles. If I'm doing the math correctly, it seems that one would need to do seven complete up and downs and then one more up for 100.5 miles. All pavement. Not entirely sure about the elevation change, but it is in the neighborhood of 34,000 feet or something stupid. So my answer: yes.

Crooked Road No. 1 in the bag

Wanted to throw these numbers from Page 1 up here for NEXT year!! And in the hopes that this graphic will help me remember how inspired I was by so many of the folks who really put themselves out there day and night.

Pretty easy to stop in these short-lap deals, and never go out again. Cheers to all those who stayed out there the whole way, and also to those who took a break and came back out. I was in the latter group (as expected), and I'm 100-percent sure that I found the guts to leave that warm car and jump back in BECAUSE I heard the footfalls of Redpath, Finkle, Gabell, Kuzma, Surrette, etc. Thank you, friends. It was, once again, an honor to be in your presence.

So many stories. So much exploration. Lots and lots and lots of suffering. And triumph.

It's ON!!!

There are 12 days left in 2011. And I am 12 2-hour runwalks away from knocking out 190 of them for the year.

Two more work days and then JMU shuts down until Jan. 3, so things get a bit more flex for me. Christmas Day is looking kinda squirrely schedule-wise, so that means I either punch one out at 0400 or try for a pair of long ones on one of the other days.

If everything breaks just right, No. 190 ought to pop to life on New Year's Eve just in time for the second running of the Reddish Knob Road Marathon, a ridiculous two-trips-up-and-down a fairly steep mountain road that tallies something like 9,600 total feet elevation change.

Twelve days left. Twelve more runs between here and 190.

This thing is so on! 

Winner

Well, here we are.

Two more sleeps until Crooked Road 24-Hour. This one's new to me, so I don't know anything more than what's on the web, which is a good bit, but def not the same as having seen it with your own two feet.

Optimism is running high. I'm feeling fresh. Have actually even done a bit of speed work for this. Even knocked out a 33:19 5-miler on a crazy hilly course Thanksgiving Day that was really more like a tempo effort except for flying down the downhills. Zero residual soreness in the days after. Very psyched about that. Seems the yoga and all the extra single-leg exercise attention may be paying dividends. Guess the running has something to do with it, too.

So, I've figured and re-figured and calculated and re-calculated to come up with The Plan. I've gone to sleep thinking about it. Dreamed all night about it. Waked up with it as my first thought (actually, second thought: First thought always goes like this: "Another day? Kewl. Thank you, Lord. Now, let's go kick some ***!)

The Plan: Start 3-Days-at-the-Fair slowly and go 3 mins. run 3 mins. walk until dark, then assess. Eat once an hour. Sip sip sip from either the Nathan 10 oz. Sprint bottle or the Nathan pack with two 10 oz. bottles. Tell as many stories as I can remember. Laugh lots, especially when The Hurt settles in.

Goal: Have fun.

If I'm having a great day once the lights go out, I'm going for it. And if I'm not, then it becomes a long walk and the chance to make some new friends.

Either way, I win.

A grand scheme

This just in from my friend Bob. Bob has broken 3:00 in the marathon 13 times. And owns a 20:58 100-mile PR. Bob is a genius. He hangs around with me anyway. Community service, I think.

We're doing Crooked Road 24-Hour together Dec. 3-4. It's a .94-mile mostly gravel loop down near Roanoke. And Bob has a plan.

From Bob ...

"I have a scheme that I think will work. I am using the run/walk model, and here is what I found. Walk 3, Run 2. Running pace is 10:00, walk pace is 20:00. I came up with a two-loop scheme: 3-2-3-2-3 first loop, 13 minutes; 2-3-2-4-2, 13 minutes, second loop. For a .94 mi loop that is right at 14:00 per mile, which will get us 100, plus a little. The 3s are walks, all 2s are runs, and the 4 is a walk, once every other lap. After 26 laps, we have 36 minutes to spare and still make 100 miles. That is for each 26-lap segment, we have an extra 36 minutes, for whatever. If we don't need it after each 26 laps, we are building in a good cushion in any case. 106 laps is a 100 miles. I think this scheme is guaranteed to prevent going too fast early. Walking @ 20:00 pace is leisurely, not the least bit pushing. It's a stroll, almost. Two minutes running is not going to get your heart rate up very high, ya know? Especially on a flat course. The key is inverting the usual ratio, with the walk segment a little longer than the run segment."

I don't really know what to say about this, other than that I thought I should share it. You just should not keep stuff like this to yourself. It begs to be shared.

I will come back here now and then in the coming weeks. Just to ponder this. And to wonder if I have the moxie to actually try it. I am betting no.

Could, however, make for a heckuva story. If the other runners don't beat us severely at 3 a.m. when my Timex 150-Lap Ironman -- the one with the SIXTEEN different interval settings that I can engage at the same time -- beeps for the 413th time.

