Running and Travels

Testimony

2012-07-15T14:41:00.001-05:00

I have seen postings on this study circulating for a couple of months. This study illustrates how a sedentary lifestyle can impact long term mobility. It contains a series of images comparing the lean muscle mass in the cross section of a human leg between sedentary person and a triathlete. Now on the two year anniversary of leaving the hospital for a severe illness (see previous post), I want to add my own testimonial.

The study and pictures suggest the active person was much more capable later in life of retaining mobility. I won’t pretend I was as lean as the triathlete whose X-rays were shown in this study, but suspect this effect must have helped with my survival and/or my recovery those medical issues.

As a disclaimer, a relative of mine who used to be in the organ donation business has indicated these pictures are the most extreme examples, and healthy activity does not always make up for genetic predisposition.

My illness hit me particularly hard in the lungs, sending their ability to process oxygen below the level needed for survival without special equipment. Doctors at the time suggested the endurance running that I had done over the last decade might have made my lungs a little stronger, giving me the edge to survive long enough for the treatment to take effect.

In addition to possibly helping me survive, the active lifestyle probably helped me recover faster. As a consequence of being medically immobilized and unconscious for nearly 2 weeks, I was left so weak I needed a few weeks of physical rehab to regain the strength to walk. During the rehabilitation, the therapists kept remarking how quickly I was regaining strength. At the time I thought they were simply saying the same encouraging things that they said to all their patients. But more and more I would hear workers say, not realizing I was within earshot, things like “I can’t believe he is walking so soon, you should have seen him in the ICU a couple of weeks ago”. Based on some other comments from doctors, I now believe all the running over the last decade helped me bounce back quicker than normal.

When I left the hospital, the effort to walk around the block shot my heart rate up to a level that used to match a hard run. But I kept walking and built myself up to a mile, then 3 miles, then 6 miles and eventually was able to walk in a half-marathon event 8 months after leaving the hospital. When I went in for a follow-up doctor visit, I had a conversation that went something like this:

Q: [Standard Question] How many blocks can you walk before you get out of breath?

A: 13.1 miles.

Q: Do you realize many people who have gone through what you have would still need supplemental oxygen at this stage?

That same doctor now encourages me to be as active as possible and keep moving back towards the activities I used to do. Before this medical drama, I have encountered doctors who discouraged me from running marathons since they bad for the body and encouraged me to keep to drastically shorter distances. I am glad now I went to find other doctors instead.

I have to believe that 10 years of regularly training and running marathons, trail 50k’s, and the occasional half-ironman triathlon did me more good than harm. If I had stuck to the shorter events and not been constantly joining some sort of training group for these longer events, I would not have developed the support community and circle of friends that motivated me to keep coming back for more after each event ended. And without all of that, I would not have bounced back as quickly as I did from that illness, and possibly not at all.

Tongariro Northern Circuit

2012-03-01T02:07:00.000-06:00

Recently, I spent 4 days hiking the Tongariro Northern Circuit Tramp, one of New Zealand’s Great Walks which circles the Ngauruhoe volcano. I split this trek into 4 days, staying 3 nights in the Magatepopo, Ketetahi, and Waihohonu huts which are setup along the way.

On my first visit to New Zealand 11 years ago, I did the Tongariro Crossing as a day hike, but there were heavy clouds and very low visibility so I couldn’t see much during that hike. The crossing day hike covers the most strenuous and scenic section the route I took this year. Since I could not see the sights the first time through, I made sure to schedule the trek into this trip.

Day 1: Whatapapa to Mangatepopo Hut

The first day I started at the Whatapapa Visitor center where it was safe to park the car. Then I hiked 10km to the Mangatepopo Hut. The trail had been eroded heavily in several places, creating some small canyons which I had to take my backpack off to climb up or down the steps. Otherwise, this relatively short hike was uneventful with heavily overcast sky. I arrived at the Mangatepopo Hut a little too early around noon. I probably could have skipped this first day’s hike as many people do and taken the shuttle to the Mangatepopo car park, which is the drop-off point for the crossing day hike thirty minutes below the hut.

Mt Ngauruhoe

The only clear view I saw of Mt Ruapehu

The volunteer hut warden arrived shortly after me for the start of his 5-day stint at the hut. He was a young guy from Boston. He explained the wardens come out for 3 months and are given board and food allowance. They man the hut for 5 days, and then get 2 days off before rotating to another hut in the park. The hut provided for aprox 28 hikers mattresses, running water (from collected rainwater) which was fit to drink, and self-igniting gas stoves, and there was room for more people to camp outside.

Although this first day’s hike itself was mostly unremarkable, the afternoon proved to give a good example of the New Zealand tramp experience as the night’s hut inhabitants streamed in and began to visit with each other around the tables for a few hours until bedtime. First, three Kiwi families arrived with kids running round screaming, but the parents quickly contained them to the other smaller bunkroom so the rest of us could have some peace at night. Another New Zealander was leading a group of teenage students on a trek and was only too eager to give me all the recommendations for the must-do side trips on the rest of the trek. (The students fortunately camped outside the hut). An Australian, the only one this night following my tramping schedule for the rest of the trek, arrived. He was taking 3 months to do all of New Zealand’s great walks. He couldn’t get over the fact that the hut warden’s Boston accent was not a Canadian accent. There were several Germans, one of whom had managed to acquire an Irish accent while working with Irishmen during his stay in New Zealand. The whole evening most people who came in kept assuming he was Irish.

Around midnight after everyone had gone to bed, some late arrivals violated the hut etiquette waking everyone by slamming doors, talking in regular voice, and shining their headlamps in everyone’s face as they searched for the empty bunks. Then they fired off an alarm at 5am and made a lot of noise as they left early, without paying for a hut stay. One of the New Zealanders visitors notified the hut warden after he got up a couple hours later, who radioed to the other huts to be on the lookout for those guys.

Day 2: The Tongariro Crossing to Ketetahi Hut

This was to be the most strenuous and scenic day with lots of elevation change (684M/2244ft ascent, 426M/1397ft descent) and was included in the route taken by the day hikers. In a way, this was the culmination of the last 8 months of training hikes around the U.S. which were taken to return me to the physical condition to allowing me to do a hike like this. I started the day hoping I was not attempting more than I was capable of.

The sky was completely overcast with low hanging clouds, but the clouds cleared 10 minutes after I began hiking and so I had to stop to take off my jacket as the sun was making me sweat profusely. Shuttle buses had dropped of several hundred day hikers who proceeded along the trail. With my heavier pack (and physical condition) keeping me slow, I had to step aside frequently to let faster groups of people pass.

The first time I was here doing the day hike years before, the trail was in a very different state. Very little of it had been maintained and much of it had eroded into deep rocky channels which complicated walking along it. Much of the ascent involved a little rock climbing up the heavily eroded channels. Large queues of people formed as those in front had to slowly and carefully pick the best path up the rocky hills. In the 11 years since that previous visit, the park had built boardwalks and stairs over much of the complicated terrain allowing it to better handle the crowds, and making it a little easier to traverse.

The first few kilometers to Soda Springs ran up a valley floor. A fair sized section of this was boardwalked. At the springs was the start of the major climb of the day to South crater. I pretended not to notice the sign warning of dire consequences for people proceeding up the strenuous climb who were not in excellent health or physical shape, and began the climb rising more than 300 meters over the next kilometer. At the start of the climb was the only toilet between the two huts, so I passed most of the people who had just passed me and I got to step aside for them again as they passed later during the climb.

I could see clouds below being blown up the valley towards me. When the clouds reached me, the visibility dropped to nothing and the temperature seemed to drop 20 or 30 degrees (Farenheight) for a few minutes until the cloud blew past.

Looking back down on the Mangatepopo Valley.
(last night's hut is a tiny spec on the far end of the valley)

There were several ultra runners who came running by as I climbed. I would keep seeing these guys multiple times as they went back and forth, taking every available side trail. Later someone explained this was part of some sort of sponsored event and these guys were getting paid if they stuck through until the end.

This big climb seemed to take forever, and the weight of my backpack forced me to stop and rest several times before reaching the lip of the South crater. I stopped at the top of the lip to eat lunch and ran into the hut warden from the previous night who had come up to ascend Ngauruhoe (a side trail which left from this point for 1.5 hours up followed by a 20 minute run down) in between his warden duties.

Crossing the South Crater

Mt Ngauruhoe

I continued down into the South crater. After crossing the South crater, there is another steep climb up to the Red Crater. The weather was clear so this gave some good views. Separately, I happened to run into two of the German’s from the previous night’s hut while admiring the crater. One had managed to climb Mt Ngauruhoe and run down its scree slopes. At the red crater we climbed to the highest point of the day and then took a steep decent to the Emerald lakes on a scree filled slope. I had to take this descent slowly due to the weight of the backpack.

View of the Oturere Valley From the Red Crater

Red Crater

Emerald Lakes

Then there was the central crater to cross before another climb up to the craters’ lip and then a decent for an hour and a half to the Ketetahi Hut. Eventually, the view opened up so that I could see Lake Rotoaria and Lake Taupo.

Central Crater & Blue Lake

Looking back across the Central Crater up to the Red Crater

Lake Rotoaira & Lake Taupo

Ketetahi Hut

Many of the day hikers were stopping at the Ketetahi hut for a break. This late in the afternoon most needed to be running down the mountain to reach the car park before their shuttles departed. Instead, several groups at different times were lounging around on the hut’s deck for extended breaks. Most of these late hikers had taken the side trips to either the Ngauruhoe or Tongariro summits, but did not really have time for those excursions. I heard more than once someone announcing they were texting the bus company to tell them to hold the bus while they took their time, as if the busses and dozens of other passengers would not mind waiting an extra hour or two for them. I was thankful most of these late hikers did not seem to be Americans promoting the stereotype.

The volunteer hut warden this night was an American who works as a seasonal National Park Ranger in the U.S., and came to New Zealand while his park in the U.S. reduced staff for the winter. In the hut, I bunked near an American couple who went to the same university as me and had origins in the Appalachians near where I grew up. A group of New Zealanders arrived late to share our bunk room after hiking up from the Ketetahi car park two hours below. They said there were a bunch of people at the car park who missed their shuttles and were trying to bum a ride off anyone with a vehicle to any nearby town with bus service.

Day 3: Ketetahi Hut to Waihohonu Hut

This day’s hike began by backtracking on the route of the previous day back up the mountain to the Emerald lakes. I covered this section mostly in the rain, but then the clouds began to clear as I approached the view looking back up on the red crater.

At this point it was 10:00am and a man with a German accent who was not exactly dressed for trail running stopped to inform me he just ran here from Whatapapa (covering most of the route of my first 2 days) in under 4 hours, but he explained he “didn’t run very much.” He was trying to decide if he wanted to continue to do the whole circle (as in my 4-day route), or go back the way he came. I pointed out that since the clouds were lifting, that if he went back the way he came he would get to see some sights that he couldn’t see on the way up due to the poor visibility. He concluded it would be risky for him to make the longer circle in one day since he wasn’t prepared and went back the same route to enjoy the sights.

Emerald Lakes

I continued down the hill from the Blue Lake across the central crater to the Emerald Lakes where today’s route separated from yesterday’s trail. The trail took a steep descent into the land of Mordor, or at least where some of the Mordor scenes from the Lord of the Rings were apparently filmed. Once I turned off from the Emerald Lakes, I left the section of well-groomed trail. I had to take the steep descent slowly and carefully since it was full of loose rock and my backpack left me with awkward weight I had to be careful to control.
Oturere Valley

Once on the valley floor, It took a couple of hours for me to cross this volcanic landscape over to the Oturere Hut, where I took advantage of the toilet facilities before continuing three more hours to the Waihohonu Hut. Despite the fact that this region gets a lot of rain, most of this section was very exposed desert-like volcanic rock. But eventually I crossed into one valley and had 30 minutes hike through a rainforest that had managed to survive the volcanic activity before climbing up and then down one final hill to the hut. This hut was newer than the other two, and twice as large.

Mt Ngauruhoe

Suprise forrest in the middle of a volcanic desert

Waihonu Hut

After claiming my bunk in the hut and dropping my pack, I walked down to the nearby creek to rinse and soak my feet in the cool water. As I was getting ready to leave, a group of French speakers (one each from France, Belgium, and Quebec) who were hanging out downstream called over to me and invited me to share in their appetizer trey of carrot sticks, cucumber slices, and cheese blocks with a dressing of oil and pepper. Each were traveling independently on extended trips while stopping along the way to work at restaurants, which is where they met. 30 minutes into our conversation they confessed their reason for inviting me over was to practice their English. They had a bet going that the first one to lapse into French would have extra cooking duties. I think the girl from Quebec lost.

Day 4: return to Whatapapa Village

This day’s route crossed between the Ngauruhoe and Ruaphehu volcanoes. Most of this day’s hike was in the rain, so I could not see the tops of the volcanoes due to the low clouds. I got to the end in mid-afternoon, just as the sun started to come out.

