The Random Thoughts Review

I’ve been playing volleyball a few times a week lately. It’s been fun. It’s given me a chance to meet new people, and a bit of exercise as well. For whatever reason, I love to ‘set’. I set everything. I shouldn’t, but I do. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck cultivating my ‘bump’, so I just set.

However, this isn’t the idea way to handle an incoming serve. I’ve known this, but it was really hammered home to me last night. I was in the back left corner of the court when a serve came sailing in, and my hands were in the wrong place when the ball arrived. My left thumb got jammed in, bent back pretty good, and I heard something of a pop (which I hope was the ball) and I instantly knew that I was in a bit of pain.

It was one of those pains that you really feel. I leaned over for 30 seconds or so, and decided that I could keep playing. One more serve (not to me, thank goodness) and then I rotated to the left end of the front row. I made it through a serve and found that I was getting more and more nauseous. I said that I was taking a break, found the nearest section of fence to lean against and sat down on the sand. I’m guessing that I would have fainted had I stayed up a few more seconds. It was one of those kinds of pains. So, I sat there for a while. My body started sweating like crazy for about 5 minutes and I was slowly trying to get my left hand moving again. My thumb didn’t really swell all that much, though. After this I got up, walked around a bit, and after 15 minutes or so decided that I was done playing volleyball for the night and brushed the sand off, put my shoes on, and ran home.

Upon arriving home I held a few ice cubes on the thumb for a while, took a shower, and then put some ice cubes in a bag and iced the hand for probably an hour and a half. There was a little bit of swelling. The thumb didn’t have hardly any motion, though. I could bend the thumb, but moving the entire thumb wasn’t easy. If I tried to move the thumb away from my hand, it quickly started hurting and I just couldn’t go very far.

Fast forward 12 hours through an evening of less-than-normal sleep and some internet searches, and I think I have a pretty good thumb sprain. Hopefully the thumb isn’t broken. It’s still swollen some, and certain motions (basically anything where I have to grip with my left hand, or anything that requires me to move the thumb in relation to the hand itself) simply isn’t easy, or even possible. From my searching, this is the type of thing that could take 4 days to recover from, or it could take 6 weeks. It sounds like it varies a lot. Right now it isn’t hurting much, and luckily I can type, since that doesn’t require me to move my thumb very far relative to my left hand. But, I just just don’t have any strength, and can’t do anything that requires my thumb to play an active role. Stay tuned, but I know I’m not going to be playing anymore volleyball in my current condition.

I’ve been trying to get some exercise recently. I’ve been doing various things towards that end, but for this post, I want to talk about my recent jogging. I’ve been walking into work, but I didn’t walk on Thursday, because my legs were sore, and I didn’t walk on Friday because I had a pre work appointment that made the timing not work out. I did play some volleyball on Thursday night. Walked/jogged part of the way to and from the volleyball. On Friday night, I ran a bit over 4 miles in 41 minutes.

Square loop

That’s the track that I took. I actually went for about 2 miles without slowing down. Then, as I started the hill up first street (not much of a hill.. only 30 or 40 foot of elevation change) I started wearing out. I started walking and jogging, walking and jogging.. But, even with all of that, I still managed to average a bit over 6 miles an hour. I was relatively happy.

On Saturday, I jogged to and from the volleyball courts without stopping.

To the courts

It’s about 2.4 miles each way. Obviously, I can’t count that as 4.8 miles, because I took a 2 hour break in between the legs and played volleyball.

This afternoon, I ran to and from the library.

To the library

About 1.6 miles each way. So, 3.2 miles. 33 minutes. 5.8 miles per hour… If you throw away the 5 or so minutes i had to stand in line at the library, that’s in line with earlier times.

The ability to run/jog for extended distances is something of a new thing for me. Until recently I’ve always found myself getting tired after short distances. I’ve apparently crossed a line that is letting me get away with this. I like it.

