Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:51:08 +0000
From: lazarus lake
Subject: vol state start of day 10-omeliation
Indeed Mike did finish last night, but it wasn’t pretty. After moving reasonably well all day the descent into Jasper must have broken something in Mike.
After getting to the quarry 3/4 of the way down Sequatchie mountain time seemed to stand still. He *was* moving… sort of. Sighting reports tended to detect scant difference in his location over periods of hours. Calls to our suffering hero turned from cheers and encouragement to a persistent nagging demand to “Move Mike, just move!” and the ever encouraging “All you have to do is get here and you can stop.”
When one caller entreated him to “Hurry up, we have been waiting forever” we rolled with laughter, certain that the discomfiture of those on the rock was probably nowhere to be found in Mike’s top ten list of motivations to get done.
The little band on the rock watched for falling stars for hours. We laughed & joked.
As the hours went on, we became positively slap happy from counting falling stars
(if you trust Carl’s self-reporting he was the big winner. Our speculation was that he simply watched for us to look away and then shouted “there’s one!”)
We turned to giving ever more outrageous descriptions of Mike’s progress, (to be fair he kicked it into high gear at the Tennessee river bridge covering the final 11 miles in a sizzling 5 hours) we could not come up with an adequate term for his method of locomotion. Ambling strolling, not painful enough. Limping gimping, not urgent enough. We finally coined an all new term omeliating.
We were a band of brothers we vol-staters and with the sort of love typical of brothers
while our comrade was on an endless treadmill in hell we laughed about it until tears rolled down our cheeks.
At last we saw the glow of his light coming down the trail, pushing gamely to the finish line. He then collapsed to the ground and curled into the fetal position so favored by vol-staters. We dragged him (or his body) away from the cliff’s edge
and propped him up on a rock. Mike opened his celebratory finish beer and after a few minutes began to regale us with tales from the road.
No one tells a story quite like Mike and he had accumulated some good ones. More peals of laughter floated across the gulf.
Mike finally announced that he had to go home… “my feet hurt” and the party broke up.
When we got home attention finally turned to our last survivor, the Troubador.
Carl speculated as to when he would be on the road “actually he was supposed to leave an hour ago. This is already Rich’s tomorrow.” It was past time to go to bed.
Having gotten a bit of sleep and joined Rich in tomorrow I have yet to hear any word on his progress. Calls to his cell did not go thru giving hope that this morning he did not dally. The area between Tracy City and Jasper has scant cell-phone coverage.
Mike’s 19 hour oddysey over that final 41 miles should be a cautionary tale for Rich. If he started late (as has been his wont for the the first 8 days), he and the clock could end up in a battle to the death (or dnf).
He has already done so much proven so many doubters wrong, but there is still work to be done, still mountains to climb (and one runner killing descent to go down)
and rivers to cross and scariest of all for Rich the pathfinder, he must negotiate a mile of trail without getting lost.
Go Rich go!
Laz
Be the first to comment