Slight Rainbow with typical Weather on Day 4

Post-Tramp:

A few days after the hike, I was walking down the streets in Taupo when I heard someone yell “Hey Texas!” I turned around to find the American hut wardens from my first two huts trying to get my attention while they caught up to me to see how the rest of my hike went. On their day off, they came up to Taupo for some bungy jumping and a restaurant meal. They said I was lucky because the weather got a lot worse in the days after I hiked through. In fact, the shuttles that drop off hikers for the day hike stopped running for a day or two due to the dangerously windy weather. A few minutes after I parted ways with the wardens, I saw this:

Almost Running Again

2011-12-07T10:23:00.005-06:00

I have used this blog for the occasional update for recent running or travel stories, but I haven’t had much new stuff I felt made a story worthy of a blog post for a while. Although I have had a few posts catching up on old trips as I get by backlog of pictures processed, there hasn’t been much in the running department worthy of a blog post while recovering from last year’s medical issues. So, perhaps it is time for an update.

8 months ago I wrote about a couple of couple of half-marathons I walked as part of my recovery while severely weakened from last year’s issues. Sustaining a running pace then was still outside my physical capability. At that time I had reached the point where walking several miles on relatively flat land was OK, but hills got me out of breath quickly. So I began including hills in my walks. People kept asking me about my goal race, but my only goal was to regain the strength to be able to do some good hikes in the national parks later in the year without having to be concerned about getting back to my car if I ventured several miles. Work was draining much of my reduced energy at that time, and also with the excessive heat of the central Texas summer I was not getting out to exercise as often as I should.

In one of the early hilly hikes I tried out the 6-mile roundtrip Stairway to Hell trail that all my trail running friends had been talking about for hill work. I encountered people doing hill repeats on the stairs. I probably should not have tried that hike on a day that hit 100 degrees heat since it is far more climbing than I have done to that point. Even though I started early in the morning, it still took me half a day and I felt seriously beat-up at the end.

In the summer, my employer announced plans to phase out their Austin site, so I wrapped up my work within a month and took an early exit. Although I had some avenues I could pursue employment, I decided this was a good time to take a sabbatical to focus on recovery before jumping into the next job. Last year, I almost did not get to live to retirement, so I decided to take a little bit of retirement early since any new job probably would not have much vacation. In the first 6 months of this sabbatical I spent 50% time outside Austin, with trips split into 2-week segments within the US so that I would not get too tired and be available for my regular doctor visits.

My first trip after work ended was 2 weeks mostly camping to the Waterton-Glacier National parks on the Montana-Canada border. I averaged hiking 8-10 miles most days. This park is one of the most beautiful places and I left plenty of unexplored trails for future trips.

The more that I got out and hiked, the more I was able to do. The cool fresh mountain air was so much better for me than the Texas summer heat . After only a month of this increased activity, my doctor noted visible improvement in my muscle tone as my strength was returning. Measurements also showed improvement in my lung capacity throughout the year, although that has not yet returned to normal.

I also spent some time visiting various parks in the Pacific Northwest, Palo Duro Canyon, Big Bend area and southeast Utah and a few weeks with family in Tennessee which allowed me to see real fall colors for the first time in a while (which we don’t get so much in Texas).

While I occasionally made an attempt at running or jogging during this time, that activity had not been comfortable or enjoyable. I was still getting out of breath easily. But if I don’t push into activity I won’t regain that ability. In the Got Guts 5K in September, I felt like I was somewhat running half of it, but it still took me 50 minutes as my “running” speed was still slower than many people fast-walk and I couldn’t pretend to run the uphills. I also tried to run but mostly walked the 20k in the Palo Duro Trail Race.

It was not until the 5-mile Thanksgiving Turkey Trot that I almost felt like a runner again. I don’t know that I can call what I did running. My “running” speed was still slower than many people were walking, but I felt like I jogged the majority of the race except for a few of the hills and waterstops. I averaged just slower than 12 minute miles. This may sound slow to other runners, but it is a huge improvement from the beginning of the year. That was the first event where my “running” felt good. Perhaps by next year I might be able to do some real running.

Here are a few of the pictures I've taken this year:

Double Rainbow in Waterton Lakes National Park

Kiawanda Rock, Oregon

Bridge at Victoria Falls in Glacier National Park

Cape Kiawanda State Park, Oregon

Blue Ridge Parkway (near Grandfather Mountain, NC)

Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park

Sunset at White Sands National Monument

Seattle

Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park

Bighorn Sheep, Glacier National Park

Organic Coffee Farm in Nicaragua

2011-11-20T09:51:00.004-06:00

Two years ago I took a tour of an organic coffee cooperative in highlands of Nicaragua. The Danilo Gonzalas cooperative was named for a teenager from the area who died fighting against the Contras in the 80’s. I reached the cooperative, traveling with by guide Jessica from ¡Un Buen Viaje!, by local bus from Matagalpa to San Ramon, and then 3km hike to the rural community of La Reyna.

Matagalpa Bus Station

Typical Local Bus

San Ramon

Our guide from the cooperative met us at the business office off the main square in San Ramon. She was a college student who was going to school in Matagalpa learning farming practices. She grew up in the cooperative and came back regularly (and to help the cooperative make a few extra dollars from showing tourists like me around). She was accompanied by her cousin of similar age, a single mom who lived at the cooperative and was raising a newborn.

As we hiked to the farm, it was explained to me (via translation by Jessica) that the cooperative was made up of local families, some who had long lived and worked the land. When the wealthy absentee landowners abandoned the region during wars and mines closed, leaving the locals without work. The community took control of the local resources and formed the cooperative which currently included 55 people. Now they work to sustain their own living. The families pooled their resources to grow, harvest, and process the coffee beans and restore land damaged from years of mining.

Views along the hike to La Reyna

The cooperative was in a rural community in the hills/mountains of Nicaragua. It was a very pretty and seemingly peaceful area with simpler existence. The guides also explained a lot what their day to day life was like. Our cooperative guide explained once she was done with school, her plan was to return here to live the simple rural life.

As we hiked up the mountain, we passed a man-made water reservoir and then began to encounter coffee plans planted in deliberately uneven rows following the contour of the land wherever there was space on the hillside. This was very different from the machine harvested coffee plantations I visited in Hawaii, where all the plants were in neat rows. These coffee beans were harvested by hand and so did not need to be in the neat rows for the harvesters. Instead, more natural sustainable farming practices were used not only in the planting of the coffee, but in many aspects of the land maintenance. There were also plants for other fruits. One of our guides picked some fruit to be used later with lunch.

Following the trails through the coffee plants up the hill we eventually reached the center where the coffee beans were processed. Now that some time has passed I don’t remember enough to describe properly the process, but I was shown the aging equipment for extracting the beans from the berry. The beans were put into concrete pits where an older woman, barefoot, walked on and washed the beans.

Then the beans were spread in these large trays with wire mesh bottoms for the first round of drying in the sun. Periodically the workers would shake or flip the beans to facilitate drying. Afterwards, the beans would be spread out on plastic tarps to dry some more. Periodically, workers would use rakes or shovels to turn and re-spread these beans to facilitate drying.

Nearby there was a pavilion which had been built by a well-meaning American church missionary group that had traveled to the region. There wasn’t much purpose for it at this farm, so they used it as a meeting place to give lectures for the occasional larger tourist groups.

We wandered through the forests and hillside coffee fields some more. We eventually came to our local guide’s house complex where she lived with her mother, cousin and their family. The complex was split across 3 1-room structures. In one structure, the mother was busy cooking us lunch, which was served to us on the porch of another building which had a little bit of a view of the country side. The meal contained typical Nicaraguan food. Jessica explained to me the meal was a big deal for their guest compared to what they normally eat, especially since there was fresh meat.

Living Compound

Lunch

Related Links:
Maps of the sites I visited in Nicaragua: on Google Maps or Google Earth
My travels in Nicaragua were arranged by ¡Un Buen Viaje!.

More Blog Posts or Photo Albums from this Nicaragua Trip.
- Managua and Coyotepe
- Granada at Christmas time
- La Granadilla
- Mombacho Volcano
- Empowerment International
- Masaya: the City and the Volcano
- Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua
- Calzado de Ometepe Kids 5k
- Leon
- Cerro Negro Volcano
- Juan Venado Nature Reserve

Isla Juan Venado Nature Reserve

2011-11-07T14:58:00.002-06:00

During my Nicaragua trip, I visited the coastal Isla Juan Venado Nature Reserve as a day trip from Leon for wildlife viewing. With my guide through Nicaragua, it was a 45 minute local bus ride from Leon to the town of Las Penitas on the coast.

On there shore, there were several small motor boats for fishing. We met up with a local boat guide for the park which was pre-arranged through a costal hotel, and then headed for the park.

Las Penintas, Nicaragua

The park consists of a 22km long barrier island which provides a sheltered habitat for birds and other wildlife. We motored into a channel between the island and the mainland. The vegetation on either side of the channel consisted of mangrove trees. Within the roots of the mangroves were found many birds (which tended to fly away as we approached), crabs climbing up the trees from the water, alligators , and other things.

Locals used boats to harvest firewood

Our boat guide explained a lot of what we saw in Spanish, and my other Nicaragua guide translated. He was able to spot and find things which were so well camouflaged or otherwise very well hidden. I regret that after two years I don’t remember the names of many of the birds.

A termite nest with a small bird living underneath:

Bird's nest:

Crab climbing a tree:

Alligator hidden within the mangrove:

The photography from a rocking boat in low light with a zoom lens was a challenge. I had to use manual focus since auto-focus often focused on the wrong tree branch or root. Also, for mechanical difficulties I had to use my older backup camera so the quality was a little less than ideal. However I got a few shots that were salvageable.

At one point along the route, we got out of the boat and walked across the narrow island to spend a few minutes on the beach. Our boat guide impressed us with his skill for finding crabs buried under the sand. He would dig down into the sand, dig out a crab, and then we would watch it scurry across the beach into the water.

The most common bird seen was the white egret, of which I got a few too many pictures:

After a half-day boating up and down the channel, we returned to Las Penitas, had lunch at the hotel on the coast, and then went to catch the bus back to Leon.

Related Links:
Maps of the sites I visited in Nicaragua: on Google Maps or Google Earth
My travels in Nicaragua were arranged by ¡Un Buen Viaje!.

More Blog Posts or Photo Albums from this Nicaragua Trip.
- Managua and Coyotepe
- Granada at Christmas time
- La Granadilla
- Mombacho Volcano
- Empowerment International
- Masaya: the City and the Volcano
- Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua
- Calzado de Ometepe Kids 5k
- Leon
- Cerro Negro Volcano

Cerro Negro Volcano

2011-10-08T10:05:00.005-05:00

The morning two years ago began long before first light when I left leaving hotel in Leon. We made our way about 6 blocks to the office of Quetzal Trekkers by 4:30. There we met up with our two Quetzal guides and two Danish tourists. The six of us discussed briefly the days plan hike the Cerro Negro volcano. Then we packed our lunches and hurried 4 blocks to the bus stop only to wait in the dark 45 minutes for the first bus to arrive. The Leon guides apologized explaining the local bus schedules were not always unpredictable.

View while waiting for the bus:

Cerro Negro is Central America’s newest volcano having first erupted in 1850. It’s gotten some press recently and been featured on the Survivor reality show for the sport of volcano boarding, which is sledding down the scree slops of the volcano.

The local bus, a converted north american Blue Bird school bus, took us some 15 miles from Leon and dropped us at a trail head in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. We hiked for 45 minutes between farmer’s fields as the sun rose.

Eventually we reached the edge of the black cinder gravel-sized rock which had been ejected from the volcano and covers the surrounding land. A little vegetation tries to survive in pockets around the edge of the lava rock field, but quickly gives way to barren land. The Cerro Negro cone rises before us. My pictures do not do justice to the size. It rises 1600 feet in elevation above me (total 2388 ft above sea level).

Our group hiked a path that took us across the lava gravel rock to the opposite side of the cone and then climbed up. We appeared to be the only people on the volcano that day.

Scenes from half-way up the volcano:

Approaching the top, the uniform black rocks gave way to a section of steam vents and colored rock closer to the crater. We eventually reached and walked around the red inner crater.

Walking near the top of the Cerro Negro Volcano

From the top we could see for miles around. Several other volcanoes in Nicaragua’s Maribios volcanic chain were visible one behind the other.

We climbed up to the edge of the tallest part of the volcanic cone to begin the fun part. From there, the cone’s slope dropped 1600 feet unobstructed below us. The Quetzel guides mentioned at the time some people were trying to develop the sport of volcano boarding at Cerro Negro with cardboard sleds and mattresses. The New York Times suggests the sport had been further developed with specialized wooden sleds since my visit.

Our group however was simply running down the cone without any special equipment. One Quetzel guide went first to show us how it was done. I got a couple of pictures of the first people to descend. Then I put my camera up safely in the bag and started my run.

Starting the run down Cerro Negro

When running down a scree hill, it is easier to just let go and run without brakes. Trying to hold back increases the chance of tripping. With each step, the feet are buried above the ankle in the small rocks, but the foot easily comes out of the mess when taking the next step. A few of us re-grouped about halfway down the slope. Once stopped there, it was safe to get the camera out for a few pictures before finishing the decent.