Did another reasonable sized walk today. Needed to run by work and print some things out in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s departure, so I headed in that directon. Stopped at Champaign Surplus on the way there and picked up another pair of hiking socks. Also got a synthetic t-shirt that was on clearance for 5 bucks. Went on over to work, did my business, and then walked down through campus. That was kind of a neat experience, because today is graduation day, and there were lots and lots of seniors that were out in their blue robes. There was a line about 40 people long waiting to get a picture with the Alma Mater statues. But, the whole thing had me thinking to myself “been there; done that”. But, good for them.

Anyway, from there I kept heading south until I got to the main road south of town and took it over to where I could come back north and stop at Culvers for lunch. According to the website, the custard flavor of the day was Trufflicious. Sounded good. Got there, and the flavor of the day was actually chocolate covered strawberries. Which I also like a great deal. So, I had lunch there, stopped by the bank ATM to take care of some business, and then made it back to the house.

A little over 7 miles in all:

Gmap view

About 10 minutes before I got to Culvers, it started sprinkling on me. The radar didn’t have any organized cells, but this was just simple stuff. Kinda sprinkled on me the rest of the way home. When I got here, I mowed the lawn, in the light rain. Had to get that done before tomorrow. So, it wasn’t ideal lawn mowing conditions, but it worked. And, I’ve tried to call Mom a couple of times, but haven’t yet managed to actually find anyone at home. So, that’s the latest. Signing off for now. See everyone in a few!

Well, I hadn’t been able to walk the last couple of days. With the trip out west that I have planned for a couple of weeks from now, I figured that I’d better do what I could about it. So, I threw on a camelbak (didn’t bother getting myself any water in it.. just wanted the backpack.. And then I put a bunch of weight in the back of it. I weighed after I got home. 33 pounds of stuff. So, it was a basic approximation of what it will be like on the trip. Anyway, I was gone about 3.3 hours all together (including the stops) and I walked the following route

Gmaps Pedometer

for a total of 7.28 miles. From leaving home, I first went to IMPE-East to get a gym membership, and found out that I couldn’t get one there. So, I went to CRC-East, and managed to get my membership set up there. Then, I went up past Beckman where I work so that i could give a mouth swab for testing to see if I’m a good bone marrow donor. Only to find out that they didn’t know anything about it. Come to find out, the document that I got to tell me about it was called May 6, but the document text itself states May 13. From asking the people there, they didn’t even know about May 13. There was one at Danville, but nothing planned for the location in Urbana. So, go figure. That was a bust. I did get a glass of free soda. So, there was that. As I was standing there talking to the ladies sweat was dripping off of me, and they pretty well forced me to take the soda.

Then, I went to G-Mart to get free comic books, since today is FreeComicBookDay. And, I got there 35 minutes before they opened. So, I ended up going to Champaign Surplus (they were having a sidewalk sale today) and spending a fair amount of money on clothes, etc for the trip next week. Then, the 35 minutes had passed, and I went back up to G-Mart and picked up my free comic books. G-Mart had free pizza from dominos and soda, so I had a couple of pieces of pepperoni and a couple of glasses of soda. They also had 3 or 4 people dressed up as Storm Troopers. Another as Boba Fett, and a third as an Alliance airwoman (I think.. could be way off)..

From there, I went to the library and traded in DVDs. Then to Valhalla for more free comic books. The first store just gave me a random collection. The second store let me actually pick the ones I wanted. Hopefully there isn’t too much overlap. We’ll find out.

After Valhalla, I had thought about going over to Durst Cycle. They are having a “yard sale” today, but I was starting to get tired, so I figured I’d just walk home. Another 2.5 miles or so, and I arrived back home.

