From: RDJT76A@prodigy.com (MR RICHARD J LIMACHER)
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 09:30:37, -0500
To: ULTRA@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU
Subject: Legend of Pecos Phooey at WS100, Part 19

[Editor's note:  The dude's on schedule!  He's sending in his stuff at
breakneck pace!  We wondered why, of course, until we realized:  He's got a
pacer!]

                       Ain't This The Emerald City?

The thing about Foresthill that most of us don't even realize until we get
there, of course, is that Foresthill is an actual "place."  Not an
imaginary dot on the map in the official Western States race-day program
(an encyclopedic document, in 25 pages, covering everything possible you
ever wanted to know about the event before, during, and even after the
"race" was ever invented, and to which I've been referring right along,
especially for "place" names--especially in Placer County).  No, Foresthill
is NOT an abandoned mine shaft, an impassable "pass" where cowboys used to
ambush Indians, a fire road on which even Jeeps get stuck, a ghost town, a
canyon, a valley, a ridge, a flat, a creek, a bluff, or a "thumb."  Oh no.
Foresthill is someplace real, where real people really live.  Hell, it's a
CITY (!), I think.

It has a road.  Actually, a street.  Many streets.  And they're paved!
Coming up out of the arid jungle of the High-and-getting-progressively-
Lower Sierras, we hallucinogenic runners might think we're stepping out of
the sauna and parading through the resort's main lobby, right into the gift
shop.  In all our stinking dishevelledness.  We actually come out of the
woods and, suddenly, we're running through a neighborhood!  We're on some
kind of recreational path running right alongside Main Street!  There's
houses and sidewalks (I think) and kids and cars and people and...TRAFFIC!

Wow.  Talk about "culture shock."  I felt like the hideaway Japanese
soldier on Iwo Jima, still fighting in 1955, who never realized the War was
over.  Whoa.  I bushwhack my way out of the jungle and suddenly I'm in
somebody's vegetable garden!  Wow!  Hey, what's for supper?

Anyway, there we were, prior to the aid station, all running alongside of
TRAFFIC, being passed mercilessly by Tony, on our way toward the very
height of modern western civilization:  Foresthill Community High School (I
think).  Or, maybe it was Foresthill Community Center.  Maybe recreational
center.  Heck, maybe it was just the Moose Lodge.

Norm would know.  Ask him.  Ask him, or Helen, just what the hell that
PLACE is at Foresthill where he's set up Division Headquarters and
represents THE MOST MAGNIFICENT, thorough and complete, ultramarathon aid
station ever invented.  That place, honest-to-God, was a "happening"!  It
was a local draw!  It was Saturday night, and "the thing" for the residents
of Foresthill to do that night was, you know, drive downtown and "hang out"
at the Western States aid station!  There were throngs of people!  Parents
and children!  All standing around, clapping, waving, having a grand old
time watching the "parade"!

Culture shock again.  You hardly think of yourself running all by yourself
through the hot, sweaty jungle along a rocky and treacherous trail as being
part of a parade.  Or, on second thought, I was plenty delirious enough to
imagine being right behind the Foresthill High School Marching Band
following--out of step, of course--the fat kid playing the bass drum--out
of sync, of course.  Boom-boom.  Boom-boom.  Boom-boombity-boom.  I'm-done.
I'm-done.  I'm-really-done.

All right, I'm hallucinating.  There was no marching band.  But there were
lots of people hanging around the place.  One little girl asked me, as I
Mo-seyed past:

"Are you going all the way to Auburn?"

"Yes I am!"

"Wow, mister.  Tonight?"

You betcha.  And I'll be pulling into town long after your bedtime, too.
(Like, as if, it'll still be dark by the time I get there.  Ha!  The little
girl will have slept, dreamt, gotten up to go to the bathroom twice, woken
up, had breakfast, watched TV, forced to put on her nice new dress and
clean white shoes, been dragged to church, dragged to the Foresthill
Holiday Inn for Sunday brunch, told to "be still" at least a thousand
times, and, finally, gotten home, changed clothes, and become filthy dirty
playing in the jungle along the Western States Trail--all before I ever
show up at Auburn!)

Then too, of course, I hadn't the heart to tell my little fan where I'd
started from that day!  Going "all the way to Auburn" was mind-blowing enough.

Here's a thought.  What with all those back-country roads and Jeep roads
and gravel roads and unpaved recreational paths, just how long do you
suppose it takes to DRIVE from Foresthill to Auburn?  Well, to a little
girl being forced to "keep still" and "stay seated" and "stop asking so
many questions" in the backseat of pop's old Pontiac, such a journey must
seem endless.  Probably take half-a-day or more.  Maybe even all night!

Yes, I can relate to that.

Anyway, it was plenty "night" when Steve Reagan (my newfound pacer, guide,
guru, and "watch the rock" specialist) and I boarded the non-existent bus
and headed south out of Foresthill.  We were following the arrows painted
on the pavement.  Whoa!  You never thought THIS race would follow arrows
painted on pavement, I'll bet.  Huh?  Well, you needn't think about it
long.  After a couple blocks though the neighboring neighborhood next to
the school, we were suddenly plunging ourselves right back into the woods.
The pitch black, overgrown, mystery-enshrouded, probably haunted, weird
woods of the Wicked Witch of the West.  I immediately thought of the
Cowardly Lion (a character I can always relate to) who came upon the sign
in the movie that said:  "I'd turn back if I were you."

"Good idea!" he said (I think).

In the beginning, the path through the woods was lighted by green glow
lights.  These are wonderful inventions, and I found myself wishing they'd
only been invented years ago in time for the Vietnam War--except I didn't
find myself wishing for this too long because, of course, I was never in
the Vietnam War.  I was just doing my wishing for the veterans.  Again,
like the imaginary fat kid with the bass drum, I was totally out of sync
with this thought too. (And if you've been taking notes at how many times
I've been completely out of sync with the reality of running a hundred-mile
footrace, well, by now you must be on your third or fourth pad of paper.)

The glow lights were "cool," and I think I commented about them to Steve.
But he had opted to "lead" me along the first stretch of trail out of town,
so he probably couldn't hear what I was saying about fifty paces behind
him.  Whoa!  Steve, baby, not so fast!

The thing about "pacing" is, I've discovered, is that most pacers cannot
possibly imagine running that slow.  I mean, they might THINK they're
running as slow as it is ever humanly possible to run (and certainly as
slow as they know they've ever had to go), but it is not slow enough.  It
is NEVER slow enough.  You cannot possibly imagine how slow it is possible
for the human being to go, until you have already gone 62 miles.  There
were times, I swear, when Steve had to force himself to go so slow that it
must have seemed to him like he'd not only stopped, he had thrown his
manual transmission into reverse.  In fact, with me hanging so far behind
him, he had to stop and back up lots of times.

Finally, he stopped, waited, and said:  "You lead."

A song lyric just flashed into my head:  "This ain't no upwardly mobile
freeway...oh no, this is the road to hell."

And so there I was, moving out in front, at about a-half-a-mile-an-hour,
leading my brand-new buddy right out of Oz and straight down into...

...the RIVER!

Which, maybe next time, I'll finally get to.

[Back--quick--with Part 20.]

Rich Limacher
The Ultra Nutty Troubadour
RDJT76A@prodigy.com