Views from half-way down the volcano:

A couple of pictures of me reaching the bottom courtesy my guide from ¡Un Buen Viaje!

Here are some more pictures from the base of the volcano. The curve of the slope hides the top from view when close to the base. It is a little difficult to perceive the size of the volcano in some of these pictures. Note the size of the people in the distance to get a sense of scale.

For sense of scale, note there are two people in this picture:

After the decent, we found a shaded spot under a tree on the outskirts of the volcanic rock for a picnic lunch. Then we hiked back to the road through woods and farms until we reached a cluster of buildings that served as a bus stop along the dirt road highway. There was a shack selling drinks served in plastic bags with straws and we got a drink while waiting amongst the scrawny dogs and chickens for the bus to take us back to Leon.

The barbed wire fence is so old that the tree has grown around it

The local non-profit volunteer organization Quetzal Trekkers guided this day hike and also guides overnight hikes to several other volcanoes and parks in the area. The guides are foreign volunteers who come for a minimum of 3 months. Proceeds from these hikes fund local projects helping street kids.

The rest of my travels in Nicaragua were arranged by Jessica of ¡Un Buen Viaje! Tours to Nicaragua.

Related Links:

Maps of the sites I visited in Nicaragua: on Google Maps or Google Earth

More Blog Posts or Photo Albums from this Nicaragua Trip.
- Managua and Coyotepe
- Granada at Christmas time
- La Granadilla
- Mombacho Volcano
- Empowerment International
- Masaya: the City and the Volcano
- Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua
- Calzado de Ometepe Kids 5k
- Leon

Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

2011-10-04T12:45:00.003-05:00

A couple of years ago I did a trip through the Southwestern USA but never posted pictures from Bryce Canyon or Zion National Parks. After getting some questions from friends planning a Zion traverse, I thought perhaps it is time to get back to this story.

I drove up to Bryce Canyon after an overnight stop in Las Vegas. My last visit was 10 years before. Coming from Death Valley where I could walk about in shorts, it was a bit of a shock to encounter snow. I found a tent spot that was not covered too much in snow and pitched a tent. Then went to the main observation point for some late evening pictures as the sun set.

I hung out there for almost 3 hours waiting for the best light for pictures. There was a large group of Italian motorcycle riders there in the middle of a cross country tour. They were lively and animated.

The wind was strong and the temperature dropped dramatically by the end. My gloved fingers were pretty numb. After sunset, I went to a restaurant just outside the park entrance to eat and warm up. When I was ready to return to my campsite, the car thermometer read 18F and falling. The motel attached to the restaurant had very reasonable rates, so I wimped out and checked into a room without even returning to the camp. Although my sleeping bag was rated for these temperatures, I was on vacation and was not really inclined to suffer. The next morning I went back for some sunrise pictures and then to collect my tent before heading to Zion.

I stayed in Zion for a few days and hiked up the canyon walls a few times. I tried to fit in my long training runs for the Jemez Trail race, but those kept getting cut short since I kept encountering snow packs blocking and hiding the trail. The drop-offs along some the canyon walls were just a little too steep for me to risk slipping in the ice and snow. Still, it was a good workout climbing to the top of the canyon several times.

There was one thing in Zion I had never seen before. A turkey with all its feathers extended crossing the road. The roads in the park are all red, matching the surrounding rock color, and the turkey’s feathers made some harsh scraping sounds as the bird dragged the feathers across the pavement.

In this trip, I also had a few stops covered in previous posts:
- Death Valley
- Guadalupe Peak
- Davis Mountains

I also had an overnight stops in Las Vegas. Since I was getting in late and just passing through, I hadn't planned to go to the Las Vegas Strip, but the now closed Sahara on the strip was offering the cheapest rooms in town for $20 a night + $10 in resort fees and taxes. It was a deal not easy to pass up. It appeared that all the airlines were taking advantage of the deal for their pilots and flight attendants. I might have been the only one on my floor that was not an airline employee. However, it was quick to see why the rooms were so cheap since even the non-smoking rooms still smelled from 50 years of smokers and the first room I tried to check into had already been used so I had to ask for another cleaned room.

Bighorn Sheep Near Many Glacier

2011-08-22T13:28:00.003-05:00

One of the things I like to do when in places like Glacier National Park is to take a drive near sunset or sunrise to watch for large animals that come out at this time of day, usually away from human activity. However this trip last week I encountered a bunch of Bighorn sheep in a place I was not expecting, in the middle of the day near the most congested road in this part of the park.

I had just made my obligatory stop to peek inside the historic Many Glacier Lodge lobby, and was leaving. To get back to the main road I have to drive over a bridge across the creek and pass 2 houses labeled as private residences. As I crossed the bridge, there was a car in front of me. In front of that car, a herd of about a dozen Bighorn Sheep stepped into the middle of the road to cross. The sheep stopped in the middle of the road, hesitating due to the approaching traffic, and then retreated back between the two private residences.

As usually happens with large animal spotting along a park road, other drivers were stopping and getting out of their vehicles to take pictures. I did the same. I parked on the other side of one of the buildings, and crept around behind another vehicle to get a better look. The animals were still there. I expected they would wander back into the woods at any minute to get away from the increasing number of people who were stopping to look. Instead, they decided to move in the direction of the people. I was not expecting this since there was a lake on the other side of the road, and nowhere to go except to follow the road across a bridge to the hotel.

First, the sheep needed to move the people out of the way before they could get where they wanted to go. So a big mama sheep lowered its horns and started walking right towards me. In the world of horned animals this could be interpreted as a prelude to an attack. At the time, I had misidentified the animals as mountain goats due to the smaller horns on the females, and I had no desire to confront a mountain goat. So I retreated along with a couple of other people calmly but quickly back behind my car.

While the mama sheep stared me down, a couple of other sheep ran behind here to cross the bridge to the lodge. A few sheep behind them started to follow, but turned back. I thought perhaps the sheep were retreating, but someone on the other side of the street told me they were still coming. I peeked around the corner of the building to see two more adult goats coming towards me with their horns down in a defensive position. I was still in the path where these animals wanted to go. I got into my car and prepared to take some pictures out the window.

A mama sheep, protecting the young, walked right up to my window while staring me down. I was concerned she might be getting ready to head-butt me so I stopped taking pictures rolled up the window. She stood there as protection while a few more sheep ran past behind her. She moved on and then a few more sheep ran past. Then the remainder of the herd got intimidated and turned back.

Some sheep turned back from the crossing

Other sheep made it accross the bridge

Now the herd was split. The adult sheep looked rather nervous as more and more people stopped to take pictures. The sheep that crossed the bridge came back and the herd regrouped on a bluff overlooking the creek that emptied Swiftcurrent Lake.

Most of the sheep then stood there for a few minutes posing for pictures. They were right on the other side of my car, so I rolled down the passenger window and took some pictures. I was afraid if I got out of the car the sheep would run off, so I did my best to take some pictures with the zoom lens through the open passenger window in a way to make it look like I wasn’t so close to civilization.

Leon, Nicaragua

2011-07-31T17:24:00.001-05:00

I am slowly getting around to organizing/culling photos from prior trips. Almost two years ago I visited Leon, Nicaragua, for a few days as part of a 2 week trip around the Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua event. (The next race, by the way, in February 2012 is open for registration).

By the time I reached Leon on this trip, I had been in country for over a week, including several days in the city of Granada, which was the historical rival to Leon. Compared to Granada, Leon seemed more liberal and lively. Although peaceful now, previously Leon had also been impacted more by revolutions and civil wars, and that was evident in the street art memorials.

Vendors preparing agua fresca (fruit flavored sugar water) drinks to sell:

This visit was a couple of weeks before Christmas, and so decorations were up all over. There was a nativity scene in the main square. I happened to be there one day while there was a graduation ceremony at the main cathedral. Some festivities from the graduation were still ongoing into the evening.

The central park always seemed to have people hanging out, often with families and kids, including into the evening. Vendors were on the square renting out toys for kids to ride. Next to the central park was the Basilica de la Asuncion, which is the largest cathedral in Central America.

Pictures from Basilica de la Asuncion and Leon's central park square:

Vendor rents toys for kids to ride in the park:

Graduation ceremony:

One afternoon my guide took me to the Museum of Legends and folklore which was most interesting. The museum had a bunch of exhibits explaining the local folklore. In each room, the museum host and historian enthusiastically explained the story behind the exhibit, and my guide translated. These stories were a combination of fairytales and ghost stories. The museum was previously a prison which was notorious for torture of political prisoners. On the walls behind the colorful main exhibits were usually flat black and white drawings depicting the conditions of the prison as a subtle reminder of what happened there.

There was no shortage of additional churches in this city.
Iglesia de la Recoleccion

Iglesia Dolce Nombre de Jesus el Calvario

Iglesia Parroquial de San Juan Bautista de Subtiva

Iglesia San Juan de Dios Leon

Ruins of the San Sebastian church

Unidentified church near the San Sebastian Ruins

In many countries of a similar economic development level that I have been to, as an obvious foreigner walking around a city, I often found myself approached and followed around by aggressive beggars and touts trying to befriend and swindle me thus making it difficult to just walk around and observe the place. I did not encounter that problem here, nor in Nicaragua in general. I had become so accustomed to being on the defensive for such people I was a little unprepared when such defensiveness was not needed here.

During my stay, I took day trips from Leon to hike the nearby Cerro Negro volcano and a wildlife watching boat tour through the costal Juan Venado Nature Park.

More Leon photos in slideshow or album format.

Related Links:
- More Blog Posts or Photo Albums from this Nicaragua Trip.
- Maps of the sites I visited in Nicaragua: on Google Maps or Google Earth
- Tour operator/guide who arranged my Nicaragua Travels: ¡Un Buen Viaje!

White Sands National Monument

2011-07-20T09:52:00.003-05:00

In April I visited White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. I arrived in the afternoon and went straight to the park after checking into a motel in the town of Alamogordo. It was a windy afternoon. I hiked the first short mile loop trail I came across to get an introduction to the terrain.

As I drove further into the park, the wind was blowing sand more heavily, obscuring the sky. With all the sand blowing around, I was afraid to pull out my camera for fear of damage and I was not eager to breath in too much sand after some lung issues I have been healing from. I took some pictures near the road, but with the wind blowing so much and being tired from the journey, I did not stay for sunset that first night.

The next morning, I came back out to the park. The wind was gone and the temperature was not too hot. I started one trail from the center of the park. The trail is marked by markers buried in the sand. Sometimes the sand dunes have started to bury the markers. Without the markers, it would be easy to lose one’s bearings. Photography was a bit of a challenge. The sand was so white and reflective, the highlights tended to overexpose even when the camera was set for proper exposure of everything else.

At mid-day, I drove to the town of Cloudcroft which was 30 miles away and 4000 ft higher in elevation (8600ft). Along the highway, there is a canyon with some views looking back toward White Sands, which is the white streak near the horizon.

There were also a bunch of deserted tourist shops which do not open until summer, including this Apple Barn with its giant apple man statue. I couldn't help thinking about the Stay-puft Marshmallow man from Ghostbusters.

Once in Cloudcroft, I had left the desert and entered a land of mountains and pine forests. I walked a mile or more along a rails-to-trails project trail. This was the highest elevation I have been at since last years med issues that hit my lungs, and so I could really feel it on even the short hills. Along the trail were the wooden ruins of the old rail bridges that were built to help the train around some of the sharp curves in the terrain.

After a nap at the motel, I returned to White Sands Park in the late afternoon. The wind was back in the afternoon, but it started to abate as sunset approached. I hiked around some dunes and photographed some of the desert plant life while waiting for the sunset. Without clouds in the sky, the sunset itself was not so spectacular. However the late afternoon light just before sunset made for a few nice pictures.

On this trip, I also hiked and took some pictures in the Organ Mountains from Aguirre Springs Campground, which are covered in an earlier post.

Slideshow:

Aguirre Springs Hike, New Mexico

2011-06-18T10:20:00.004-05:00

A couple of months ago I took an extended weekend to travel to New Mexico for some hiking and photography.

It’s been more than a year since I have traveled for anything like this, and after dealing with some medical issues I felt recovered enough for a short trip with a little hiking. I have gotten to the point where I can walk for miles on relatively flat surfaces but I haven’t done so much with elevation during my recovery.

I first went to White Sands National monument for some hiking and picture taking (a subject for a future post). Afterwards I stopped off at the Aguirre Springs Campground for a day hike through the Organ Mountains just east of Las Cruces. Click any picture in this post to see a larger view.

I arrived an hour after sunrise as the moon was rising over the mountains and stopped for a few pictures before starting the hike.

I went on the 4 mile loop hike with 1000ft of elevation change. It was a good half-day excursion with picture stops and my reduced speed. The rock spires reminded me of Yosemite a little, but on a smaller scale.