I was in the mood to go skiing again this week (imagine that). I had thought about it all week long, and decided to actually do it on Thursday. The resorts “down south” (like Hidden Valley) have already closed. The resorts like the one I went to last week, Alpine Valley, were pretty well done.. I needed to go farther north. One of the reviews for Alpine Valley had mentioned that they thought that Alpine Valley was oriented more to beginners, and recommended Granite Peak, Cascade Mountain, or Devil’s Head for more interesting skiing. So, I did some research on the three of them as well as others in the area, and ended up deciding on Cascade Mountain. Granite Peak was an extra 100 miles north, which made it rough. Even the other two were an extra 40 minutes past Alpine Valley. So, Granite Peak was out because of the distance. Cascade and Devil’s Head are within a few miles of each other. From what I had read, Cascade was a little better for the more advanced skier. So, Cascade it was.

Once the locale had been determined, I had to worry about weather. Champaign was on the leading edge of a large amount of rain. Supposedly 3-5 inches over the course of a few days. And warm weather. Supposedly in the 50-60s on Thursday. Not good skiing conditions. A quick check of the weather in Portage, Wisconsin showed that they were expecting highs in the low-mid 40s on Thursday. About a quarter of an inch of rain Wednesday night, and a 30% chance of showers Thursday morning until the 10 o’clock hour. The resort opened at 10:00am. I didn’t want the rain to be delayed. Skiing in the rain doesn’t seem like it would be a fun thing.

So, I did the normal preparation thing the night before. I set the alarm for 5am, and ended up getting out of bed at 5:09am. I had to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to go. It would have been a lot easier to lay in bed. But, I ended up crawling out of bed and was thus committed. A check of weather.com showed that they were still expecting the showers to end at 10:00am.

So, I was off! I left the house at about 5:40. I hit fog around Utica, and was in fog until I got to Cascade mountain. The view from the interstate looked pretty good. It looked like there were some good runs, but there was a lot of fog, so it was hard to tell. A nice view from an airplane is available on their website. Radio reports were saying that the fog should burn off by noon.

I got my ticket, which ended up being $42.20. The normal ticket was good from “open” until 4:30pm. I could have gotten a ticket for the entire day for two dollars more, but I figured that if I only went to 4:30 that would make sure that I left Wisconsin at a reasonable time. Since I didn’t get there until about 9:50am, I quickly changed into my ski clothes and hit the slopes. I didn’t want to waste any time, since I knew I only had until 4:30.

It was foggy! Did I mention that? As I headed up the Mountain Top Express lift (high speed detached quad) I could bairly see 2 chairs in front of me. BeforeI made it to the top of the hill the outside of my ski goggles had fogged up to the point that they really weren’t usable. So, the goggles were removed from the eyes. The sun certainly wasn’t causing me to need to use them, though. At the top of the hill, I could probably see 100 feet in any given direction. So, it made things interesting. I was on a hill that I had never been on, and didn’t have a clue as to where I was going. So, I pointed my skis downhill and slid. Cascade is quite a bit different than the other midwest resorts that I’ve been to. At Cascade I get the feeling that there was a forest there and they have carved out runs. The other midwest resorts feel much more manufactured. Almost as though they have a blank hill, put in the runs, and then a few trees in between the runs. Cascade has a lot more tree action. This makes it feel much bigger. I was confident that i could make it down any run there without killing myself, so that helped a lot in the fog. If I hadn’t been a new skier, that would have scared me to death.

