Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 02:01:58 -0600 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 13 "The Edmund Fitzgerald's Out There Somewhere!" "You'll find the history of the Voyageur all along the North Shore, for he travelled Lake Superior by freighter canoe and explored the full length of its shores. Browse through the voyageur and the logging museums in Two Harbors. See Split Rock Lighthouse near Silver Bay, the harbor at Grand Marais. The long, low silhouette of the iron ore freighter has long been a symbol of Lake Superior." --From "North Shore Drive of Lake Superior: Vacation Travel and Accommodation Guide" ("Serving Vacationers for 62 Years: 1937-1999") [A publication that looks like it was printed in 1937, with only those other two numbers changed since] Well, sure enough, I come bursting through the thickets and the wickets of the weeds and the trees, and there stretched out before me for five feet in the clearing is one little picnic table surrounded by five hundred people. Oh, so THAT's a "Tettegouche"! No, that's an aid station. This particular aid station happens to be the very first one along the course of the Superior Trail 100 Mile Endurance Run; and it comes after some eleven miles of VERY rocky, hilly, cliffy(?), ugly, wicked, mean 'n' nasty terrain; and it suddenly pops out at you in the middle of nowhere. Usually aid stations during ultras are situated along highways or gravel or dirt roads (so the chuckwagons can bring all the chuck steaks in), but sometimes you'll find aid stations in places where, you swear, the only supply wagons in there had to be carried, bodily, by guys named Chuck. (Norm Klein out in California, I'm told, has such clout that he can arrange to have supplies airlifted by helicopter, and that explains some of those aid stations in the Western States 100-miler precariously perched on top of ridges or at the bottoms of canyons where, in an earlier time, only settlers and Indians could ever get to, and of course the Indians massacred the settlers.) Anyway, I'm stumbling into the station totally amazed and mystified that, first of all, I somehow managed to tear up the first eleven miles of the course in something like two-and-a-half hours, and mystified that anyone would bother to hike in supplies to this godforsaken place and set up shop on a picnic table. (And I really didn't find out until finally reading the entire pre-race booklet NOW--as I write this after the race--that, yes, those fine folks did have a 1/3 mile hike into that location from the nearest parking lot. Dedication like that just brings tears to my eyes.) Of course, standing in an aid station at something like 7:30 in the morning, I'm not interested in eating any chuck steaks. Not that they actually had any, you understand, but I'm not exactly looking either. (Hey, they MIGHT have had 'em!) No, I move down the cafeteria line to the coffee and desserts. Actually, if the truth were known, this is precisely what I do: I strip. Yes, that's right. I move down to the end of the table, take off my fanny pack and double-holster set and set them on the seat. Then I ask the nearest volunteer guy where the garbage is and he shows me. Then I dump as many vital supplies out of my fanny pack as possible and straight into the garbage. For example, my rain poncho. (Remember this. It figures later into the story.) And my extra band-aids, blister kit, and Breathe-Rite nose guards (which are apparently designed to protect your nostrils from the air you breathe). The PowerBar I decide to eat, then and there. The helpful volunteer volunteers to refill my two water bottles ("one water, one Gatorade, please, thanks") and I continue stripping. The headlight now goes into the newly emptied fanny pack (it fits!) and the Madison, Wisconsin, bricklayer's cap comes off my head. I take off my Sunmart "Finisher's Bonus" Texas-looking Tyvek jacket and my long-sleeved T-shirt from Chicago's Shamrock Shuffle. This gets me down to my singlet underneath, where I decide to stay. Any more than that and I'd be down to bare shin, and the ladies at the station might object. Right. Like as if they haven't ever winced before. So now I'm frantically drinking cups full of whatever they have there, attaching my removed soggy garments to my double-holster pack through this nifty drawstring-clamplike nooselike loop holder, chomping my PowerBar and trying not to gag, putting the whole damn disassembly back together again on my body, and all the while trying to hold intelligent conversation with the ladies at the station. "Aren't you the one who won the new shoes?" "Yes, ma'am." "That was pretty lucky, eh?" "Yes, ma'am." "Did they give them to you right away?" "No, ma'am." "Well, I guess they wouldn't know to bring your size." "Yes, ma'am." "Is there anything else we can get for you?" "Yes, ma'am." "And what is that?" "A helicopter." They all get a kick out of that, I suppose. But then the nice man gives me back my refilled bottles, which I proceed to twirl around my index fingers like they did in the Old West and flip them fluidly back into their holsters. Now the ladies are impressed! "See ya later!" I call out as I'm running back into the next wicket of weeds. "Thanks for everything!" It is only about two, maybe three, hundred yards down the trail--before I get to the bridge--where I first learn what a "Tettegouche" is. There's this wooden sign, you see. It says "Tettegouche State Park." Oh, so THAT's what it is! It also says, "Hiking Trail Only." So I immediately stop running. But then I get to the bridge and would have to stop anyway, even if it's only to think. So I go, Hmmm. (I'm thinking!) They told us when we get to this bridge we'd have to turn left. Or, was it right? Hmmm. (Still thinking.) They said, "It's tricky." So I stop, think again, and look at the bridge. From where I'm standing, I need to turn left to get onto the bridge--that's easy--and then once I'm on it, the bridge only goes one way. To the right! I go, Hmmm. So what's the problem? I walk carefully across this--hey, pretty nifty!