Moon Rises over the Organ Mountains

Many vantage points looked down on the White Sands Missile test facility. At the time I was guessing the long road was the runway once used for as a backup for the space shuttle, but googling later revealed that White Sands landing strip and spaceport was some 30 miles northeast.
Looking down on White Sands Missile Range.

I also had the a little time to stop in the Old Mesilla historic section of Las Cruces for a few pictures.

Old Mesilla section of Las Cruces. This Adobe building was the first capital of New Mexico.

Storefront in Old Mesilla

Buildings on a side street in Old Mesilla

Below is a flash slideshow with a few more pictures. Alternatively, see the full screen slideshow or the online photo album.

Premium Beer in Tibet

2011-06-12T11:21:00.003-05:00

I was recently reminded of this story so I thought I would share.

A few years ago I took a tour through Tibet. At each restaurant, the waiter would always gave a choice between "local beer" and a slightly more expensive "Premium Blue Ribbon" beer. Most of the time they referred to the second choice as only "Premium Beer" or more often simply as "Blue Ribbon Beer". I usually tried the local beer which was always a one liter bottle of Lhasa Beer. Sometimes I would split the liter with a friend at dinner.

So at lunch one day after more than a week traveling around in Tibet -- I think it was the day after coming down the mountain from Rombuk and the Everest Base camp -- I decided to splurge the extra buck and find out what the premium blue ribbon beer was like. I was surprised when the waiter brought me a one liter bottle of this:

(Click the picture to see larger size and read the label)

Yes, there were only two choices of beer at the time and the premium beer choice was a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. In the U.S. we usually refer to this beer by the brand name "Pabst" or "PBR", and it is considered a cheap beer selection. However, the words "Blue Ribbon" on the label are more clearly readable and understandable so the locals had been referring to the brand name "Blue Ribbon".

I later read on Wikipedia that the Lhasa beer was a relatively recent commercial venture by the Chinese in cooperation with the European Carlsburg brewery. At the time, I did not know this and believed this just to be a cheap long-time local brand of beer.

Seno Otway Penguin Colony

2011-05-18T20:01:00.002-05:00

In November 2009 I visited the Seno Otway Penguin Colony which was an hour’s drive from Punta Arenas, Chile. I finally got around to uploading some pictures here.

Once at the colony, it was a self-guided walking tour. I arrived in the late afternoon. It was windy and cold, but not too freezing. Some penguins were gathered on the coast, but were starting to move inland for the night. As they moved in groups, I witnessed a march of the penguins, as they walked in single file lines away from the coast. It was a little unexpected and odd viewing penguins waddling around in a grassland environment once they left the beach.

Scattered throughout the grasslands, there would be lone male penguins who had built nests, which were holes burrowed in the ground and filled with straw. The male would stand outside his nest singing to attract a mate. The guide explained that the females chose the male based on the attractiveness of the singing and the viability and presentation of his nest.

More Pictures: Embedded below is a flash slideshow of some of the pictures. For better viewing, see the fullscreen sideshow or the Photo Album on SmugMug

Related Links:
- Maps showing locations of stops on this tour: Google Maps, or Google Earth.
- Index to More Pictures and posts from stops on this tour.

It's That Time of Year Again

2011-05-08T10:05:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of year again, when the overpopulated deer in the area begin dropping their young in neighborhood yards. The other day I got home in the afternoon, I saw this little guy laying still in my front yard, less than 10 feet from the driveway.

A year ago this activity created a flurry of traffic on the neighborhood email list, and I came home from the hospital to find a fawn in my back yard. I wrote about that encounter and why deer do this in a previous post.

This time, the fawn did not move when I drove in and opened the garage door. After last year’s fawn encounter, I expected the fawn would lie still and pretend to be invisible while its mother was probably somewhere nearby foraging for food. I went inside to grab my camera with the zoom lens and came out to get a quick picture as I went to the street curb to get the mail.

I intended to keep distance so as not to disturb the animal, since I knew the mother would be nearby. The last time this happened the fawn did not move, since its only defense I figured was to play dead. And so I was a little unprepared when it jumped up to run away. Pictures are a little blurry. I guess I came to close. Hope that did not cause a problem for the deer.

For a moment I thought it was going to run into my open garage, but at the last moment it turned away and went across the street into a neighbor’s yard.

Race to the Altar

2011-03-27T19:45:00.005-05:00

Last weekend I returned to trail races last weekend at the Race to the Altar. This race was put on at the Bluff Creek Ranch in Warda by a couple of friends, Jeff and Cheri, as part of their wedding weekend festivities the day before their wedding. This couple met a few years ago in a training group, which I was also in, that was training for the Palo Duro Trail runs. Since then they have been running a marathon or ultra per month.

The race had marathon, half-marathon, and 5k distance options, chip-timing and tech-tshirts. Between the 3 events, there were over 150 people who drove out to Warda, an hour and a half from Austin, for the event. The start times for each distance were staggered throughout the morning so that the runners for each event would all be finishing around mid-day. Since I am still constrained to a walking pace while recovering from last years medical issues, I got permission to start the half-marathon along with the marathon start at 7:30, two hours before the rest of the half-marathoners.

The bride and groom to be were doing the marathon dressed in faux wedding attire, but started the race well over an hour before everyone else (once the chip-timing was set up) so they could spend time greeting people later in the race. When the marathon started, they were waiting at a point shortly after the start (which was also around the 3.5 mile point for them, after the course loops back) to cheer on the runners.

The course was along trails usually used for mountain biking. It was a loop course, 2 loops for the half and 4 loops for the full marathon. The course had lots of turns. During the first couple of miles, there were frequently runners heard or seen nearby as different loops in the trail came near each other, even though those other runners were well ahead of me.

I tried to jog a little on some of the downhills, but I couldn’t sustain it for long. It doesn’t take that much exertion before I hit the feeling which is kind of like when scuba diving when your air gets low and you breathe in but are not getting much oxygen. That forces me to slow back to walking to catch my breath. It is frustrating to get winded so easily before getting tired. I could feel my heart racing slowly walking up the big hills, which were not all that big but they seemed like that to me. I finished in a little less than 5 hours. Despite these momentary discomforts, it was good to get out and I felt good after the race. I am hopeful the more I get out at activities like this the sooner I will get more fitness back.

I didn't take my camera to this one, but there are some pictures from the event up on this Endurance Buzz report.

Livestrong Austin Half Marathon 2011

2011-02-28T10:00:00.010-06:00

Six months ago, while recovering from some medical issues, I decided to sign up for the Livestrong Austin Half Marathon as a walker to give myself a purpose to help motivate me to get out and exercise and work toward a comeback. The medical situation had taken me from a physical capability of completing a few marathon distance events a year to level where I was struggling to keep up with friends during walks around Town Lake.

When I signed up for the race, the race website had a whole page explaining how the race was friendly towards walkers with relaxed cut-off times. But when the website was updated when the routes were finalized last November, the verbage about being walker friendly was removed (or at least I couldn't find it). And I am not sure but I thought I remembered a more relaxed cut-off. Not sure if the race changed things, or maybe I was just starting to realize I wasn't coming back as quickly as I needed to. I used to run these races targeting around 9:30-10:30 minutes per mile. But now the website said I would need to maintain a 16:00 minute mile for a 4 hour gun-time cutoff. I wasn’t quite to that point yet. Even though I was walking this event, I still had to think of this as a race -- just at a different scale.

By December I had been able to walk as far as 7 miles around Town Lake, but I was getting winded if my pace increased above 22:00 minutes per mile. I wasn’t concerned so much about being able to complete the distance in the race, but it was the cut-off time that I was worried about. By January, I had improved to able to do the 4 mile loop comfortably at just under a 19:00 minute pace. The improvement coming more from time for my lungs and body to heal than due to any training since my exercise had been irregular due to cold weather. My lungs are still at a reduced capacity, which causes me to get out of breath quickly if I walk to fast, but if I stay below the exertion level that my lungs can keep up with, I feel like I can keep going for a long time.

Due to a virus combined with cold weather, I did not get out for any long training walks during the month preceding the race. I didn’t think I was going to be fast enough to finish in the allotted time, but since I had already paid the registration fee, I decided to at least start and see how far I could get before they started to shut down the race course around me. I was imagining myself being the last guy trying to keep ahead of the course sweeping trucks.

The race website specified a 16:00 minute per mile minimum pace, but that assumed walkers at the back of the start corral took 25 minutes to reach the start line. I realized if I could reduce that to 10 minutes to reach the start, I would need only an 18:30 pace to finish by the 4 hour gun-time cutoff. That started to look possible. But it meant I would need to violate runners etiquette and start near the 4 hour marathon pace group even though I was no-where near that speed.

Yes, for this race, I was that guy.

For anyone not familiar with race etiquette, runners generally complain about slower people who line up to start ahead of faster runners, impeding runners behind who must weave in and out between the slower runners during the early portion of the race. I needed to believe I had a chance of finishing within the cut-off time, so I took the risk that I would momentarily annoy some runners to give myself that chance of finishing.

After the gun went off, it took me 9 minutes to reach the start line. As I passed the start, I stayed as close to the edge of the course to minimize blocking the runners behind. For the first ¼ mile, I broke into a slow jog, which I will refer to as a “trot.” My trotting speed now is still slower than many people’s walking speed, and I cannot yet sustain it very long. Fortunately most of the roads here were wide enough I am hopeful I didn’t impeded people behind too much. After the first turn the road widened and I was able to move out of the flow of runners for a bit. I soon caught up to a group of women walking 4 abreast. Rather than impeding the flow to get around them, I fell in behind them for a few minutes and slowed to a walk to catch my breath.

During downhill sections in the first couple of miles, I was able to sporadically trot for some portions as I tried to bank some early time to make up for the up-hill miles to come. If there was even the slightest uphill I could not sustain the trot at all. The first two miles wander through downtown before crossing the lake, and then the course follows South Congress for 3 miles until it reaches Ben White Blvd.

As I walked up the hill on South Congress, I thought back to the training for my first Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon from 6 years before. I can’t believe that was 6 years ago. Similar to that race, I had a long uphill where I could only power-walk. The reduced capacity in my lungs produced a result that was similar to the experience that race with reduced oxygen at altitude. I knew it was important to maintain mental focus and keep persistent forward momentum. Loosing focus would result in unintentional slow-down that I couldn’t afford if I wanted to beat the race cut-off.

I picked out other walkers and focused on maintaining pace and picked people off one-by one passing them. In actuality, more people were passing me than I was passing but this mental game kept me moving. A few people here would become my rabbits for much of the race as I focused on at least keeping them in sight. Sometimes I would walk a little too fast and start to get out of breath and have to slow a little. Each time this happened it was quick to catch my breath once I adjusted the pace.

I overheard part of a conversation between two of my rabbits. One guy was recovering from heart disease, and was using this activity as part of his recovery, not too different from me.

Splits from GPS-watch auto-split, which was taking splits little ahead of the actual mile-markers.
Mile 1: 15:40
Mile 2: 16:09
Mile 3: 17:57
Mile 4: 19:34
Mile 5: 19:00

I passed the 5 mile marker with exactly 1:30 chip-time by my watch. The race website had indicated I needed to be past this point at 1:30 from gun-time. That meant I was 9 minutes behind the cutoff time. This was near the top of the hill, so I risked a look behind and was relieved to see a steady stream of walkers as far as I could see.

After turning down South 1st street, the 3 mile return-trip to downtown was slightly down hill, and I could sporadically trot through some sections to try and make up some time, passing my designated rabbits. I kept myself at a sped where I was just below the point where I would fall out of breath. Occasionally I would push a little too much and have to slow down to catch my breath.

During one of my walking breaks, on a really flat section of road, I managed to twist my ankle. This injury took me by surprise. I kept walking through the pain, and it went away after a couple of minutes. Fortunately, there was no sprain.

After crossing the river again the course turned west. Around mile eight or nine, my hips started getting sore and I slowed a little. My rabbits caught up and passed me and so once again I had a target to keep pace with.

Mile 6: 18:43
Mile 7: 16:13
Mile 8: 17:16
Mile 9: 18:15
Mile 10: 20:05

I passed the 10 mile mark with exactly 3:00 chip-time on my watch. At least I was taking consistent time for the 2nd 5 miles as for the first 5 miles, but that meant I was still at a pace around 10 minutes behind the 4:00 chip time race cutoff. As I looked behind, there were now only a handful of runners around me. At least there was no sign of any course sweep vehicles. The stretch along the MOPAC frontage road had a nice up-hill. Even though I was feeling some pain in my hips and I knew I wasn’t going to make my time goal (and what I believed to be the race cut-off), it didn’t matter. I was happy to be out here and to be able to do this.

As my rabbits started to pull away from me, my thoughts went once again to the Pikes Peak training and the mantras for persistent forward motion. At that moment, a young woman passing me wearing minimalist footwear asked if I had done the Pikes Peak Marathon. I was a little surprised by this question. How did she know? I had not even realized I had picked up a cap to wear from the Pikes Peak race. She used to live in Colorado Springs and was familiar with the race. We chatted for a few minutes and before I knew it, our pace had picked up, we passed my rabbits and got over one hill, and then a second short but very steep hill as we turned on Enfield Road. I was starting to get winded trying to maintain conversation at this pace, and so I dropped back as she quickly moved ahead and out of sight. Just this few minutes of conversation with a total stranger had given me some important motivation to power through this section of the course which otherwise would have been more difficult for me.

