ERE Marching Meetup Series

[brainstorm]

Sounds good to me! Thanks, Jacob, for the recommendation.

@Dave, shuttle from the train station would be great. I’ll let you know an ETA once I have it (tomorrow). Many thanks!

[jacob]

Walked (slid and almost slipped) 13 miles on the Salt Creek trail and saw about ~15 very friendly/tame deer.


Same deer as above. It just stood there looking kind of smug. Probably knew something that we didn't.

[Dave]

It was a nice day for March #8. Low 30s F, sunny. We logged ~13 miles in about 4 hours, pretty good clip considering the ice.

Enjoyable conversation with a recurring theme of accepting lower and lower goalposts as we age . @brainstorm's map interpretation skills outperformed Google & me ("The Google says...") We discussed launching a Congress Cloning mutual fund to generate Pelosi-caliber returns. And lots of wildlife sighting, as with the deer @jacob shared but also a squirrel dropping an acorn on my head. Karma for hunting.

A great day. I'd be interested in doing this one another time sans ice!

[brainstorm]

Feeling very grateful for the dry wool socks I have on now glad you could make it!

[Scott 2]

Looks like a great time. @Dave are those the barefoot shoes? I found mine were absolute trash on ice. Super fun in fresh snow, but even then, all my body heat was sucked out through the feet. Glad you made it!

[Dave]

Looks like a great time. @Dave are those the barefoot shoes? I found mine were absolute trash on ice. Super fun in fresh snow, but even then, all my body heat was sucked out through the feet. Glad you made it!

The boots were these - https://xeroshoes.com/shop/boots/denver/

Traction is OK, definitely not anything to write home about but not the worst I've had. Bigger problem was they soaked through ~1/3 of the way through the hike. The boots are "water resistant", but when you combine deep enough snow to fall on top with every step, temperatures right over freezing causing slow melting, and sun, it's a recipe to get wet without legitimately waterproof shoes.

All good though, just an opportunity to channel one's inner Goggins .

[jacob]

Legs are definitely feeling it today (day two DOMS). I'd say 20km of snow = 40km of hardtop. I'm very glad that I didn't bring the heavy ruck along!

We also talked about PrUn, so I wrote an intro which hopefully explains it better than I did in person waving my phone around in front of @brainstorm. I already tried to recruit @Dave, who, by the way, is definitely going to cave eventually. It's only a matter of time, I'm sure.

Talking to @brainstorm about randonneuring made me consider dusting off my dusty road bike. I actually looked into "local opportunities" for riding when I moved to Chicago in 2012 (having done a few centuries and achieved a functional threshold (20 min effort) 3.7W/kg level output (about half of a TdF rider or IIRC 2/3 of @C40) but saw few opportunities in Chicagoland traffic other than death by collision. Turns out that there's now an active rando club, so that is something to consider. I've been looking for a new (or old) sport for a while now, which kinda ties into the whole "for what purpose?" discussion we had in terms of getting in shape beyond "good enough for an old guy". I prefer the event/racing format over "leisure cruising". Same with sailing when I did that.

[Scott 2]

@Dave - I've got a pair of their boots, though not that model. My experience was similar. Certainly better traction than the shoes.

@Jacob - Getting to the low traffic areas is rough. When I was exploring, I'd trawl the garmin connect heat maps. Centennial trail felt safe, though at the volume of work you're talking about, the leisure riders will be annoying. Dunno that I'd want to hit some of the bumpier parts with a road bike either. My Dad bikes a lot. His solution has been to start at dawn, especially favoring Sunday morning. I did a couple hours with him at one point. Traffic was chill.