Trenching with a shovel

The deal has always been that after the Grand Canyon I am not allowed to do anything epic until the yard has been landscaped. I agreed to this because I value my marital happiness. It was interesting that after the Grand Canyon run, actually leading up to the run I didn't feel like doing anything. I was burned out, period. All I wanted to do was sleep. But then that is also how I felt when I was hiking out of that cursed hole.

Since then I have decided to start landscaping the yard. My yard is a little on the intimidating side. We have a small house on 4 acres and there are dying plants everywhere. The previous owners planted about 80 oleander in a 300 foot long row around our yard, and they had mature eucalyptus trees, and a couple of pine trees on the south side of the house.

Since we moved in Two Pine trees have died and 1 of the huge eucalyptus succumbed to extreme dehydration.

The fact is that if you have small children and you don't have an automatic watering system in for plants and you live in the south west, your plants will die. So that's what is happening here. It's sad really, but the truth is that I have enjoyed running two marathons and running through the grand canyon, and riding hundreds of miles on my bike with my kids more than I like having mature trees. And to be fair, my wife and kids also could have watered them, but they were doing something else instead.

Anyway I decided to start landscaping. Really what I should have started with was buying a tractor, but I didn't. I don't have the money for that so I got a shovel and went to work. I wanted to start doing the watering system, but I haven't figured out what exactly I need to buy yet, so I bought pipe to put in a trench to move the water overflow for rain gutters and the washing machine from the middle of our yard to outside the yard.

This requires a trench about 100 feet long and I figure about 9 or 10 inches wide. Not a small trench for a back yard, and I dug it by hand. I know many people who think that is stupid. I think it is epic. The truth is that I like digging trenches. It feels like I am doing something painful and creative at the same time. For all the problems in my head that I deal with on a daily basis, I really find clarity when I am physically exhausted. My lower back is starting t adjust because I have been abusing it on a regular basis. The only problem is going to be what to do when the trenching is done. Actually I'm not too worried because there are hundreds more feet to trench still.

I think it will be nice when it is done, but that will be a while. Perhaps at least I'll be able to get enough done that I can go to the Grand Canyon again sometime soon.

Here's a video of the trench.

r2r2r4m

So some of my friends and I decided to go to the Grand Canyon and hike across it and back. Before we went I was sitting at work wondering how much elevation gain there was and so I typed "rim2rim2rim elevation" in google and blog came up that had the information I was looking for. After the fact I went to the blog and posted a comment

"I just hiked that a couple of weeks ago. It took 21 hours walking. If you run It will be faster. Good luck."

The blog owner is a girl named Jen in Virgina Beach. Actually I am not sure where that is, but I know it's flat. Anyway she responded to my post and since then I have been thinking about starting a blog. As with most things I start this one will probably not last, but we'll see. Here is the email exchange with Jen, which I think pretty much sums up my experience.

From Jen:

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for the heads up! I think we're going to try and take in the
scenery too.... run but stop and smell the roses kind of thing ;) How
was the trip?! Do you do stuff like that often?

Jen

My Reply...

Jen,

The trip was Epic. I don't do stuff like this often. That is the
farthest I've ever gone in one day. My brother and I ran the Sedona
marathon earlier this year in 4:30, so we aren't fast, but while we
were training with a couple of other friends, we would often discuss
Born to Run. During one of the discussions one of our friends Matt
said we should do the r2r2r. He had hiked r2r before and in the period
of confusion that often comes with reading that book he thought it was
a good idea to go r2r2r. Admittedly I agreed with him. I said "It
would be Epic!" We all made the agreement that if Matt wanted to do it
we would be with him. We would do it "For Matt!"

That was our motto.

We trained by continuing to run a few times during the week, and on
the weekends we alternated between doing Wasson Peak trail (5 miles up
about 2kft elevation change) and Wrightson peak (5 miles up and about
4.5kft elevation change). We even did wrightson peak 2 times in a row
on a couple of different occasions. We would hile up and run down. We
thought we were ready.

One of my friends training with us, Todd, ran the Sedona marathon in
3:25 ( I give that information because it becomes some what important
later). Anyway Todd and I work with a lady named Julie Arter, and we
asked her about r2r2r. She has run int 22 times, once she did it in 10
hours, or less I think. Anyway Julie had us thinking it would take
around 15-18 hours. We were excited and nervous, but talking to Julie
was very comforting. She made it sound like it would be great.

The run itself was... well it was more of a walk. We left at 3:00 in
the morning, and did the bright angel trail. We were going to run
down, but ended up walking till it got light. Another of the group
which had grown to 8 by now kept falling down when we ran, so we
slowed it down for him. We jogged the flat parts when it was light
then started the trek up. It was a lot harder than I thought it would
be.

We did take a lot of pictures. We also stopped and talked to a lot of
people. My brother was telling people Matt was a cancer survivor so
that's why we were doing it. People ate it up, and it is technically
true, although not in the sense that people think of when you say you
are doing something for a cancer survivor. Anyway our group slowed
down considerably on the way up to the north rim. Once we got there we
ate a huge lunch and rested for and hour and a half.

We felt great after that. Except for the guy who was falling down that
morning. His IT band was hurting like crazy. He could have bailed out,
but he wanted to finish, so my brother and I walked 23.5 back with him
up bright angel, and Todd and Matt ran on ahead.

The Canyon is beautiful. I mean really amazing. The trail is well
marked, and there is lots of water. It was really fun until the last 4
or 5 miles. Actually for me it wasn't that fun walking with the hurt
guy when I wanted to run, but by the last 4 or 5 miles, I was glad he
was hurt, because I didn't feel like running. The hike out was never
ending. I wanted to lay down and go to sleep, but the others didn't so
we kept walking.

I didn't get to see the south rim in the daylight, which is a little
dissappointing. The south rim to me is a small patch of light on the
ground a few feet ahead of my feet. The last 1.5 miles I hated the
Grand Canyon. It was the main thing I didn't like about Arizona. I
wanted to fill it in like a land fill. I sat down and went on a
tirade. I swore that this was the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my
entire life. I also swore that I would never do it again, and I
promised to believe my wife when she said that something was a bad
idea, all along she said I was crazy. I think she was being nice not
to use the word stupid because that's the conclusion I came to.

In fact everyone except for Todd, said that it was a dumb idea at the
end of the hike. Even Matt was apologizing to all of us for organizing
the trip. Everyone but Todd did not want to be there at the end.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later. My feet are still healing
from the epic blisters I have, But I want to do it again. Todd and I
often discuss how we would do it differently.

I would run more in training. I would also bring better socks. I would
try to do it so that I could see the south rim during daylight.
Otherwise, it was awesome. It was also terrible. On one hand I think
we should fill it in, on the other hand I am probably going to do it
again.

Todd wants to do it in april. I have some home improvement projects to
do first, so probably not, but maybe you'll see him that weekend. We
saw one other group doing r2r2r, 3 girls and an older gentleman. It
was kind of cool to see other insane people on the smae day. Actually
there was more than just them doing r2r2r.

You are going to have a memorable experience. Sorry for being verbose.
I do that with email sometimes.
Maybe I should have posted this on your blog.

Good Luck again,

-Jimmy

Full disclosure also requires that I upload a video of me sitting down in the parking lot on the south rim waiting to be picked up after finishing the hike.