Another mile and I reached the big steep hill at mile 12. My rabbits, including the recovering heart patient, passed me while making an attempt to run hard up the hill. They made it half way. I took the hill slowly, and was breathing heavy at the top of the hill. I looked back and saw only one other walker behind me. I figured must be one of the last people still in the event by now.

Another mile brought me near the finish. About 1km from the finish, the half-marathon route joined the marathon route where there was a steady stream of runners coming in. The half-marathon route had been reduced to a trickle of walkers, and spectators had taken over the half-marathon lane. I had to move into the marathon lane for the most of the last few hundred meters until the final finisher chute. My prior marathon coach was there near the end telling me to finish strong as I passed.

Mile 11: 19:09
Mile 12: 19:46
Mile 13: 19:38
Mile 13.1+overall GPS watch auto splits error: 4:00

I crossed the finish line with a chip time of 4:01:25 (gun-time of around 4:10). It was 10 minutes after my target, but still faster than I thought I would be able to do before the event. I guess I interpreted the cutoff times from the race website a little too literally. The race seems to have left the half-marathon finish open as long as anyone was out there coming in. But the belief that I was going to be close to missing a cut-off time gave me some important motivation to push ahead.

In the end, 10,536 people were listed as completing the half-marathon and I beat 60 of them. But I think some of those 60 actually ran the full marathon while registered for the half. Looking into the chip-time details, some of those slower finishers ran the first 10 miles more than twice as fast as I walked them, and they were missing a chip time for the 12-mile mark (the only chip mat which wasn’t also on the marathon course).

Anyway, I am happy that I was able to finish in approximately 4 hours and I am glad I chose to get out and do this event rather than stay on the couch. This was the Austin Marathon’s 20th anniversary, and it was the 13th time I have participated in the Austin Marathon in some form if I include all the full and half marathons and legs of the now discontinued 5-person relay. It was an all time PW for my slowest half-marathon finish, but I suppose I should look at it as a PR for the half-marathons where I was an intentional walker.

Southern South American Towns

2011-02-27T14:06:00.001-06:00

I’ll show here some pictures from several towns which I visited awhile ago in southern Patagonia in between stops at some other amazing places which will deserve their own future posts.

Punta Arenas, Chile

This is the southernmost sizable city in Chile. The stop here was just a transit point on the way to Torres del Paine. We flew to the city in the morning from Puerto Varas. On the way to the hotel, my tour mates who were originally scheduled for an Antarctic cruise that was canceled saw their disabled cruise ship in drydock getting repairs. The economic slow-down had left enough vacant hotel rooms that my tour operator was able to get a good enough deal to bump us up to 4-star accommodations. As I hung out in the hotel lobby, I overheard curious conversations of other guests, including a couple of pilots in NASA uniforms debating the details and weather risks of whatever research mission they were getting ready to fly over Antarctica.

Plaza Muñoz Gamero

Street scene in Punta Arenas

I had a few free hours to explore the city on foot on my own. There was a central square, Plaza Muñoz Gamero, with a monument to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Magellan’s voyage. Apparently the local superstition is to rub the feet of one of the statues for good luck, and many people were stopping by to do that so I had to wait awhile to get a relatively people-free picture of the statue. I walked through some of the neighborhoods by myself and stopped at a street vendor for some fresh cooked empanadas. Getting a couple of blocks from the main streets, the city started to feel cold, empty, and desolate.

HMS Beagle Reconstruction docked in Punta Arenas

Ships sail in the Straits of Magellan

I went back to the hotel, which was on the edge of the Straits of Magellan. There was a fancy historic-looking boat docked down the coast. I took a picture from afar not knowing what it was. A couple of hours later, my tour mates explained to me it was a ship which was a reconstruction of the HMS Beagle, which was retracing Darwin’s historic voyages. By then the ship had already left port so I missed the opportunity for a closer look. In the afternoon I visited a nearby Penguin Colony. Dinner was at a great restaurant with good atmosphere called La Luna.

Pureto Natales, Chile

A half-day bus ride north from Punta Arenas brought me to Puerto Natales. I walked around to the edge of the water. There were lots of beached fishing vessels. Even though it was summer, we were far enough south that wind was cold and chilling. It was daylight until 10pm or 11pm, and the sun rose before 5am.

Puerto Natales Waterfront

Monument in the main square

Typical Street Scene

In this town, I rented sleeping bag, and stocked up on some grocery supplies before leaving the town for a 4 day trek through the Torres del Paine park, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. I will post pictures from that location later. Unfortunately, I had several camera memory cards fail, so I have not been able to access most of my pictures from the park. I still have those cards, but have not yet investigated if I can retrieve any of the data. After the trek, we returned to this town for one night before taking the bus to El Calafate, Argentina.

After dinner Foosball Game

Beached fishing vessels

El Calafate, Argentina

El Calafate is a city less than 80 years old, and serves now as a tourism hub for visits to the nearby parks. After dropping off laundry at a local lavanderia, we had the rest of the afternoon to explore the gift shops selling tourist junk. Not so much to see here, but the Calafate ice cream was good. Calafate is a local berry. This town was another transit point in between more interesting destinations.

In the evening, I went with several of my tour group to a steak house. In one corner of the restaurant, behind a display glass for everyone to see, were the racks of lambs cooking over the fire pit. It was similar to this picture take below in Buenos Aires. The cooks would step into this room and cut off pieces of cooked meat as orders were placed. Gradually, over the course of the night, the cooked animals disappeared piece by piece.

Example Barbeque (from Buenos Aires, similar to the one in El Calafate)

The tour left El Calafate the next day to visit the glaciers at the Perito Moreno National Park, and then moved on to El Chatalen and the Fitz Roy Mountains for several days before returning to El Calafate for one more night.

As I explained in a previous post, the tour company, GAP Adventures, had added a second tour on these dates at the last minute to accommodate other travelers who were originally booked on an Antarctic tour that was canceled. There was another tour group following the same itinerary who we saw regularly, although they often traveled on separate buses or stayed in different hotels. The other group flew to the next stop in the morning. The last minute booking meant our group couldn’t get travel reservations until the afternoon. That gave me an extra day to explore this town, although I would rather have had that day at the next stop. Such is the cost of signing up for the tour at the last minute.

Flamingos in El Calafate

I took my camera down to a park on the edge of Lago Argentino, where there were a lot of flamingos and other birds. Then I went through a couple of small museums. One had some dinosaur skeletons from the area. The museum also had an exhibit on the indigenous people of the area, which had been noticeably absent from the travels so far. Photographers had documented their existence in the early part of the last century, but the tribes had either died out or been assimilated into the invading European immigrant cultures.

Natural History Museum in El Calafate

Map: View in Google Maps or Google Earth.

Photo slideshow is embedded below. Alternatively, for larger view see the full screen slideshow, or see the pictures on my SmugMug album.

Related Links:
- Maps showing locations of stops on this tour: Google Maps, or Google Earth.
- Index to More Pictures and posts from stops on this tour.
- More pictures from this stop on the tour.

Christmas Time in Granada, Nicaragua

2010-12-20T10:45:00.008-06:00

This time last year I was experiencing Christmas time celebrations in Granada, Nicaragua during the week before the Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua. I happened to arrive during the Purísma celebrations. This is a celebration of the Virgin Mary in early December that lasts about 2 weeks.

Cathedral de Granada

Christmas Tree in Parque Colon

Each night, for a week leading up to the main holiday, it seems like the whole city comes out for a procession, where a statue icon representing a virgin is carried through the town to the church in the city’s main square. The parade took a different route each night. We figured out which streets would be used based on where the decorative lights were hung along the route early in the morning before each parade.

On my first night in Granada, the route was to come down one of the main streets approaching the city square from the west. My guide, Jessica, took me out to show me around and take pictures. We did not know precisely what time to expect the procession, so we ended up being there nearly two hours early. But it was interesting watching the locals during that time. We started out waiting on the steps of a church by a park. There were many kids, and also street vendors selling sweets and shaved ice lined up waiting for the parade to come by. After a while there was an electrical problem that caused the street lights in the area to shut off, and so we walked a few blocks towards the main square where there was more light.

In this neighborhood, on either side of the street were building where the residents opened up their doors and set up chairs in their doorways on the sidewalk from which to watch the procession. Through the doors people passing on the streets could get a glimpse inside at the well decorated entrance room which usually had a lit up Christmas tree. These families living near the city center were apparently the regional upper class and took some pride in showing off their houses.

Purísma Processions

During the hour preceding the procession, more and more people came walking down the street along the parade route. First there was a wave of street cart vendors pulling their carts ahead of the crowd. Then hundreds of people passed by. All were presumably walking towards the main square ahead of the procession carrying the virgin. It felt like the whole city passed by while we waited for the procession.

Eventually the procession carrying the virgin passed us by. The alter was surrounded by a group of kids using a rope as a barrier to keep people out of the way of the procession. It was followed by a group of musicians playing horned instruments. I snapped a few pictures, and then went back to my homestay for bed.

I was staying at the home of a local family who rents out 2 rooms in their house to foreign visitors. Most of their tenants are students at a local Spanish language school. The rent includes home cooked meals of typical Nicaraguan food. Since I was to run a 50k endurance run in a few days, Jessica had asked that I receive more filling meals, and so I got extra gallo pinto (rice and bean mixture) and other good and hearty food. I was in Granada for several nights. During the day I would take day-trips to surrounding areas. Some of these trips were described previously in the La Granadilla, Mombacho Volcano, Empowerment International, and Masaya posts.

Purísma Processions

On the second night in Granada, I went out by myself to take pictures of the procession. I found the street where the lights were hung, and followed them as the parade route wound its way through neighborhoods until I found the start of the parade at a small church. The virgin statue was there on display, and much of the town was crowded in the street socializing. Street vendors were selling food and snacks and there was music playing.

I eventually moved to a less crowded spot where I hoped to get a good picture of the procession as it passed. I kept my camera in my bag until the last minute to avoid grabbing attention of anyone of questionable intent. However, as one of the few foreigners on the street, touts still came up to me. I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, but from the few Spanish words I recognized I am pretty sure one of them was asking if I liked dark skinned women. It was funny how such people didn’t approach me when I was with my guide the night before, but insisted on coming up to me when I was alone. It was an annoyance, but I was never worried about safety. In fact in two weeks in Nicaragua this was the only instance of anything like this.

Purísma Processions

I kept a close eye on my belongings and stood near groups of large families thinking that would be a little safer. As the procession approached, one mother tapped me on the shoulder and told me something in Spanish. I am not sure what she said but I believe she was warning me to watch out for the dodgy man who kept trying to talk to me. As the procession passed, I got my pictures, and then jumped into the crowd following the statue where I lost the questionable people. I followed the procession into the main city square and watched as the virgin was carried into the main cathedral.

While walking around the city during daylight, it is evident that many of the buildings in Granada have been “restored.” This must have been an expensive process that cleaned up the outside of the buildings and left them painted in bright colors. At times it felt a little too sanitized.

Contrast between Original and restored work is seen at the Iglesia de Merced

Restored Church

On a free morning I walked over to the Fortaleza La Polvora (fortress). I was there pretty early, but someone was there pruning plants. He unlocked the gate, took my admission fee, gave me a ticket, and then I was free to roam around. There was a little historical display in the center with some old cannons and barrels. The main draw was that I could climb up the towers in the corners for a view of the surrounding neighborhood blocks. I also stopped by a now defunct-run down former hospital looking for photographic opportunities. And then I also went through the historical museum, Museo de San Francisco, which had some interesting displays and artifacts.

Fortaleza La Polvora (Spanish Fortress)

Views from the towers of Fortaleza La Polvora

Artifacts in Museo de San Francisco

View from the back of Museo de San Francisco

Mural at the entrance to Museo de San Francisco

I left Granada after a few days to go to Isla Ometepe for the Ultramaraton Fuego y Agua 50K. After the race, I came back to Granada for one night before moving on to Leon. On the last morning I took a tour of the Islets de Granada, some small islands on the lake near Granada. The original plan was to take a sail boat, one of maybe two on the whole lake, which was owned by an Austrian ex-pat guide. But it was two windy so my Austrian guide took me out on an inflatable kayak instead.

Boat launch site on Lake Nicaragua

Starting the kayak tour, Photo courtesy of my guide, Jessica

View of Granada from the islands

We stopped at Castillio San Pablo, a Spanish fortress on one of the islands used to defend the city of Granada from pirate attack. In colonial times, Pirates sailed up river from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Nicaragua to raid Granada.

Castillo San Pablo (Spanish fortress)

Views of Las Isletas de Granada from Castillo San Pablo

The islands are littered with small houses. Many are local fisherman, but on some islands, wealthy Nicaraguans had “purchased” the island and built an expensive looking vacation home. There is some dispute over land ownership and who really owns the right to sell – whether it is the local person now living on the land, or the absentee landowner who fled during the civil wars 30 years ago. Often the original family who “sold” the land maintains their house on these islands as care takers while the new owner lives day-to-day in one of the bigger cities.

