Steps

Even though people are worried about the potential to be unhealthy, I'm using the opportunity to step up my cardio game with lots more running and other things.

A few years ago on Thanksgiving, I ran on a trail that went down into City Creek Canyon. Last week, I noticed another sign that looked like it was signaling another trail, which I presumed also went down into City Creek. So I decided to go check it out.

 But once I got past the sign, the "trail" vanished. There was nowhere to go. So I turned around and went on the usual trails. (These trails are above Wild Rose Trail.)

On my way to the trailheads, I run past a house that always has a truck parked directly on the sidewalk, even though there's tons of room in the driveway. And it's next to their parking strip, which means you have to walk on their grass to get around the car. It is annoying, and technically it's illegal, so I left this note on their windshield:

 That seems to have done the trick, because now they park in their driveway! (Which they should have been doing all along.)

I tried to be very friendly about it, and I figure that it's helping not only me but also other pedestrians. But part of me wonders if it was appropriate. My ward's Facebook page is open to the neighborhood in general, which is great, but a few nonmembers feel a need to post on the page to lecture their neighbors about shoveling their sidewalks or avoiding gathering. I 100 percent agree with their messages, but the way they do it seems excessively strange and even rude, so I hope I'm not being a jerk.

On Tuesday, I ran up a steep trail on the east side of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. I don't know if it's an official trail, but it's been there as long as I've been using the main trail. (In the five and a half years I've been exploring North Salt Lake's trails, I have been sad to see trails widen and shortcuts become more deeply entrenched. Stay on the trail, folks!

Wednesday and Thursday were rainy. On Thursday, I thought I would take the opportunity to ride my bike for twenty miles, a distance I have never done before, on the Legacy Parkway Trail. At exactly ten miles, I was at a Farmington park where I could see Lagoon, and it was time to turn around.

 That bike trail is super easy. So easy, in fact, that it's kind of boring coming back. It's only slightly difficult, but the tedium makes the scant difficulty much less enjoyable.

I go to Ensign Peak a few times a year, and I always go one way that takes me above Ensign Peak and I have to descend (and then ascend) a very steep trail. But the first time I went there, five years ago, I instead went below Ensign Peak and ascended a steep, narrow, unofficial trail. But now there is a completely new trail, with lots of switchbacks, and it was my first time using this new trail. I'm glad it's there, because it's better than what was there before. But I think I still prefer the way I usually go.

There were lots of loose rocks on the trail, one reason I don't like it as much.

My nephews spend their free time playing video games (boring) and watching YouTube videos of people playing video games (boringer!). But they also have to exercise (and they can leverage the exercise to get more game time), so I have enjoyed taking them on some of the smaller trails, which are too small to be worth my time most of the time.

I love all the glacier lilies on the lower portion of Wild Rose Trail! (The part of the trail that goes by the NSL landslide, not the main loop by the park.)

 Even though Friday's Ensign Peak run was more than nine miles up and down hills, I still had plenty of energy for Saturday's run.

Five years ago (again), I got lost on the trails and ended up going way farther than I had anticipated. I decided to go on the same trail again to see where it goes. So part of my run was places I haven't seen in five years, and part of it was completely new territory.

I didn't take my phone with me five years ago, but I was confused then to see a "no parking" sign lying on the ground. This is the middle of a trail that feels pretty isolated, so I don't know what it was doing there. But five years later, it's still there! But this time it was leaning against some trees.

Conglomerate outcrop

I believe this cairn signals a fork in the trail that leads to a cellphone tower, where I've gone a few times, but the trail there is very steep with loose rocks.

This is where I turned around.

 I ended up going 7.5 miles, with a climb of 2,100 feet.

I'm so glad that the Fitbit app finally shows elevation! For years, elevation was only available online. But even though they tell you your elevation gain in feet, they only show the actual elevation in meters. 🤷

I was in fact exhausted at the end of that run. But after a little recovery, I went with my nephews on a walk on Centerville's Prospector Rail Trail. It was kind of boring because it was flat and straight, but I'd never been there, and it's good to know it's not worth my time.

I took 28,700 steps yesterday!

I also had several strange dreams this week. In one, I had to pretend to defend myself from lions, but once filming was done, the lions wanted to be petted. In another, as part of my grad school preparations, I had to go back to junior high, and there I was interacting with adolescents when I'm in my thirties. And in the strangest one of all, President Nelson was visiting my ward, so the ward decided to try to impress him by having a big performance of secular song-and-dance numbers during sacrament meeting. There was a scene from Beetlejuice and a "Thriller" performance with a campy Michael Jackson costume. Some of the costumes were immodest, and I found it all to be entirely inappropriate for sacrament meeting. I wanted to lecture the ward on Brigham Young establishing the Retrenchment Society to prove that you shouldn't try to impress the prophet. I guess I'm a know-it-all even when I'm dreaming.