Oh lookit ...

 Kinda looking around for a little something something to cap this year off when I get email today from my buddy Bob with this.

Let's see: December. Kinda close by. Mostly flat. Loop that's almost a mile.  $40 entry fee before Nov. 1. A new-to-me event.

Hmmm ...

Hmmm ...

May just have to pull the trigger on this one.

Word of the Day

OK, so Hinson Lake 24-Hour is this Saturday.

This is my fourth try there. The previous three have been, well, laughable. Here's how each has gone: Go out fast. Blow to teeny bits. Barely make it to 2 a.m. Stumble back to the vehicle. Drive home with tail tucked firmly between legs.

So how about No. 4? I am gonna go out on a limb here and say that No. 4 is gonna go differently. Call it a hunch, but I think I may have come to a reality at Hinson last year – I really really REALLY do not like puking. At all. Which is what I typically do at Hinson. Because, even after 105 ultra finishes and another 44 at the marathon, I pretty much suck at the event nutrition thing. Been practicing it with fervor all summer and think I may have some semblance of an answer ... NutriFit drink from Food Lion. Think scaled-down Ensure Plus. NutriFit is 250 calories. When I drink half of a bottle every hour, good things seem to happen. Haven't tried it beyond 5.5 hours, so that will be uncharted territory. Truth is that I'll probably change my mind and be after real food by then anyway, so no sweat.

Training has been off-the-hook good this year, yet that seems to have very little bearing on my performance. When I was faster, it mattered a lot. Now? Not so much.

I am in full-on pro taper mode. Most recent 2-hr. runwalk was Friday. Will likely do one Tuesday a.m. just to help with sleep. Legs have now officially moved past that achy start-of-taper feeling and on to oh-wow-strong feeling. Forecast changes daily, but is hovering around 80/50. Not optimal, but also not 91F like last year.

So here's the rough plan: Go slowly after the first lap or two, eat, drink and take what the day gives. Steady as she goes. Leave a bunch for night, especially at Hinson with as dark as it gets on the Back Nine. This is, after all, the site of the famous Fred "Doom" Dummar quote: "The party don't start till the lights go out."

OK, so my goals. Primary Goal: Do the whole 24 hours. Reach Goal ("reach" based on how poorly I've done at 5 of the 6 24-hour formats I've tried so far): 24-hour format PR of 60 laps for 91.20 miles. Dream Goal: 66 laps for 100 miles.

Word of the Day Saturday and Sunday: Joy. I get the chance to run a long, long way with friends and snacks and dirt and peace and somebody else keeping track of the distance.

Count me lucky.

From the "can-this-REALLY-happen?" file drawer ...

Latest ridiculous non-event brainstorm: Reddish Knob Road 100-Miler.

Briery Branch Dam to the top is 6.7 miles. 6.7 x 15 equals 100.5M. That is an estimated 39,000 feet of elevation change. If you start at the top, it would be 7 Reddish summits. If you start at the bottom, 8 Reddish summits.

When Mike Frazier, Jack Broaddus and I just did the Reddish Knob Marathon, the 26.8M jaunt took me 5:10. That was only two down-and-ups. And that was with running the final 2 miles without walk breaks. That was also on a thoroughly overcast day. That was also with me knowing that I was only gonna be out there about 5 hours.

Let's see ... 100 miles of Reddish road. Seven or eight summits. 39K of change. Um ... can anybody say 36 hours or so (maybe?).

Oh. boy.

Good thing I have a 24-hour coming up the end of September.

Really, really good thing.

Love you for always, VA

Last week, we lost one of the finest humans ever.

Virginia G. Gentry, ill the past couple years, finally gets some much-deserved peace and rest.

I could say so much about my remarkable mother, but for now I'll just leave it at this poem that I wrote on the morn of her memorial service. Overheard my dad Sam tell a visitor about this pesky plant the night before.

Gardening and words were among my mom's many passions. She really, truly was something else. :)

Two Blooms

Fully formed, forest green

Four-year-old Peace Lily

Standing guard from its gracious front-porch perch

Four years old. Never bloomed.

Until Tuesday, July 12, 2011.

Two small, creamy blooms.

One for Sam.

One for God.

The July Project

Here it is. July, in all its glory. Right before my very eyes. Begging to me from my Runner's World online training log.

I hear it calling to me in its soft, sing-song voice: "Hit me back ev. ry. day. C'mon. Lemme see what you got."

So far, I have a pair 2-hr. runs posted. Yesterday, July 1, Me and Jack knocked out the standard Tuesday/Friday 7-minute run/3-minute walk at a casual pace. Nice one. Great way to start a day, that. This afternoon, I pushed out a 4/2 on blistering roads in Harrisonburg. Shoulda gone first thing in the morning, before it got to 85F. Lesson learned? Guess we'll see.