I found myself on the Mogul Monster run. At the top of it, I noticed that it was moguls, but figured that I could: a) make my way through it, or b) go beside the moguls. Resorts typically have a non mogul area on the run next to the moguls. Well.. not Cascade. I headed into the moguls and promptly fell. This is probably the first time I’ve fallen in the actual act of skiing in a few years. But, it was moguls. So, I found myself trying to figure out a way out of that run. I spied a made-up path through the trees over to another run, and worked my way down to it and over to the last part of the North Wall run. From there I made it to the bottom of the lift and back up. Next, I decided go way out to the east end and took the Far Out trail. Far Out is a green trail, but there were a lot of black runs that led off from it. I knew then that the place had possibilities. From Far Out, I took the Cindy Pop lift back to the top (a slow lift) and started working my way through the black runs. My impressions: The Bridge Ridge run was a somewhat narrow trail through the trees that goes across a man-made bridge. From the Far Out run below the Bridge you can see a huge frozen stream that goes under the bridge. Next over is the Narrow Margin trail. Narrow Margin is pretty narrow. Both Bridge Ridge and Narrow Margin have signs at the top saying that they are narrow and for experts only. Narrow Margin has a pretty narrow chute at the bottom with a steep section right after the narrow chute. So, you can’t slow down a lot. You just have to hit it and go. This isn’t a problem, though. The steep section is short, so as long as you don’t panic, it isn’t a problem. Radical Rob is next over. It is unique because it has a nice conifer right in the middle of the trail at the top. P.W. and Screamin’ Steven follow those. Each run gets slightly steeper as it gets shorter. A couple of the runs bank to the left and have a few small bumps in them as well. The Cindy Pop run is right under the Cindy Pop lift, and has the steepest section of hill at the resort. It is steep enough that I was able to really work on paralleling to slow down. If the lift was just faster it would be a most excellent run.

The Anniversary run is somewhat unique because the bottom of it feeds to both Cindy Pop lift and Mountain Top Express. So, if you ski east of it you have to go to Cindy Pop, and if you ski west you go to Mountain Top, but it can feed to both. Next to Anniversary is North Wall, which has an excellent view of the resort buildings at the bottom and the Interstate. Each of these runs is flatter at the top with a steep section at the end. Very satisfying for midwest skiing. Mogul Monster is next, but I’ve already talked about it. A terrain park is next to that, with an actual half pipe, almost unheard of for the midwest. Apparently earlier in the year they have another half pipe at the top of the North Wall run, but that had been removed yesterday. Probably because of the snow melt. Skiers could gracefully go along the east edge of the terrain park, though, and that made a nice run. About halfway down you could veer right for Racer’s Edge, or just go straight down. Anyway, that completes all of the black runs.

Farther west, the Ptarmigan, J.J. and Badger Bowl provided some blue runs. I would have been tempted to call Ptarmigan a black on their scale, though. I guess it wasn’t quite as steep, but still was more challenging than the other blues. Badger Bowl dropped into a surprisingly deep bowl (compared to what I was expecting) which was a nice surprise. The first time I went down it I just pointed my skis downhill and went, and found myself picking up more speed at the bottom than I had expected. Lighting conditions were horrible yesterday. With no sun at all it was very difficult to see conditions on the ground. Everything just blended together. The fog started burning off on the lower part of the mountain about 1pm, but didn’t burn off on the upper part until probably 3-3:30pm.

I had my second fall of the day on the next to the last run of the day. There was an upper terrain park that had smaller features than the one on down closer to the bottom of the hill, and it had a little jump on it. I’d guess that the build up to the edge was probably 2 feet or so. The first time I got up enough nerve to go over it, I was going very slowly, and when I got to the crest of the jump, my skis just fell over the edge and I slid down the other side. Each time I went down the hill, I tried to hit this jump. Each time I tried to go slightly faster. Towards the end of the day, I was getting some pretty good speed up. I’d guess that I was hitting the jump and probably landing 5 feet or so down the hill. There’s definite technique required for jumping. One unfortunate time I learned that you really need to lean forward. I found myself too far back and my skis were in front of me. I managed to maintain some semblance of order, though, and got up rather quickly. I was covered in snow, but otherwise unscathed. The next time I went down I leaned forward more, and the run worked out perfectly.

At 4:30 I quit. I hadn’t stopped all day long. I had packed a couple of granola bars in my coat, and literally didn’t stop at all for the entire day. No breaks. I wanted to maximize the time that I had available. I then took a couple of pictures with my real camera and checked out the pro-shop. They had clothing 50% off, but I didn’t see anything I liked.

The trip home was relatively uneventful. About 20 miles south of Cascade I hit rain, and it rained on me all the way back to Champaign. I stopped for gas in Madison, Wisconsin and drove straight through other than that.

