Adventures in Onionism

For those of you who subscribe to my blog via e-mail, thank you. Also, I was using Feedburner to send those e-mails, but Google stopped supporting that feature this summer, so I switched to Mailchimp. In case I messed something up in the transition, my three recent posts are about my July adventures , the Kodiak 100K , and the Mogollon Monster 100 .  If you aren't getting e-mails and you want to, you can subscribe under the menu on the left side. Here's a big Joshua Tree for your troubles  

I finally got revenge against the Mogollon Monster.  I tried running the race in 2014, but it was cancelled mid-race due to rain. If you prefer I suppose you could call it a thunderstorm, but I'll stick with "rain." You can see my report from that year here . The race is under new management, and both the management and the aid station tents seem much sturdier, so I was confident the race would go off without a hitch. Gf and the dogs and I drove to Pine, AZ the day before the race. We were mostly on HWY 60, which I don't think I'd seen before, and was gorgeous though, duh, really hot. Saguaros everywhere. I bought a hat. As is my wont, we camped near the start on any old dirt road pullout we could find. There was a little more traffic than ideal because hunting season just started (elk archery, I think). Plus we couldn't get very far off the pavement because damn, when a Prius says it has 5 inches of clearance, it's 5 inches tops . We made it through the s

I ran the Kodiak 100K in Big Bear, California in August. Prior to moving to the desert, the Kodiak ultras were not really on my radar. I'd heard of them but never had interest in running them. I can't remember why, but whatever reason I might have had (the name makes you think Alaska, not SoCal?) was dumb, because the race is great. This year in ultra distances they offered 100K and 100 miles. I wanted to save a bit of my legs for the Mogollon Monster in September, so I wasn't interested in the full 100 miles. I was excited to sign up for what is basically the "local" race, or the closest ultra to my house of which I'm aware, in mountains that I can see from my front yard. I also signed up with my one local running buddy, though he eventually did not feel confidently prepared and withdrew, and Nano actually signed up last minute as a final adventure before he went off to the Himalaya. The pre-race set up was fine, though I would have preferred if there were ra

Summer's over. I had some good adventures and ran a few races. In July we did a couple east Sierra trips, I ran Sespe Creek through the condor sanctuary in the Sespe Wilderness, and I did not make it up to Tahoe for a group Desolation adventure because of the Tamarack fire. In August I ran the Kodiak 100K in Big Bear, and in September I ran Mogollon Monster 100. I'll describe the July trips here and the races in other posts. For July 4 did a short trip to the Horseshoe Meadows area outside Lone Pine. Margo cut herself in the yard somehow, so she was hiking in her cone of shame. It was a fun low-key trip but it ended poorly when I contracted food poisoning on the drive home and ended up in the hospital that night. That was miserable, and the billing has been annoying, but I think my insurance will end up covering everything. Chicken Spring Lake Sespe Creek   I went to Z's house in Ventura to hike Sespe Creek through the condor sanctuary. The sanctuary was created in 1947, an