Reunions and Running

Lost and Found
As you may or may not know, depending on how faithfully you follow these on-line postings, several months ago we became the proud foster family for a pair of baby desert tortoises that we wound up naming Uno and Dos in honor of our Spanish heritage (our living-in-Tucson heritage, not our actual lineage, which is not Spanish, but is in fact Scottish (Katie) and German (me) and which would have led us to name the tortoises Yin and Twa or Ein and Zwei, depending on whose heritage we wanted to honor). We also named them Uno and Dos because it was catchy and clever (and the names Connor suggested were ridiculous and silly), which is often the goal when coming up with names for animals, although there is a school of thought that animals shouldn't be given names at all because it's confusing to small children who begin to think that animals are people when they're really not, so you should name a duck, Duck or a chicken, Chicken, or a guinea pig, Pig (which is generally what I call whatever guinea pig(s) happen to be residing with us at any given time). Anyhow, these two baby tortoises are very, very adorable because they're little tiny creatures - and because tortoises are kind of cool looking even when they're not little or tiny, and we quickly set about updating our tortoise den so it would be suitable for babies. This involved digging out all the dirt that our dearly-departed-and-still-greatly-missed tortoise, Albert John, had dug into the den, then adding some cinder blocks around the outside so it was enclosed, putting down a layer of pea-gravel, adding a wading pool and some landscaping, and then covering the whole thing in chicken wire so the big bad birds can't swoop in and grab our little critters. Needless to say, the end result was both aesthetically pleasing and practical, and any tortoise would be thrilled to move into such a high-class joint. And so, Uno and Dos moved in and promptly went into hibernation. Every once in awhile, we would check up on them just to see how they were doing, and they were doing just fine until one day about a month or so ago, Katie went out to check on them and discovered that, while we thought they were sleeping, the little imps had actually been cooking up an escape plan. I'm not sure when they did it, but the little sneaks were secretly burrowing under a boulder that made up one of the walls of the enclosure (not sure if they were sneaking out the dirt by carrying it in their pockets, then dumping it on the ground, but I wouldn't put it past them). So when Katie discovered this, she burrowed in after them, and to her dismay, only found one of the tortoises - ironically enough, the one tortoise she found was Uno. Which meant that Dos was missing. She immediately formed up a search party and we wandered around the backyard calling, "Dos, Dos. Wherefore art thou, Dos?" and whistling and making tortoise calling sounds, but much to our dismay, Dos was not to be found. So we fortified our enclosure to keep Uno from following Dos and hoped that Dos would somehow manage to survive in the wild. As stated before, that was about a month or so ago. Well, yesterday afternoon, Carrie was walking out into the backyard and who do you think she spotted sitting by the door? That's right, it was Dos. He was looking kind of scraggly and dirty, but his eyes were shining and he obviously had been having a fine old time wandering around who-knows-where and getting into all kinds of mischief. And so this story has a happy ending because Dos is now back at home with Uno, the enclosure should be escape-proof (we hope), and… okay, I guess there is no and, because that's it.

Living the High Life
Katie and I spent the weekend in Estes Park (Colorado) celebrating cousin Molly's nuptials. It always feels a little surreal to get on a plane in Tucson, where it's pushing 100 degrees, and then a little over an hour later to arrive in Denver, where it's most definitely not in the 100's. Anyway, I suppose the wedding was beautiful and all that junk, but the most important part of all this (okay, the most important part to me, which just goes to show where my priorities lie) was that it gave me a chance to run a goodly portion (18 miles) of the Estes Park Marathon route in preparation for the Estes Park Marathon which I'll be running in about three-and-a-half weeks, and I have to say that the course is absolutely breath-taking. Partly because it's spectacularly beautiful as you wind around lakes, follow mountain streams, gaze up a snow-capped peaks, and pass through and pine/aspen forests and alpine meadows where deer and elk are grazing, and partly/mostly because the elevation is between 7,500 and 8,100 feet, and there's not nearly as much oxygen at 7,500 to 8,100 feet as there is in the "Old Pueblo" (elevation around 2,500 feet) and it's especially breath-taking on the four-mile stretch that goes up from 7,500 feet 8,100 feet. So after huffing and puffing my way around the course, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to set any speed records during this event, which I was pretty much figuring going in, but I'm also pretty sure that this might wind up surpassing the Anchorage Marathon as my favorite and most scenic course.

That does it for this edition, so until next time may your pens remain filled with ink, may your words of wisdom be honored and obeyed, and may your wayward wanderers return safely home (unless you want them to stay away, in which case, I hope they stay away).