So, that’s the descriptions.. Now.. my thoughts..

Crowds were nonexistent. I said that last week, but last week was busy compared to this place. There were probably 10 people there. I spent probably 45 minutes on the Cindy Pop lift one time and didn’t see a single other person. Not one. The main lift was busier. It generally always had at least one person on the lift somewhere, but it was still really really dead.

Each loop (lift and the run down) took about 5 minutes. Both lifts, actually. The Cindy Pop lift was slower, but didn’t go as high on the hill, so you could still do the run in about 5 minutes. I did a test at one point and did all of the runs mentioned above. 14 runs. It took me one hour and 10 minutes.

This resort was definitely more satisfying than Alpine Valley. Alpine Valley isn’t a bad resort. After last week’s visit I was relatively happy with it. However, this resort felt much larger and had a lot more variety for the more advanced skier. I wouldn’t hesistate to choose this as a destination over Alpine, even though it is 30 – 40 minutes farther away. It is also more expensive than Alpine Valley. Paying $42 for a lift ticket puts it at the high end of what I would want to pay for midwest resort, but you seem to get what you pay for. Seeing as how they only had 10 or 20 people there, it would have been nice to see an end-of-the-season discount price. But, that wasn’t meant to be. It would be great to go back sometime in January, though. It might be neat to take a mini vacation and spend a day at Cascade, a day at Devil’s Head, and a couple of days at Granite Peak.

So, I decided to take off work yesterday and go skiing. Winter is quickly disappearing. We’ve had an extremely mild winter here in the midwest, so I’m guessing that the midwest resorts have had a tough time of it this year.

Anyway, I wanted to go skiing. Living in Champaign is a rough thing if you like skiing. The nearest slopes are about 3 hours away, and they are actually south of here. I’ve been to the one in St Louis (Hidden Valley) and Paoli Peaks in Indiana. They are both OK for the midwest. Perfect North is another one in Indiana that I have been wanting to try out, but haven’t had a chance. For yesterday, though, these three were all out of the picture. It is just too warm this far south. It was supposed to be 60 here yesterday, and I think they were predicting 70 degrees for St Louis. Not good skiing weather. So, I started to look north. weather.com has a handy ski resort finder where you can give it your zip code, and it gives a list of the closest resorts. Chestnut Mountain in Galena, Illinois seems to be a favorite that is about 5 hours drive time from Champaign. I also investigated a resort in lower Michigan called Bittersweet (about 4.5 hours drive time). The factors that I was looking at included drive time and vertical elevation drop. Other things, such as price and reviews were secondary. Chestnut Mountain has about 400 foot vertical. Bittersweet was 380 or so. Then I discovered Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. Supposedly only 3.5 to 4 hours drive time, with 488 foot vertical. The reviews seemed to indicate that it was acceptable. And, Wednesday happened to be Men’s day, with $22 lift tickets for guys. (more on that later)

So, with the decision made for Alpine Valley, additional work took place. Tuesday night I got everything packed, planned a bit on the food situation, and tried to go to bed early. I had the alarm set for 5:00am. The resort opened at 10am, so I figured I had my 4 hours to get there if I got out of the house by 6. I ended up rolling out of bed at 5:15, and was out the door at about 5:48. The trip up was pretty uneventful. Sunrise wasn’t even all that impressive. I didn’t run into any precipitation. The weather forecast the night before had predicted some freezing drizzle in the ski resort area from 8-10am, but when I checked the forecast before leaving the house they had removed that. They were predicting rain in the afternoon, though.

I got to the resort about 9:25. I got my lift ticket and walked around a little bit. The resort area consists of 4 or 5 buildings that look somewhat european. They have hotel rooms off to one side that might be interesting if you wanted to stay there for extended lengths of time. There is also a Pro shop (which was closed at the time) and a cafe.

I then took a few pictures and walked around some. By that time it was about 9:45, so I got changed into my ski clothes and prepared to hit the slopes!

