Hot Hours to Eugene

Baker City to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument to USA Track & Field Championships

Departing Baker City Tuesday evening with some restocked food stores, I made it 90 minutes west before the setting sun forced me off the road.  I had hoped to cover more miles, but since I no longer had a designated destination, I wanted to give myself a few minutes of daylight to find a campsite somewhere off the road in any of the national forests along my route.  In the Malheur National Forest, I found the Dixie Campground, a USFS fee site that I poached and departed at 5:30 Wednesday morning.  For once I slept the entire night not fighting hyperthermia and my slumber was rather comfortable.

The small, agrarian communities sprinkled along the roads of eastern Oregon were quintessentially western and idyllic.   At 7:30, I rolled into the Cant Ranch, the headquarters of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, on the banks of the John Day River.  The setting was very dessert-esque and the restored sheep ranch gave a fine display of the way life used to be in the high desert.    Since the visitor center didn't open for another hour and a half, I set up shop on a picnic table and cooked a quality batch of pancakes to satiate my hunger.

After breakfast, I explored the ranch grounds, nearly stepped on a snake roughly the size of a garden hose, and watch a cowboy herd a small group of wayward cattle across the river.  Finally at 9AM, the archeology center had opened and I took a fair amount of education learning about prehistoric Oregon and the abundance of fossils in the once volcanically active area.

Back on the road it was more deserts, mesas, and emptiness to the Painted Hills, a beautiful natural oddity of red and orange striped mounds caused by millennia of volcanic deposits.  Not wanting to walk to a view point above the Painted Hills, I strapped up my Slashies (the name I've lovingly granted to a pair of running shoes) and ran the 3/4 mile trail up the butte.  The run was easy, 90 degrees, and the view splendid.  A few tourists looked at me cockeyed since I was running in the desert, but they were of the portly persuasion and I doubt they breath easily when having to climb out of basements.

The rest of Wednesday was spent on the road, driving through climates ranging from alpine to desert and mostly everything in between.  The trip took nearly 7 hours of my day, but it was time well spent and the Wagon performed beautifully.  Finally arriving in Eugene, Jordan Horwitz and I headed out for an easy 70 minutes of running.  It was good to run with our rivalry finally dead, but it was always a healthy rivalry.   Afterwards, we attempted to hit the streets of Eugene for a some bar fights and alcoholism, but only found drunk locals and pathetic drug addicts clinging to lamp posts.

Thursday morning brought about the start of the USA Track and Field National Championships at Hayward Field.  With Lech, Riley Masters, and a few other UMaine athletes competing Saturday, I met them at Lane Community College for a short rust-buster workout before Lech actually treated me to a free lunch at Track Town Pizza.  Unfortunately, the pizza was sub-par but it was a good start to the track weekend.  

At the start of the day I only had a ticket for Thursday's events, but by 4PM I had secured tickets for the remaining 3 days of competition and by 5PM our small BAC contingent had managed to get itself into the VIP section.  I didn't entirely fit in with the CEO of USATF and other bigwigs in the running community looking like I had just stepped off of a mountain and the security people checked my credentials at least four times to make sure I was allowed up there.

The highlight of the meet was Amy Yoder-Begley's win over Shalane Flannigan in the 10,000m.  I was most impressed and I've added Amy to my list of solid runners to take as example.  Enough said. 

The evening was closed out with Danny, Nicks, Sean, Marcus, and I at the Adidas party in downtown Eugene.  We all hid our Nike gear and spent the evening getting progressively filled with intoxicants while rubbing shoulders with running community royalty.  Finally, the five of us piled into Burrito Boy, grossly ate past our heart's content, then passed out back at Nick's house at 4AM this morning.

Wagon Miles: 301,264 to 301,545