Trails in the fall

 Since May, I have been running up North Canyon almost every day. And now that we've had our first snowstorm of the season, I'm glad that I spent so much time on that wonderful trail, because I don't know if I'll be back this year. And I'm glad last week I did the 12.8-mile run, which might have been my last. Last year, we had a late-October snowstorm, and it took forever to melt, so I never made it back up North Canyon. We'll see what happens this year.

On Monday, I could tell there were horses on the trail because I saw the horse trailer at the trailhead. I hate sharing with horses! I don't like sharing with dirt bikes either, but they're better than horses. So instead of going all the way to Rudy's Flat like usual, I went up a little side ridge trail. I had never noticed it until this year, and one day I encountered an older hiker telling me about it (he was trying to describe where on the trail he had seen a rattlesnake). I decided I would run up that side trail rather than encounter the horses. 

Ugh. Blogger is adding the images in reverse order again. I feel like Google is spending 2020 making all of their products worse, as if this year wasn't bad enough already.

It took me to the top of a little peak. It was fun to see a new place, since I am so familiar with North Canyon. The trail was a little hard to follow at times, and it was a little steep (though not prohibitively so), so I don't feel a great need to go back anytime soon.

The rest of the week, though, I did get all the way to Rudy's. About a third of a mile from there is a shortcut trail, which makes me furious. It doesn't save much distance, and it skips the pretty part, and it causes erosion. I hate it when people make their own shortcuts. So all summer, I have been removing rocks from the trail and placing them on the shortcut to deter people from using it. I have become a little possessive about it, and I am dismayed when I see that rocks have been moved, or that someone has still gone up the shortcut. I avoid the trail on the weekends, so I'm always nervous at what I'm going to see when I return. But this week I saw that someone had placed tree limbs and a much larger rock to deter people. Yay! That is so much better than what I have been doing. I will continue to contribute to this new blockade. 

The rock pile in the front is mostly my contribution. The rocks between the logs are the new contribution, for which I am grateful.

The rest of the week I continued to run up there, even as it got cooler. My ideal running temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees; that's when I'm fastest. On Friday, my run was a full fifteen minutes faster than my slowest summer times. On Thursday, I did eight miles, and it still took less time than my slow seven miles in the summer. If I didn't have to worry about homework, I would go on longer runs.

This is not North Canyon but rather the ridge between North Salt Lake and City Creek. I wanted this to appear at the bottom, but Blogger put it at the top.

Lately, I've been watching spooky movies before bed. I prefer silly spooky to actually scary or gory. Here's a question I have been pondering for years. If a movie has a spooky theme, but it makes no reference to Halloween, is it a Halloween movie? Because my inclination is no. But vampires and Frankenstein are very much part of Halloween, and when the original Dracula and Frankenstein movies came out, those characters weren't really associated with the holiday. It's because of those non-Halloween movies that they are now Halloween characters. I appreciate it when there are spooky movies that actually take place at Halloween: Hocus Pocus, Ernest Scared Stupid, Casper, Goosebumps 2, and the original Frankenweenie. (Note: I don't like or endorse all of those movies. I'm just giving them as examples.) I thought about going on a tangent about Halloween movies, but I'm not going to.

Watching these movies at night has made me have spooky dreams. One dream was about an alien invasion a couple houses away from me, with aliens that could take any form, including skeletons. Another dream was that our garage door kept opening itself. I also did math in my dream, because I determined that a 43-year-old could date a 29-year-old (because of the "half your age plus seven" rule). And then I was thinking about how some people are silly and pronounce "scissors" with a "k" sound, and I was thinking that that doesn't work, because in English, a "c" before an "i" has an "s" sound, just like "cicada."

On Friday night, my grad program had a Zoom social gathering. I participated, because I think I don't pursue relationships enough, which is overall detrimental to me. But I certainly felt awkward. I admit I feel out of place in my program. And it's also hard because I've always been near the top of my class, and now I think I'm near the bottom. Oh well.

Also, they sent out goodie packages, and they addressed it to "Mark and Jimmy." Jimmy liked it.

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Halloween is this week, but luckily, pumpkinundation roundup goes through Thanksgiving!

I got this pumpkin streusel muffin from the gas station, and I suspect it came from Costco. It's fine, but not especially memorable or noteworthy. 7/10.

The Fiiz Caramel Apple Frappé was better than I expected. It was an artificial apple flavor, but less artificial than other apple things, and I liked the caramel mixed in. 8/10.

I ate the Fiiz Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie during the presidential debate. I specifically asked for it without frosting, but they either forgot or misunderstood. The frosting was overly sweet for the cookie. And if they gave me a frosted cookie, part of me wonders if they gave me a regular chocolate chip cookie, because it didn't taste like pumpkin at all. 5/10.

 
These Birch Benders Pumpkin Spice Paleo Pancakes are officially the worst pumpkin product I've had this season. I followed the instructions, but the batter was very thick, even though they said it would be thin at first, and it didn't make nearly as much as the package said. The mix had a nice pumpkin spice scent, but the flavor wasn't much like pancakes. 3/10.

The Twisted Sugar Harvest Cookie is simultaneously creative but not creative. On one hand, just dropping candy corn on top of a cookie seems lazy. But candy corn and peanuts is a winning combo, and it's creative to put it in a cookie. It's a peanut butter cookie with marshmallow topping and peanuts and candy corn on top. It was a great cookie! 8/10.