Three lifts were running: Valley Flyer, E-Z Rider (both high speed quads) and Mohawk chair (slower chair). Valley Flyer goes to the top of the “mountain”, and the other two go to points on either side of the top. Valley Flyer seemed to service Blacks, so I took that. First run of the day at a new resort.. Ya, I went with a Black. First run down was Lodge Express, followed by Big Thunder. I’d say that Big Thunder is the hardest run there. It’s steeper than the rest at the top. It was followed later by the rest of the runs there: E-Z Does It off of the E-Z Rider lift, Timber Gulch, Timber Trail, Valley View (a lot of poling! No lifts running near the bottom of it), E-Z Pass, First Chance, First Adventure, Broadway, Half Way, East Pass, Cut Throat, Sheltered Valley, Northwest Pass, and the Mohawk Terrain Park… The number of runs sounds more impressive than it actually is. For instance.. To get from the top of the hill to bottom, you could say that you completely ran East Pass, the top half of Mohawk Terrain Park, complete Northwest Pass, complete Cut Throat, complete Half Way, and the bottom half of Lodge Express. So, in normal terms, I’d say that there are about 8 ways down the hill. The rest are just little bits and pieces that jut off here and there.

Crowds were non existent. Lines were non existent. The resorts breaks the skiing up into two time slots. The first goes from 10am – 5:30pm, and the second from 3pm – 10pm. For the first part of the day I would literally say there were probably 30 people on the entire mountain. About 28 of them were men. Maybe 29. Thursdays are apparently Women’s day. It would be interesting to go there on a Thursday and see what the “crowds” look like. Later in the afternoon a few extra people showed up. Around 5:00 I started seeing a few school-aged kids. It was very dead. In most of my pictures you don’t see a single person on the runs. Very uncrowded. Probably 4 or 5 lift rides were with other people. The rest were all by myself.

And I took a lot of lift rides. I would estimate the loop time (lift plus ski run) was about 4-5 minutes. I took a couple of breaks during the course of the day. About 10:30 am I went back to the truck to get my better gloves. About 11:15 or so I went back to the truck and picked up my camera, and dropped it off back at the truck at 11:45. At that time I ate lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pringles, and some fruit). Going to the truck was a minor affair. I could literally go from slope to truck and back to slope in about 5 minutes. That’s the beauty of a midwest resort. You can park right next to the snow, which means you are parking mere feet from the ski lift.

The snow was good yesterday. I felt, once again, that I was able to work on my technique. The runs weren’t hard, but they were steep enough that I could work on my skills, which is great. The main complaint I guess I had was about the wind. The wind was blowing pretty good yesterday, particular at the top of the hill. I can’t really blame the resort for that, though.

While the sunrise was very uneventful, the sunset from the hill was really nice. It was cloudy most of the day, but the line of clouds stopped an inch or two over the horizon, so the sun had a chance to peek through around 5pm. The snow took on a beautiful golden glow and it was really nice to see. On my last run, the I started getting a few drops of rain on me. It was 5:30 at the time, so I decided it was time to go. I headed back to the truck and got changed out of my ski clothes and was leaving at about 5:45. I had to stop for gas about 30 minutes later, at which point I got a double cheeseburger extra value meal at McDonalds (I didn’t need it, but it tasted good). Then, I just drove back home. While the lift ticket cost me $22, I probably spent over twice that on the gasoline required to get there and back (and $2 toll for the section of I-39 around Rockford, Illinois.) So, that’s the way it goes, I suppose.

All things considered, a successful day. Alpine Valley would be a great resort for beginners. You could go there for a couple of days and be in good shape to tackle the greens in Colorado!

I’ve been to a couple of other Wisconsin resorts since then, including Cascade Mountain and Devil’s Head.

Went to Hidden Valley and did some skiing yesterday.

This was really a spur of the moment thing. I had sent some email earlier this past week to some friends saying “Hey, looks like Hidden Valley has advanced lessons on Sunday afternoon”, but no one bothered responding until Saturday. Bill was willing to drive up to St Louis, so we decided to meet and get in some skiing.