After the boat tour, Jessica took me to the main square in Granada for some very typical local food. There are 4 gazebos, one in each corner of the square, and each is actually a restaurant selling the local cuisine. Then we boarded a collective mini-bus for the ride first to Managua for a connection change, and then to the city of Leon. Since it was only two days after the run, my legs were cramping in the small space, but it was a cheap and safe way to get around the country.

A slide show of more pictures from Granada is embedded below. For better viewing, see the Smugmug album or the full screen slideshow.

Links:
- More Blog Posts or Photo Albums from this Nicaragua Trip
- Maps of the sites I visited in Nicaragua: on Google Maps or Google Earth
- Tour guide who arranged my Nicaragua Travels: ¡Un Buen Viaje!

Chile Lakes District

2010-11-28T19:56:00.003-06:00

Continuing the tale and stream of pictures of last year's trip to Patagonia...

After only one Full day in Bariloche, we boarded a bus to Puerto Varas, Chile. We traveled through a mountain pass over the Andes before stopping at the Chilean customs. Customs was strict about searching for certain food items, and anyone with dried snack fruit had their food confiscated. After a long wait while everyone’s bags were inspected, we got back on the bus and continued. Re-entry into Argentina the following week was much easier.

We had enough time that first afternoon in Puerto Varas to take a walk along the lakeside. We walked up a nearby hill for a better view, passing through a neighborhood where some care had been taken in many residents’ gardens. I later learned this city is known as the “Rose Capital” of Chile, and many neighborhood houses had rose bushes of various varieties. Leaving the streets, we continued up some trails until we got to the top of the hill, where there were the remains of a defunct zip-line amusement park.

Lake view from Puerto Varas, Chile.

Tiles on the Puerto Varas boardwalk

Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (Church of Sacred Heart of Jesus), Puerto Varas, Chile

The next day was a “free day” in the tour’s itinerary. The weather was supposed to be fairly cloudy obscuring views for some of the hiking and sightseeing options. Many of us between the two GAP Patagonia tours signed up for a day trip to Chiloe Island, the second biggest island in Chile, which was to involve a boat tour of a penguin colony. Given the choice of hiking in miserable weather or seeing penguins, most people opted for the penguins. After a 45-minute drive, we boarded a ferry to take us to the island. Our first stop on the island was the town square of Chacao, where there was many examples of local architecture of using wood shingles painted in bright colors.

Brightly painted buildings in Chacao, Chile.

We then drove to the town of Ancud, where we stopped for a short visit to see some local museums. The town square was filled with political posters for the elections that were coming up. Apparently, the town square was one of the few places candidates were allowed to post signs. The square also had a bunch of small mermaid-like statues commemorating local folk-lore. Unfortunately I have forgotten the story after a year.

Town Square in Ancud, Chile

When we re-boarded the mini-bus we drove to the seaside community where we were hoping to start the boat tour of the penguin colony, but the wind was whipping up the waves and it was not safe to launch the small boats that would take us to the smaller islands where the colony was located. So we went into the only restaurant for lunch hoping the weather would improve by the time we were done. After a long lunch, the sky had cleared some, but the waves were too strong to launch the boats. We walked up and down the beach past the local fishing community for a little sightseeing before returning to the bus for the trip back.

Cows on the beach, Chiloe Island, Chile

On the way back to Puerto Varas, we stopped at the city of Puerto Montt. We walked through the local fish market, and there were also a string of shops selling arts and crafts and other tourist fare. Puerto Varas was one of the stops where the extra day had been cut (explained in previous post), and so there was not the opportunity to explore elsewhere in this region before continuing to the next stop in southern Chile.

Scenes from the fish market in Puerto Montt, Chile

Related Links:
- Maps showing locations of stops on this tour: Google Maps, or Google Earth.
- Index to More Pictures and posts from stops on this tour.
- More pictures from this stop on the tour.
- More blog posts from this Patagonia Tour

Click to view in Google Maps

Update

2010-11-24T23:09:00.004-06:00

A few posts ago I described some of my medical drama from this summer. I was touched and am thankful for all those who offered support or words of encouragement through various means after reading that. So perhaps it is time for a quick update for anyone who might still be reading.

I have been back at work for a month and a half after several months medical leave of absence. I visit my doctors frequently who run tests to check that the condition is not coming back, and to watch for bad side effects of some of the medications I take daily. It's about 8 or 10 pills -- some of them twice a day.

I have been trying to get out and do some exercise – which consists of gymwork, treadmill, or long walks. I have been up to 5 miles walking distance. Last month, I went out for my first 5K event since I started recovery. It was the Get Your Rear In Gear 5k. It was a small race west of Austin, but had lots of swag. Tasty Bites was a sponsor, and I came away with enough of their product that they were handing out for a couple of meals and a couple of old tech t-shirts. I guess this milestone event gives me the right to display this badge of honor on my car.

Image stolen from JT’s Blog
My lungs cannot keep up yet if I try to run, so I am going for time on my feet walking. Taking the time to do this exercise gets more challenging now that it gets darker earlier. And with medications that increase my susceptibility to getting sick, I am not so eager to get outside for a few hours walking when it is really cold. I try to compensate for the inability to run by increasing the incline on the treadmill until I can find the balance between a pace I can sustain that feels like I am pushing myself and not over exerting and getting out of breath too quickly.

Thanks to Run DMZ for the shout-out and kind words. And also, thanks to Donald at Running and Rambling for hosting a contest where I won a case of CLIF Protein Bar products. And of course thanks to CLIF for sending the products.

Patagonia Lakes District in Argentina

2010-11-21T10:11:00.002-06:00

It was almost a year ago that my tour group with Gap flew from Buenos Aires to the city of San Carlos de Bariloche for the start of the tour through Patagonia. The first few days of the tour took us through the Argentina and Chilean Lakes districts in the northern region of Patagonia.

Bariloche was situated on a lake edge and is known as a center for skiing during the winter. There is noticeable German influence in the construction of many buildings, and also the various chocolate shops. I was there during the summer. After arriving in the late afternoon, and getting dinner, I went out with my tripod and took some pictures of the town square lit up at night. There was a lot of graffiti painted on the square. Noteworthy was from the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” group of human rights activists who seek to re-unite with their abducted children and grandchildren from the 1976-83 Dirty War. There were also a lot of stray dogs in the square who insisted on play-fighting each other wherever I tried to set up my tripod.

The next day was a free day on the tour itinerary. My tour group decided to travel together to Cerro Campanario, which was supposed to have some excellent views of the region. We went to find the local bus. There was no bus stop sign at the intersection where we were supposed to catch the bus so we were not sure if we were in the right place. Soon some other tourists showed up and reassured us we were in the right place. Soon the bus came and we rode it almost 20km out to Cerro Campanario. There was a ski-lift up to the top, but we had heard there were some trails and decided to hike. When we asked for directions, the operator of the ski-lift office refused to acknowledge there was a hiking path to the top. But another by-stander gave us directions to the nearby trail. It was not very long, but it was steep. Once at the top, there were indeed some excellent views.

Climbing to the top of Cerro Campanario

View of the lakes discrict from the top of Cerro Campanario

My tour group

Religious monument at the top of Cerro Campanario

Another view from Cerro Campanario

We took the bus back to Barriloche. Originally we were going to try to take another ski-lift to another mountaintop with a hike and a viewpoint, but we learned that place had to close due to high winds for the day so we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon lounging in town. In the evening, I went back out for some more night time pictures. The next morning, we boarded a bus to Puerto Varas, Chile.

Bariloche Town Square

Protest Grafitti from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

Lake Nahuel Huapi, seen from San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

Town Square

Chocolate shop window display.

Restaurant showing German influence in the area.

Government Building on the Town Square

Cathedral of Nestra Senora de Nahuel Huapi

I signed up for this tour with GAP at the last minute, less than two weeks before departure while I was in between jobs. Originally I had booked the trip for 2 months later, but had to exchange it for an earlier departure so that I could accept a job offer. At first I was told I was the 15’th person on a tour which was cutoff at 15. But then another GAP tour to Antarctica got canceled when the boat had to go into drydock to be repaired, and several on that tour were offered this Patagonia tour in exchange (plus excellent discount on a future Antarctica Tour). Since GAP keeps the tour groups small, they opened up a second tour that ran separate, but in parallel to the original tour, and I was switched to the second tour. It was like they segregated the North Americans into this second tour since the other group was composed entirely of Europeans and Australians and ours had all the Americans and Canadians.

I chose this tour since the itinerary included lots of free days at each stop, and I had plenty of time since I was between jobs at the time. But between the time I decided this was the tour I wanted to take, and the time I actually booked it, GAP quietly removed 4 days from the itinerary. Our guide claimed it was response to participant feedback about “too much time” spent at some stops. In reality, this was more likely a cost-cutting measure in response to strained economic times and rising costs. The days lost included most of the extra free days at several stops. I did not notice this until some from our parallel tour were complaining about it. Those who had booked earlier than me ended up with several extra free days in Buenos Aires due to the shortened tour with hotel paid for by GAP. This removal was unfortunate, since those extra days meant we were a little rushed at some stops and removed the flexibility of re-scheduling activities in case of bad weather. One of the days that was lost was in Bariloche, so we did not get the time to explore the other parks in the area. Other than the unexpected loss of the 4 days, I was very happy overall with the tour.

Related Links:
- Maps showing locations of stops on this tour: Google Maps, or Google Earth.
- Index to More Pictures and posts from stops on this tour.
- More pictures from this stop on the tour.
- More blog posts from this Patagonia Tour

Peru Trip Slideshows

2010-11-11T13:21:00.009-06:00

Just over two years ago I joined some of my trail running friends on an incredible multi-day trail running expedition through the Peruvian Andes. I started writing about this trip before (1, 2) but never managed to finish the story. There was so much experienced that my words don't do the trip justice. Perhaps one of these days I'll get back to the story. Until then...

I let IncaRunners, the company that arranged and guided this trip, use some of my pictures for their website. Hugo at Incarunner's put together some cool slideshows with these pictures which I embed below.

Slideshow #1

Slideshow #2

More about IncaRunners: Website, Facebook, Tour Brochure

Buenos Aires

2010-09-30T07:24:00.011-05:00

I arrived in Buenos Aires last November a few days before the start of a 3 week tour through Patagonia with GAP Adventures. My flight arrived around 8:00am, and I signed up for a ride with a local bus company to drop me off at the hotel for 1/5 the price of a taxi. After one transfer, they dropped me at the hotel door. I couldn’t check in that early, but I could store my bags and spend the rest of the day exploring the city.

I had hastily arranged this trip only one week before arrival. Originally, I had scheduled the tour for mid-January to take advantage of sometime between jobs. However, I got a job offer that I was not expecting since it had been a while since the interview, and it did not seem right to turn a reasonably good job down when so many other former co-workers were still out of work. I couldn’t get a refund on the tour if I canceled it due to a new job, but GAP were willing to let me exchange it for an earlier departure and my new employer was willing to delay my start date a couple of months. I rearranged my flights to combine this trip with a previously scheduled Nicaragua trip, ordered some travel supplies last minute, and one week later I was in Buenos Aires. I had to cut out a few free days in Buenos Aires and I cut out a side trip to Santiago, Chile, completely to fit within the schedule I had.

Once I arrived in Buenos Aires, I started discovering all the little things I forgot to pack in the rush, and so the few extra days before the organized tour gave me some time to look around and find things. The most important item I needed to find was a converter for the local electrical plug so I could recharge my camera batteries, cell phone, laptop and razor. On the first afternoon I found a mom & pop electronics store. Due to the language barrier (my lack of Spanish) it took me a little while to convey what I was looking for, but the owner eventually understood and pulled out an adapter plug and showed me the printed add for the part which would have run around $50 USD. That was too high and so I passed. Later that day, I found a section off the Florida Street pedestrian mall with a bunch of electronic shops and found the same device for around $2 USD.

I arrived at a time when many of the trees in Buenos Aires were blooming with these purple flowers. (EDIT: These have since been identified to me as Jacaranda trees.) My Patagonia tour returned us to Buenos Aires at the end of 3 weeks, where I had a couple of days after the tour to take a second chance at some pictures. However, by then all the purple flowers were gone and things had a different look.

I took my tripod and camera out on several evenings to get some night shots. Some of them came out pretty good thanks to the well lit buildings. (See more night shots.).

In Plaza de Mayo after returning from my Patagonia tour, I noticed at sunset several fountains were lit nicely and thought that would make a good picture. But these fountains were turned off fairly quickly after the sunset so I missed the chance to photograph them that first night. So I came back the next evening and managed to take a few shots before they were shut down.

I went to the San Telmo street fair on Sunday. From the square in the San Telmo Neighborhood, stretching about 10 blocks, were all sorts of vendors lining the streets selling arts and crafts. There were also a lot of vendors selling orange juice or lemonade which they squeezed in front of you.