As many of you know, i have a run streak going. July 6 will be Day 1,600. OK, you say, so don't you put an entry in your log for each day? Not exactly. Only the runs of 2 hours or longer get logged. Easier to keep track of the long stuff that way, plus this supports my assertion that the long stuff is all that really matters anyway – especially for me.

I don't always go 7/3. Sometimes it's 3/2. 4/1. 5/1. 25/5. 20/5. 12/3, or some such. That's if it's roads. The countdown-timer thing doesn't work for me on trails. At least on most trails. Don't need to force walks on trails. :)

Hello, July. Vaycay at the beach is in there. So is Catherine's 50km. And the mostly regular Tues/Thur/Fri group runs me and my bunch always do. I can usually squeeze another longish one in on one of the weekend days, and often on the other weekend day, too. So the greatest challenge will be those pesky workday Mondays and Wednesdays, that always require 0400ish wake-ups. Just from memory, I think my largest one-month total is 20 days. So far. :)

So ... here I am. Staring at July. Two boxes filled. Twenty-nine still empty. All with such promise. Sights to see. Moments to share.

Miles. to. go.

One For The Ages

Unbelievable. Mind-bendingly, expectation-shatteringly, reality-alteringly unbelievable.

Holy cow. Now I have a PR for a freakin' 72-hour race. And I actually had gas left in the tank at the end. And it didn't really suck hardly ever.

It really, truly was not what I expected. And then it was all that I expected and more. So, so much more.

Final total: 183.5 miles. Fifth overall. Fourth boy. Day-by-day totals of 66 miles, 55 miles and 62 miles.

Had the pleasure of sharing the path with some remarkable runners. Formed some bonds that I expect will last the rest of my life. Laughed until my stomach hurt. Slept so hard that I woke myself up because of the slobber ... twice!

Ate the best McDonald's milkshake in the history of modern civilization. Burned the back of my arms and the insides of my ankles -- the two places where I failed to put sunscreen -- so badly in the first 10 hours that I'm not done peeling yet and it's 10 days later.

Basically sprinted the final two laps of the .85-mile course with the awesome Sabrina Moran, who managed to tally just nine fewer miles than me even though she was in the 48-hour!!!!

Joe Judd. Mike Potter. Fred Murolo. Pete Stringer. Charlotte from Canada, who beat us all. Mike Brooks, a retired firefighter from Maine who notched 150-plus miles walking the entire way.

RDs Rick and Jenn McNulty. Rick's sis Marie. The McNulty children. Jessi Kennedy, who ran some of the 48 but who i think was awake for the entire 72 hours helping out. Scott Brockmeier and Liz Bauer starting the 48, not having the best of days, yet still coming back out to clock some miles and offer amazing support ... especially to ME! Inspiring work, you guys. I am in your debt.

So many stories shared. Such rich laughter. A teeny bit of suffering along the way, but nothing like I expected on the way to collecting so. many. miles.

A dream come true? Yeah. Sure was.

A return trip next year? 10-4.

Here I Go ...

Holy cow. Trained for a YEAR for this one. Three Days at the Fair. 72 hours. Starts in 1.5 hours.

I know what I'm getting into. And I don't.

It's not gonna suck. And, yet, it is.

Fun. Misery. Company. Laughter. New friends. Old friends. Patience. And lack thereof.

Time to think. Time to not. Heat. Cold that's not really cold but feels like it.

Yummy food. Lots and lots of yummy food.

A 72-hour look inside myself ... over and over and over.

THIS is how we roll!!!

Scene: Yesterday. David Frazier's wedding day, so a buncha us took our friend for a trail run up on Kaylor's Knob. Joining in the fun in addition to the Man of the Hour were his blood brother (and later best man at the coolest wedding I've ever been to) Mike Frazier, Carp, Thomas Jenkins, Jack Broaddus, Phil Turk (all the way from Morgantown, West By God!!!), Mike Zook, Vince Bowman, Tom Syre.

In other words, nine uber-studs and then me.

Tornado-like wind. Driving rain. Some gnarly trail. A lotta pristine trail, much of it built by hand by the Shenandoah Valley Bike Coalition forces who include a buncha the dudes there Saturday. A toast at the top of Kaylor's. A whole lotta laughs.

Oh yeah. Nine of the 10 of us wore shirt and tie.

All in all, vintage!!!

Some photos for my Me Wall ...



(From left): Phil Turk, Carp, me.



Me at my finest ...



(Thanks, MikeFraz, for setting this thing up, for shooting all this photos and, most importantly, for being a constant reminder to us about what it's really like to love someone as much as you love your brother. My life is a lot better because I have you guys in it. Same goes for most of these other knuckleheads involved in this particular affair.)

Big boy gear

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a real, true head lamp. The Petzl Myo 3. Technology. Wow. No more $8 flashlights from Lowe's for me. No sir. Now, I'm big time.

Now, you may actually be able to see me at the same time that you hear me. Well, maybe.