So, I tried to go to bed early on Saturday night (which, of course, is never successful without training). I knew that I was going to be getting up early on Sunday, so I tried anyway. Got up at 5:10 Sunday morning, was ready, had everything loaded, and was on the road right at 6am. My plan was to be at the resort approximately when they opened at 9am. When I’m spending $50-60 to drive somewhere, the longer I can be there, the better.

Most of the drive was uneventful, until I actually got to Eureka (which is the last few miles of the trip). It had snowed off and on for the entire trip down, but a few flurries wasn’t going to cause me all that much grief. At Eureka, though, the Interstate was a mess. In the last 2 or 3 miles before I got off the interstate I saw between 5 and 10 accidents. The flurries had built up to the point that the road was just slick. The trucks hadn’t been in yet to do the salting or calcium work, and it showed. Many fender benders (and worse). I managed to fish tail briefly a couple of times, but arrived at Hidden Valley unscathed around 9:35.

I went and purchased my lift ticket (no rental necessary!) and went back to the truck to get changed into my ski pants and boots, etc., when Bill walked by. He had arrived a bit earlier than he had planned. That worked out well, though. He got his ticket purchased, and we were ready to hit the slopes!

We started off by going to Skid Row to get to the bottom of the lift, and took it up to the top of the hill. From there, we quickly branched out and did all of the blues (Lauren’s Lane, Show Me, Eureka, Missi’s Wish, The Badlands, and Josh’s Jaunt). Then, we were onto the two blacks (Ice Man’s Ridge and The Outlaw). Hidden Valley has a “front side” and a “back side” The front side is easier, and the backside is more difficult. The front side has a couple of lifts, and the backside has a single lift. As the day wore on, the resort got busier. We basically shifted back and forth from the frontside to the backside so that we could escape most of the crowds. There was another, cheaper session that started at 3pm, and I think that a fair number of visitors came for that, which also made things busier.

I had a mini pizza for lunch, and we took that opportunity to call some other friends in St Louis (Brian and Brad) and arrange to meet them for supper. Then, we skied over the course of the afternoon. The snow really felt good. We didn’t even end up taking any of the classes that we had planned to take. I know that I seemed to be paralleling pretty well, and just didn’t see the need. We should have taken classes on the second day when we were out in Breckenridge a couple of weeks ago. Oh well. Next time.

We had planned to meet up for supper a bit before 6pm, so we quit skiing about 5, and got changed, called the friends to confirm, and then headed to an Applebee’s that Brad had recommended. Made it to the Applebee’s at about 5:45 and had a rather good House Sirloin.

Brian, Bill, and myself and went to Breck together, but we hadn’t seen Brad for a while, so it was nice to chat with him and find out what was new. We ended up leaving Applebee’s about 7:30, and I started my trip back to Champaign. I ran through snow flurries, and once or twice the roadway was starting to turn white, but it never did get very bad. I made it back home a little after 10:30. I was tired, but I had had a good day. Definitely better skiing than last year at Hidden Valley. Last year it was just too late in the year and the snow was in pretty pitiful shape. Next, I want to get to some of the other resorts around here. (by around here, I mean within a 3-5 hour drive).

Since then, I’ve been to several resorts up in Wisconsin, including Alpine Valley, Cascade Mountain, and Devil’s Head.

So, I’ve been thinking for some time now that I needed to get a new pair of “tennis shoes”. The term “tennis shoe” is one that my family has been using for decades, and it refers to all non work, dress, hiking shoes that are typically designed for some of track and field type sport. Growing up, I always seemed to end up with Nike shoes. They were definitely in style, and mom and dad somehow managed to wheel and deal the shoe dealer into getting us Nikes each time we needed shoes.

During high school, I went through a phase where I owned a pair of LA Gear shoes, and a few pair of Reebok here and there. And, I went through a no-name phase, where I got shoes real cheap and watched the soles fall off of them in the first few months of ownership, etc. etc.