San Telmo Street Fair

I mostly got around the city by walking, but occasionally I took the subway. Most of the subway cars are not unlike those found in any other major city, but one day I got on a car whose interior was made up with wooden benches and wood trim to look like some sort of old-time rail car. And the conductor had to manually open the doors at each stop. I am not sure if there was some significance to this car, but I never got it again when I went back to that route. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good picture in the low light and moving car.

After traveling in other parts of Latin America, I was a little surprised to find Buenos Aires had a more European feel than other parts of the continent. Every 3rd restaurant in the neighborhood I stayed in seemed like it was a pizza place or other Italian food joint. There were also a lot of steak houses, and I found the grass fed beef in each to be some of the best steaks I have ever had. I had not had that many steaks over the last couple of years, and so I made up for that deficiency with a little too much beef in just a few days.

Cook prepares a steak on a restaurant grill.

Lamb Barbeque at La Chaca Steakhouse

After seeing pictures of the Floris Generica Sculpture featured on the Stuck In Customs photoblog, I went and searched out this sculpture. Apparently, it has moving parts such that the flower opens and closes at sunrise and sunset. I was not able to be there at those times to witness it.

Floralis Generica Sculpture

Another interesting place was the La Recoleta Cemetery, where there are many elaborate mausoleums with the graves for some of the most important Argentinians. This cemetery holds about 350,000 dead in 6400 tombs in 4 city blocks patrolled by about 75 feral cats fed by volunteers twice daily. Most tourists in the cemetery were scurrying around looking for Eva (Evita) Peron’s tomb. Recoleta is located in one of the most affluent Buenos Aires neighborhoods. As I walked around outside the cemetery, I passed several commercial dog walkers out for a stroll, each with between 10 or 20 small, nicely groomed dogs on leashes.

On my final day, I signed up for a 1/2 day tour of the city. It gave me a little more explanation for many of the places I had already seen. It also included a stop in the La Boca neighborhood, which was a bit touristy, but had many colorful buildings.

I stayed initially at the Goya Hotel where the friendly receptionist offered me all sorts of good suggestions on where to go and what to see. Later I moved to the Hotel Carsson to join the tour group. The only place I knew of with free WIFI was a Starbucks, which I had to make use of to take care of some last minute business that I did not get to before leaving home. Hotels in Buenos Aires were charging $10 or more a day for WIFI, which is curious since most other hotels I stayed in this trip in South America and Nicaragua, no matter how rural, usually had free WIFI.

I posted a bunch of pictures from the city, split into several albums for manageability, on my Smugmug page, but below is a slideshow with selected highlights from the city pictures.

For better viewing experience, see the full page slideshow, or view the album on Smugmug.

Earlier Posts from Buenos Aires: Hokahey Run, Uruguay Day Trip

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

2010-09-09T23:16:00.005-05:00

Last November, I had been staying in Buenos Aires for a few days before joining a tour through Patagonia. After reading this New York Times article, I had originally considered an overnight trip to Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo to coincide with the Saturday art markets. However, due to some last minute changes in itinerary, my time in Buenos Aires was reduced so I opted instead for the half-day trip to the town of Colonia del Sacramento. This brief journey into Uruguay allowed me to check one more country off my list of countries visited because who knows when I would next have an opportunity to swing through Uruguay.

Colonia del Sacramento (referred to simply as “Colonia”) is located an hour’s ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the muddy Río de la Plata. It was founded in 1680 by the Portuguese as a base from which to smuggle goods into Buenos Aires. Later, it passed into Spanish rule. Now the original settlement has been turned into a historic district with small museums with lots of arts stores in the surrounding neighborhood, making this a tourist destination for day-trippers from Buenos Aires.

I caught the 12:30 ferry leaving Buenos Aires in the afternoon after running my remote version of the Hokahay 5k earlier in the morning. The same customs agents who stamp the passport for departing Argentina also stamp the entry visa for Uruguay, and the boat ticket doubles as the official tourist card visa that you need to hold onto to leave Uruguay. Since I don’t understand Spanish, I did not realize this immediately and so was a little surprised when there was no customs check upon arrival. Fortunately, I held onto my boat ticket as a souvenir not realizing its importance.

Just outside the ferry terminal there were several open air car-rental stands. These were the type of stands where one would expect street vendors to be selling food or flea market items. Most the major car rental agencies we are familiar with in the US were represented including Hertz, Avis, Budget, and Thrifty. However, most the cars available for rent were electric golf carts. At first I thought this gave a new meaning to a “Thrifty” car rental. After more thought, I realized this option for most tourists was more economical and environmentally friendly than using a regular car since the average tourist would only go a short distance from the ferry port. The historical district was only a 10 minute walk away, there was not much car traffic, and few day trippers from Buenos Aires were likely to venture beyond that area.

Thrifty gives new meaning to the term "Thrifty Rental Car"

I hiked it to the historic district past an old abandoned rail station. The streets were well groomed in this area. There were an unusual number of classic looking cars parked along the side streets, all of which looked inoperable but were kept just clean enough as if they were put there for show.

I arrived at the Portón de Campo (City gate) with its wooden drawbridge and picked up an English language map from the nearby tourist office. This historical district had several small museums scattered throughout the old buildings. One ticket gets you into all the museums. It was only now that I discovered that Uruguay was 2 hours ahead of Buenos Aires time, which meant that I had arrived after 3:30pm local time and had a very short time to make it to the museums before they closed at 5:00pm. I made it through a few of the more interesting museums before they started to close. Some of these contained artifacts from the original Portuguese and Spanish merchants, sailors, and settlers. There were also art and natural history museums.

Some colorful buildings in the historic district

An old cannon located in front of one of the museums

I walked around some of the old cobblestone streets and ruins of an old Covenant and then took in some views along the river. After the museums closed I browsed through some of the nearby arts and crafts stores in the neighborhood. I did not realize it at the time, but the main church I walked past was the oldest church in Uruguay.

Oldest church in Uruguay

Decorative wagon in front of a cafe

A dining table was set up inside this car next to a restaurant

After I felt I had exhausted the possibilities for walking around, I grabbed dinner and a regional beer at one of the sidewalk cafes that catered to tourists. Since I had signed up for the later ferry back and had run out of things to do, I had a few hours to kill so I sat there and read a book for a little while. I probably should have taken the ferry two hours earlier and/or taken an earlier arrival ferry that would have given me more time when things were open. But I was not disappointed in this day trip. This was a nice half-day excursion, although the area I visited was sanitized for tourists and I suspect not representative of typical Uruguay.

Old-time looking kiosk selling refreshments.

Sunset by the River

At sunset I walked back to the ferry terminal. I saw several tourists ahead of me in line who had lost their tourist card and were having trouble to pass through Uruguay departure customs. That is when I realized the significance of my earlier ferry ticket was also stamped with my tourist visa and was fortunate I still had it in my camera bag.

I dozed on the ferry ride back to Buenos Aires, and then walked back toward my hotel. Since it was getting late I opted for pizza take-out rather than stop in a sit-down restaurant. There was a small pizza shop half a block from my hotel that was always more crowded with locals than the other pizza places. It seems like every 3rd restaurant in this neighborhood was a pizza place. I guess this a sign of the influence of Italian immigrants. This shop had very few seats and most people were getting their pizza to go. There was only one size and choice of toppings – cheese with some sort of herbal seasonings. It was similar to New York style pizza, and was well worth the wait in line. At ~$3.50 USD for a whole pie one of the cheapest meals I had in that city.

For more pictures from Colonia del Sacramento, see the slideshow below (might not be visible from feed readers).
For better viewing experience see the phots instead at one of these links:
- full screen slideshow
- photo album on Smugmug.

Running Saved My Life

2010-09-03T06:17:00.012-05:00

I haven’t been posting recently, with good reason. Over the last couple of months I have been in and out of the hospital or else recovering at home following illness that affected my respiratory system.

The short summary is I went into the hospital with advanced respiratory distress (ARDS) a few months ago due to an uncommon condition known as Wegener's Granulomatosis that had attacked the vascular systems in my lungs among other things. I was in critical condition for awhile, including some time enclosed in a high-tech rotating bed, but now I am home and recovering. At one point, one doctor told me that the increased lung capacity I had developed due to participating in endurance events may have bought the doctors the time they needed to identify the cause and begin treatments, thus saving my life or at least significantly increasing my chances for survival.

For more details and a few pictures, read on…

(EDIT: While the title of this post gives credit to running as a factor that probably helped save me, the real life savers were the many doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who provided excellent care and I don't mean to de-emphasize their work with that title)

The Early Signs

I started seeing signs of this disease as early as March, two months before it progressed bad enough that I was hospitalized. It started with nosebleeds and a nasal infection. A few weeks later I got an ear infection in my left ear. My doctor prescribed some antibiotics, but they had little effect. So every week or two I went back to the doctor and he prescribed a different antibiotic to try. I started losing hearing in that ear, and the other ear was showing signs of the infection. I asked my doctor if it was time for me to see an ENT (ear/nose/throat) specialist. He said the ENT wouldn’t do anything different than he was doing and that we would be in this routine of trying different drugs every couple of weeks until he found the one that worked. I decided to go to the ENT anyway.

The ENT specialist prescribed Leviquin, a strong antibiotic, for the ear. He explained he was bypassing many of the antibiotics my other doctor would have experimented with an went straight for the strongest. The ENT also noticed I had a deviated septum, and asked when I broke my nose. This was a surprise to me since I had never broken my nose. I don’t think the ENT doctor believed me because he insisted it would have hurt like hell and I would have remembered it. When the Leviquin did not do much for the ear after a week, the ENT punctured the eardrum to drain the fluid, reliving pressure and which allowed my hearing to return.

During this same time period, I got an eye infection. The eye doctor treated it as viral pink eye. The prescribed eye drops did not do much (which was not that unexpected since viral infections don’t respond to medicine and just need to run their course). Problem was the infection wasn’t really due to a virus and the ear infection was not really an infection.

The day after my last ENT visit, I had started coughing up a mixture of blood and mucus and noticed a little more effort to catch my breath. Then next morning I had a previously scheduled eye doctor appointment, and the doctor said my symptoms looked like pneumonia. I went to my family practice doctor to check into that. He quickly recognized I was in worse shape than I realized. He had a very grave look on his face. He ran some quick tests, took a chest X-ray, EKG reading, O2 saturation (which was down to 82%) and placed me on supplemental oxygen. My lungs were filling with fluid. The doctor then called an ambulance to take me to the nearest ER, even though the ER was was only one block away. He gave me a packet to give to the hospital doctors containing my recent medical history. The EMT’s arrived and strapped me to a gurney to be wheeled out to the ambulance. On the way, the gurney was rolled over some un-even sidewalk, and it tipped over landing in the road. The EMT’s were able to control the fall so I did not hit the ground to hard and no harm was done except that the EMT’s were a little embarrassed.

Until now, each of my symptoms appeared as a standard but separate infection, and nothing stood out that would have alerted the doctors there was something more, except maybe that the normal treatments for infections were not working.

It turns out that each of these nose, eye and ear infections were the first signs of Wegener's Granulomatosis, a non-infectious auto-immune disease where my body’s immune system attacks the blood vessels in healthy organs. The effects of this disease include destruction of cartilage in the nose, resulting in the appearance of previously broken nose that my ENT doctor observed. It was not until the disease attached my lungs that it became serious enough to put me into the hospital. Often this disease also attacks the liver and kidneys but so far I have not had problems with those organs.

Into the Hospital

I arrived in the ER and was placed in a room. Within minutes, before even a doctor could stop by, an EMT supervisor visited to drop off his card and let me know I could call him if I had any concerns about the fall I wanted to discuss. But I was not hurt and more concerned with the other medical issues so I did not think there was any issue to be pushed.

The Internal Medicine doctor came by shortly after that and reviewed the notes from my family doctor and asked lots of questions. He quickly realized I had something that was not normal pneumonia. He said normally the first thing they might do would be to put me on Levaquin, but since the ENT doctor already had me on that for 10 days without benefit, he knew it was something else and so he called in pulmonary and infectious disease specialists who asked me lots more questions as they tried to figure out what I had. Had I not had the Levaquin recently, the doctors might have lost precious time attempting to treat me with it.

My memories of the next couple of days before they put me on the ventilator are a little fuzzy. Once on life support, I was unconscious for a couple of weeks. My accounts that follow are based on what family and friends explained to me after these events transpired and some notes recorded by my mother. There could be some error in the second hand details.

In the first couple of days, I remember friends coming in to get my keys to transfer my car home. A friend who happened to be a doctor came in to check on me, and I later learned she had stopped in regularly and helped translate the medical jargon of what was happening to me to family and friends.

I was transferred on the 3rd day to the ICU. On the 4th day my mother arrived from out of town for what turn into 2 visits covering most of the next 2.5 months. My lungs continued to fill with fluid and my health was going downhill quickly.