--new "suspension" type footbridge modeled no doubt after the Golden Gate. It's pretty darn impressive! And, after I cross, the trail continues on in one direction. So again I go, Hmmm. What's the problem? Maybe I was supposed to reverse those directions? Go right and then left? Well, then I'd be in the river. I make a mental note: If this was the Hardrock 100, we'd be in the river. Well now, I STILL don't know how to pronounce the damn name of the state park we're in. (Is it tet-uh-GOOCH or TETTA-gooch or tet-uh-GOO-chee or TETTA-goo-chee or just tet-teh-gOUCH?) I think someone later says "tet-teh-GOOCH" so that's, I guess, what I'll go with. I'm also assuming this state park is not a generic, tettegouche-type state park (as opposed, I suppose, to a scaramouche-type state park or a fannypouche-type), but that it is in fact NAMED after someone named Tettegouche. Some state senator, no doubt. Maybe a famous former founding father of the World Wrestling Federation. "La-DEEZ and GENNELLL-men! In this corner, weighing in at tha-REE hunnert and SEV-enty FIVE pounds solid, YOUR hero and OUR father who art in the state house, the one, thee only, THE TERRIBLE TETTA-GOOCHIE!!!!" Aw hell. It was probably just named for some incredibly perky (picky?) Indian princess. After whom all today's young Jewish American women are doubtless modeling themselves. [No flames, please; that was only a joke!] I'm contemplating these things more and more as I take up running again along the single-track trail cut through more and more weeds, but then I stop again when faced with another climb. I now (as I'm writing this) find a "Mt. Trudee" on the map shortly after the aid station, although now (as I'm climbing this) I have no idea what the hell it is I'm climbing. All I really know is, on the Superior Hiking ("only") Trail, you do one helluva lot of climbing! And when I AM in an ultra, at least, I am NOT running while I'm climbing. Tor Kirkygaard and Heike Hauldiigaul might run up these things, maybe, but they're all eighty years younger than I am, they all come from Norway, and they're ALL trying to win the race. Ha! I'm just trying to live to see Monday. So after yet another long, arduous, difficult, precarious, rocky, treacherous, and high (of course) climb, I suddenly find myself staring out over an incredible panoramic vista of the great Gitche Gumee itself. This is, I suppose, a breathtaking sight. (But I'm already out of breath when I arrive, so I wouldn't know.) Anyway, when I get to the top, what do I see? A guy! A young man! Another runner! And he's standing stock-still and just staring! He goes, "This is what we pay our money to see." I go, "Hey, ya know what? The Edmund Fitzgerald is out there!" He goes, "Huh?" I go, "The famous shipwreck. Didn't ya ever hear of it?" He goes, "Oh, sure." So I go, "Well? Can ya see it???" (I'm thinking maybe the guy is a special "seer" or something. Maybe he's gifted that way. This is probably why he's STOPPED STILL in the middle of a RACE just to GAWK at some inland sea, on which you can't see anything!) I breeze on by him. (Hah! I think, I passed somebody!) (Meanwhile, HE's thinking maybe I'm a jackass. What the hell does the Edmund Fitzgerald have to do with anything?) So I boogie on down the trail, lookin' for fun an' feelin' groovy. This is way cool. The sun's up, it's getting warmer by the minute, there's not a cloud in the sky, I'm still feeling groovy, and I'm passing other runners like they're standing still. Not five minutes later and that same young man is breathing down my neck. "Passing on your left," he says as I, like, totally dejectedly, step aside to give him "trail." "Bastard." (Of course, I don't SAY that. I just think it.) Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll... What sort of animosity does THIS breed in the mind and heart of our hero? What nefarious plan of revenge could he possibly be cooking up now?? Will he run this upstart competitor down in a blazing sprint to the finish--eventually, tomorrow sometime--or simply outlast the sucker and toss a plucked dandelion atop his spent and lifeless body which our hero shall doubtless find later collapsed in a clump by the trailside??? Be sure to stay tuned next time when "The Further Adventures of The Flash" will continue with yet another thrill-packed episode--filled this time with his own particular Special Powers and Elite Command for Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. :-O S.P.E.C.T.R.E.! "Oh my gawd," you sigh. "Now this, too?" [James Bond will return in Movie Number 14.] Kitsch Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net