Anyway, that’s a little background. To catch everyone up to where things are currently at, a few years ago (probably 3-4, let’s say) I went to the local Shoe Carnival store and purchased a pair of New Balance shoes. The “model” number on the shoes was 804. I tried on pair after pair, and the 804 was the shoe that really felt good in the store. And, the shoe felt good as I wore it. I’m not really a grey-colored shoe guy. I prefer standard white shoes, but this shoe did feel good. I was mostly sedentary during the time I owned this shoe.

A couple of years back I decided it was time for a new pair of shoes, so I went back to Shoe Carnival. Needless to say, it is one of the corrolaries to Murphy’s law that you’ll never find the same shoe twice, and this time was no exception. You walk into the Shoe Carnival, they are playing the peppy musack, and every 3 minutes they tell you to come spin the wheel to get 10% off of a pair of socks if you buy 3 pair of shoes, and they have aisles and aisles of shoes. They have an aisle for Cross Training, an aisle for Basketball, etc. So, I went to where the shoes were at that were similar to the 804s that I was wearing, and didn’t find any 804s. I ended up leaving, only to come back a few weeks later and purchase a pair of 480s. The 480s weren’t a bad shoe. They didn’t hurt me or anything. I was sedentary during most of the time I wore these shoes. During the tail end of the 480 Reign I started working out more. For the past four months or so, I’ve been trying to kick the sedentary habit and have been walking, jogging, and running a fair amount. I’ve been thinking about getting new shoes for some time now… Probably the last 10 months or so.

But, I don’t get in a hurry about doing these things, and just ended up back in the Shoe Carnival in the past month or so. I figured that my exercise regime called for some new leather. Needless to say, they didn’t have any New Balance 805s, or 480s. And, there isn’t any way to really reference a current model shoe with what might have been in the past. There isn’t any obvious rhyme or reason to the numbering scheme (obviously they don’t just go in increasing order) so the hundreds place probably means something.. Who knows? Anyway, I ended up getting a pair of 504s. Perhaps these are related, in some small way, to the pair of 804s that I started out with. One of life’s little conundrums. The 504s don’t look too bad. I like a shoe that looks somewhat like a running shoe. I don’t care for the flat-footed looking walking shoes. So, the 504 passed the look test. It felt OK in the store. Was it a good shoe? Well, it’s hard to tell based on the shoe box. But, I had had good luck with New Balance in the past.

Shoe Carnival was running a special that night (No, that’s not the unique part.. they are always running a special) where you could get a second pair of shoes for half price. So, I ended up finding a pair of Nike shoes that looked like good running shoes and purchased them. Let me get the Nikes out of the way first. They are good shoes. They are light, and I can run in them for miles without any noticeable ill effects.

The New Balance shoes, on the other hand, are simply inadequate for my current lifestyle. They are fine for walking around work. But, any time I do any serious walking (4mph for > 2 miles, let’s say) I start seeing problems. And, I see these problems within a few minutes if I try to use them for jogging. When I start the exercise, everything is fine. But within a short amount of time I start noticing that my lower legs are hurting. Around the area where the calf is at, but the pain is on the front side of the leg. So it isn’t like a muscle that is hurting. It’s just a pain. And, I start noticing that, when walking, my feet start falling flat on the pavement. It’s as though the shoes aren’t giving me any “roll” as I move down the street. I just fall flat on my feet with each step, which is also uncomfortable. With the Nikes, I can run for miles without noticing problems.

Bottom line, I’m most likely not going to be purchasing any more New Balance shoes. I’m quite pleased with the Nikes, and my brother has recommended Asics as a good brand as well. I have also heard that you are supposed to wear a running show for 100 miles. After that time it has lost its cushioning and should be replaced. Well, I doubt that I’ll be quite that strict, but I definitely anticipate that I’ll be updating the shoes more often now that I’m exercising more. Hope this helps someone out there.