This is the story of my experience racing The Standhope Ultra Challenge, a 30K trail running race through rugged peaks of Central Idaho. Flop down on your couch, and come along. I'll handle all the suffering for ya!

Episode #53

Hey everyone guess what? I’m still here. And I’m back! I think. It’s been a few years now since I’ve published anything here, which for those of you who know me can probably understand. But for those who don’t, here is something of a recap and an update for what I’m hoping to resume going forward.

Individual short story exercise.

Peering through the sliding, wobbling sheets of spring creek current he could just make out the torpedo shaped fish and it was the largest trout he had ever seen. It swung heavy in the current like a river of its own, sulking in the minty shade of an olive tree, but on occasion moving out to the edge of the shade where its entire length could be marked. And it startle him each time he saw it that way.

It was like tea bleeding in hot water. A blend of fragrances that rolled uphill in a slow, thermal simmer. The peppermint-butter aroma of bitter brush blooms, silken spice of sage and vanilla honey of mountain mahogany. The warm dog-foot smell of campfire juniper, and purified starkness of mocha-brown basalt... blotched with lichens colored of copper. Each layer unique in its scent, yet common as clouds.

Out on the open highway his journey found its tempo, its rhythm, its pulse. Every day on a bike has its own feel, and today a natural feeling sense of urgency had him riding fast. Carrying speed into corners and leaning steep with the bike as it swung through turns steady as a pendulum swings. Putting miles behind him felt satisfying. Little time was spent behind traffic, as he could pull around and charge past vehicles in the lawful range with a roaring casualness. Between traffic he inhaled the ribbon of asphalt between 80-100 with a low, steady, a deadly calm pulse. Like tying shoelaces in the dark.

A bumblebee bounced around.

Miles below him the line of dust continued crossing the valley, sending its flags into the air like smoke signals of forgotten interpretation. It was headed south and gaining ground fast. At the tip of this spear-shaped cloud of airborne earth, whatever was ripping dust from its resting place was still too far away, too small to see.

With a quarter turn of his right wrist the motor churned out a flurry of crisp-sounding notes that broke skyward like mallards from the angled titanium exhaust.

"As he woke his back stiffened. He tilted his head slightly and with a weathered hand pushed the woven-palm cast shadow upward- pouring the freshness of daylight into his eyes. Grasshopper wings rattled all around like strings of firecrackers hitting or missing every first or third fuse.

He blinked through rusty flakes of salted blurriness and stared past his boots and deeper down the northern view that unfolded the way heavy wool blankets would spill from the back of a rig."