The doctors had narrowed my diagnosis to two theories. I either had Wegener's Granulomatosis or else I had picked up some sort of parasite on my recent travels through South America and Nicaragua. The problem was that they treated me for the Wegener’s that medicine would cause any parasites if I had them to multiply rapidly. So the doctors had to verify whether I had any parasites before administering the treatment by performing surgery to remove a lung sample for analysis.

On the Respirator

On the 5th day of the hospital stay (Sunday, Memorial Day) I was put into a medically induced sleep and paralysis and placed on a respirator while the doctors worked to save my life. In the evening on the Memorial Day holiday many medical people were called in to perform the lung biopsy surgery via an incision in my back. In addition I understand more than a dozen friends from the running community had gathered in the waiting room. Although I had no idea for several weeks what had transpired, my parents were very impressed with this support.

The surgeon at first was worried it might be difficult to get a usable sample depending how much my lungs had deteriorated. Luckily he extracted a good sample. To get the official “all clear” on whether I had parasites, tissue sample would be sent to several labs in parallel for analysis. However, my condition could not wait for the results so they took a quick look in the microscope. They saw no signs of parasites (nor dead parasite bodies from all the antibiotics) and so they started administering the medicines to treat for Wegener’s immediately. Over the next few days and weeks, official lab results came back all confirming no parasites.

(EDIT: corrected description) On the 7th day of my hospital stay I was in a deteriorating state of Advanced Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and was placed into the RotoProne bed. Friends referred to this as the “space bed,” “pod,” or “Star Wars bed.” The bed would rotate in a sequence of something like 3 minutes on my left side, 2 minutes lying face down, 3 minutes on my right side. That sequence was repeated for 3.5 hours and then I would be turned face up and hatches in the bed opened to allow me to “air out” for 15 minutes. This air out allowed me to cool down and helped prevent skin breakdown because it was apparently rather hot in the bed. The nurses would use that time to wipe out my mouth and brush my teeth. Then the hatches would be closed and this whole sequence would be repeated over and over. The rotation apparently improved my lungs ability to absorb oxygen and prevented fluids in the body from becoming stationary, which helped to keep many of the body’s organs functioning normally.

The RotoProne Bed (I am inside)

Later I would learn that during the H1N1 pandemic, 14 of these beds were brought in for use somewhere in Austin from the manufacturer in Waco. Eleven of those beds were located at this particular hospital. Most of the patients who used this bed survived. I also learned that while my Wegener’s conditions is uncommon enough that doctors normally would expect to run across it once a decade, my Pulmonary doctors had 2 other cases within the last month, and perhaps the recent experience helped them to quickly identify this condition quickly in me. I think I was lucky landing at this hospital where there was so much recent experience with the use of this bed. Had I gone straight to an ER without going first through my doctor, I would certainly have landed at a different hospital since St David’s was not near my home or work.

Over the next week or so, doctors apparently performed 7 or 8 plasma replacement procedures on me. My blood was extracted, the red blood cells were separated from my original plasma, then the new plasma was mixed in with my original red blood cells and returned to my body. The purpose was to filter out the immune system components that were attacking the rest of my body due to the Wegeners.

During the time I was unconscious, I understand there were a bunch of my running friends who came by to support in some way. Many who came by to give company to my mother, others helped do some work around my house, and/or helped my mother find her way around town. My mother took some iPhone pictures of some of the friends in front of the bed. These sometimes looked like the tourist pictures like the type one might take while standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, but later it would let me know that people had been stopping by to visit. There was a sign-in sheet to record who visited, but the cleaning crew threw it out so I may not know of everyone who stopped by or helped out in some way. I cannot say how thankful I am for this support.

Waking Up

I am not sure exactly which day I was removed from RotoProne bed, but it was sometime before I was taken off the respirator. My mother’s notes indicate I was taken off the respirator on the 16th day of my hospital stay, which was the start of my third week in the hospital. That is where I started to wake up in the ICU, but I was still a bit out of it mentally from all the drugs that had been used to sedate and paralyze me during the time in the bed. It took a few days for those effects to wear off.

I remember bits and pieces of real conversations from that time in the ICU mixed in with the dreams induced by the various drugs that I was coming off of. Initially I was unaware of what had really transpired over the previous two weeks (and my mother was probably waiting for me to become more lucid to explain it). At some point a visiting friend showed me some iPhone pictures of the RotoProne bed and I started to realize a lot had happened that I was not aware of.

My time on the respirator left my voice was very scratchy from having tubes down my throat and it was a couple of weeks before I could talk decently. I lost 30 pounds of mostly muscle mass, and was too weak to even move my arms much. My legs were thin and bony looking like those seen in pictures of malnourished concentration camp survivors.

Someone had explained to me that much of the myosin protein which is necessary for motor control in my muscles had wasted away since I had been so stationary during my time in the bed. The way to stimulate re-generation of myosin was to move the muscles. So, even before I was completely conscious and before I started receiving visits from the physical therapists my mother started having me do some movement exercises with my arms, hands, and legs. Some of the exercises were based on the therapy from her work with recovering heart patients. At first she moved my arms and legs, and later I was able to do that a little more on my own. Each time we would go through those exercises, the next day I was able to do more movement on my own. Once a particular muscle was exercised, it seemed to be bouncing back more by the next day. This early movement probably sped up my recovery and return to mobility.

I started marathon distance running and triathlons 8 years before this incident. Since then, I have been in almost continuous training for some type of endurance event. One doctor later told me that this endurance training had resulted in above average lung capacity, and this increased capacity combined with the fact that I have never smoked probably bought me the time that the doctors needed to save my life. She also mentioned the increased lung capacity might have also kept me in the RotoProne bed a couple of extra days more than the average person, and my extra body fat may have actually been helpful by giving my body something more to feed on during this ordeal.

Since I began distance running, I’ve completed 15 Marathon or 50K trail runs and 3 half-iron distance triathlons. Even if my back-of-the-pack performance has been mediocre and my fitness level lower compared to the others who I trained with, the fact that I participated in this activity instead of sitting on the couch all the time certainly improved my chances of survival, and probably saved my life.

A few days after waking up (aprox day 19?), I was transferred out of the ICU to the IMC (stepdown ICU). By then I was becoming more lucid and aware of surroundings. I passed a swallow test which allowed me to return to eating solid food and allowed the feeding tube was removed. I had a huge appetite and was constantly hungry. Thankfully, St. David’s hospital has an excellent menu with healthy eating options for the patients. These food selections were only available to the patients and not to others in the cafeteria. I could select whatever I wanted from the menu. I had the baked salmon with vegetables and fruit sides a little too often.

The nurses shaved my face, but avoided the mustache area due to the feeding and other tubes that had been in my nose. I felt the mustache along with my hair that had grown long left me looking like something that fell out of the 70’s. My sister pointed out the similarity to a former West Wing star’s new look.

Therapists from Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy stopped by from time to time on irregular schedules every couple of days. They started out with basic movements not too different from what my mother had been having me do. Then it moved on to having me sit up on the edge of the bed and eventually progressed to standing up by the side of the bed and taking a couple of steps. I also had Respiratory therapists stop by every 6 hours, including middle of the night, to connect me to breathing machines for breathing exercises or to give me inhalation medications.

Rehabilitation

At the beginning of the 4th week of the hospital stay (day 23) I was transferred from the regular hospital to St David’s Rehabilitation hospital, which was located next door. Just prior to the transfer, with the nurse’s assistance and a walker, I was able to move the few steps into the bathroom for my first real shower since entering the hospital. I rubbed a lot of dead skin off my feet as all the calluses that had built up on my feet had disappeared during the previous 3 weeks. My feet have never been so smooth.

At the Rehabilitation hospital I had 3 hours of supervised Physical and Occupational Therapy each day. Sometimes the activities involved walking around the hospital grounds, using cycling machines, walking up and down the stair cases, light weight lifting and balance and coordination exercises. I literally had to re-learn how to walk. My heart rate shot up to uncomfortably high levels pretty quickly, so that was constantly monitored and I had to take frequent breaks to allow the rate to fall back down. But the more exercise I did the less that was a problem.

At first, I was being given a ton of IV antibiotic treatments and supplemental oxygen which left me tied to the bed with lots of tubes, and so any movement out of the bed required a coordinated effort to move or temporarily disconnect those apparatuses during the activities. Because of my weakness and instability, I wasn’t supposed to get out of bed without supervision. I was given a yellow “fall risk” bracelet so the hospital staff would know to watch out for me.

Over the course of the next two weeks I was gradually weaned off the need for supplemental oxygen and the amount of time I was tied to the IV lines were reduced. I progressed from needing wheelchair and walker assistance to being able to walk without that supporting apparatus.

Every activity I performed and each muscle I exercised, resulted in improvement for the next time I tried that activity. There were a couple of cases where I overheard comments from the nurses who I passed in the hall (nurses who I did not remember but they had apparently treated me while I was unconscious) telling someone else things like “I cannot believe that guy is walking around so soon, you should have seen him a couple of weeks ago in the ICU.”

By the end of the last week, I had progressed enough to get doctor approval to be able to get out of bed without supervision, allowing me the dignity to use the restroom without calling for the nurse’s assistance.

I was discharged from the hospital at the end of the 5th week of the hospital stay (end of June). I was not yet back to full strength, but was medically and physically stable enough I was not required that I stay overnight in the hospital.

Recovery and then Unexpected Return to the Hospital

Once recovering at home, I started attending physical therapy as an outpatient to continue my recovery. I also had frequent follow-ups with the various doctors who treated me in the hospital. My mother stayed a couple of weeks to do the things around the house I could not. She returned home after a couple of weeks once I could drive and cook for myself. After 3 weeks, I thought the recovery was going well with my strength gradually returning, but then suddenly late one night I got a hard coughing fit. I started coughing up some fluid and was short of breath.

I probably should have called for an ambulance, but things stabilized after 20 minutes and so I waited until the morning to go in and see the doctor who was overseeing my treatment for Wegener’s. I half expected I would end up in the hospital, so I packed a bag with all my medicines and a couple of other items. Many of the symptoms I had were similar but not as bad as the things that sent me to the hospital the first time. At least this time I was not coughing up blood.

At the doctor’s office, my heart rate after sitting at rest a few minutes was up to 160 and I was short of breath, and so the doctor put me on oxygen and had me take some extra of my prescription pills to lower the heart rate and took a chest X-ray. After 2 hours, the heart rate had fallen to a safer level, and she called an ambulance to send me to the hospital. This time I wound up in Seaton Hospital. This was a different hospital from where I had stayed before, but it was the one hospital where all the doctors involved in my care have access privileges.

The good news was that this time I had only contracted pneumonia and this was not a resurgence of the Wegener’s. The pneumonia was only in one lung, and it had eaten through the incision from the previous month’s biopsy and spilled fluid into the chest cavity outside the lung. The pneumonia in the lung was treated with lots of antibiotic IV fluids. The pneumonia fluid that spilled outside the lung had to be sucked out in surgery.

For this surgery I was only unconscious for a few hours. I woke up as they returned me to my bed in the ICU. After napping for several hours in the evening, I was awake much of the night, where I had an excellent and proactive nurse checking on me. A couple of days after the surgery I was moved to a regular hospital room where I spent a week. As part of the surgery, I was left with 4 drainage tubes sticking out of my chest and there were continued IV antibiotic treatments over the next few days. It took the better part of a week until the drainage tubes could be removed, and I was able to go home after 2 weeks in the hospital.

Recovery

Now I am recovering at home. My energy levels, stamina, and lung capacity are still low compared to what I used to do, but I can see improvement as time goes on. I have regained most of the weight I lost. The doctors tell me my lungs are a still scarred from the ordeal and will hopefully be improving over the coming months. My employer has been very supportive in accommodating this leave of absence despite my short time with the company.

I will be on medications for at least a couple of years to keep this condition in remission. One of the side effects of these medications is the suppression of the immune system. The doctor has advised me not to travel internationally (with some exceptions allowed for developed countries) during this time to avoid the risks of exotic disease or being somewhere with insufficient medical facilities should there be a resurgence of the Wegener’s. This travel restriction eliminates (or at least delays) travel to many of the places I would normally go on vacation, but there are still plenty of places to visit in the US. I will give priority over the next couple of years to regaining my strength and health. I still have some travel stories and pictures to share from last year’s trips to give content for this blog.

It will be awhile before I can get back to any distance running, as now a good workout is walking around the block a couple of times. But I have no doubt I will be back to the running and travels at some point in the future. For now I have to be careful not to overdo the activity until I have healed more.

Prior to these medical events, after watching some friends and co-workers go though some nasty medical conditions over the previous year, I had developed a plan to try to make the most out of any run or any time off for travel because you never know when something bad might happen to limit things. For me the bad thing happened sooner than ever anticipated. Each of my last few marathons/50k’s the reminder that I can run (the "I get to run" mantra from this post about a common friend with ALS) while others cannot has been the most motivating thoughts. At least for me I see a path that can get be back to those activities, so it doesn’t change the philosophy of my outlook so much, just reinforces it and delays the schedule of some plans.

UPDATES:
- See what it was like to train for a half-marathon after this ordeal
- or follow the recovery