Nine miles and fourteen miles

On Saturday, October 10, when there was a break in the rain, I decided to run up one of the new trails in Holbrook Canyon. I had gone there in June but didn't get to go as far as I wanted. The first part of Holbrook Canyon isn't great for running: lots of rocks and stream crossings. But the new trail I went on is great! It's clear of rocks and isn't too steep. The new trail is a portion of Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and then there's a trail called SoDa, but I'm not sure when BST ends and SoDa begins. As I ran up the trail, I realized that if I didn't reach the end soon, I would have to turn around in order to make it back before it got dark. But I soon made it to the end of the trail, which was just an abrupt dead end. It took 4.5 miles to get there, so the whole run was 9 miles. 

The end looks like a good spot to pitch a tent.

In the background on the far right is Elephant Rock, the main attraction in Mueller Park

Here's a photo dump of the rest of that run. Blogging was easier before 2020, when I could easily select the order of the pictures. (Sometimes I want to push developers down the stairs.)

I haven't crossed this bridge yet, because I went in the opposite direction. But sometime I'll go see what's that way!

The trailhead is across the street from the Bountiful Temple

Holbrook Canyon has many rocks from the Farmington Canyon Complex, which are Precambrian in age

Last week I went to ward choir practice. Our choir director consistently says and does awkward, strange things. After the practice, a man from another ward was holding a baby, and I was so embarrassed by the things she said to the man:
"Oh, how cute! Is he adopted?"
"Yes."
"I thought so, he doesn't look like you. Where's he from?"
"Washington state. Central Washington."
"What's the ethnicity?"
"Hispanic."
I can talk about her because I'm 99 percent certain she won't ever see this. Since the beginning of the year, I still don't think she knows most of our names. There are so many stories.

Last Sunday, I illustrated a dream I had recently about picking goatheads that had grown on an ottoman at my late grandparents' house in Fillmore.

Monday was Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day, so I was off for my state job, but not for my BYU job. Because it was raining, I went swimming, and in the afternoon, I made chili with fresh pumpkin in it for a ward chili cookoff. I got second place! (There were around a dozen entries.) And on Tuesday evening I went swimming with the recreational swim team again.

Also on Tuesday, the Utah Historical Society had a brief tour at the Salt Lake City Cemetery, learning about tombstones, not about the people buried there.

When I went on my Wednesday run, it didn't feel as pretty as this picture makes it look. 

On Thursday, I went into my state office and was able to put my new Peanuts poster in a frame. I like this poster because it has most of the characters from the comic strip. Most Peanuts merch doesn't interest me, because it's just stock images in different settings, but this one is actually interesting and connected to the comic strip. It's twentieth-century history. (One of the characters is Tapioca Pudding, which many people think was Charles Schulz's jab at Strawberry Shortcake, a marketing gimmick without any substantial story behind it. I think too much Peanuts merch falls into the same category of being unconnected from the source material.)

Friday evening, I consciously chose not to exercise, instead shopping for new running shoes, a new Blu-ray player, and a pirate costume.

Then Saturday was the day for a long run. I started at North Canyon, took the Bonneville Shoreline Trail over to Mueller Park, went up past Elephant Rock to Rudy's Flat, then down North Canyon. It was a little more than fourteen miles, my second fourteen-mile run in 2026. I have done several fourteen-mile runs, and this one felt harder than it has been. But I was glad I made it the whole way; at ten miles, I started to feel my IT band, but then I took short strides on the way down, and it was fine. 

This is on a portion between Elephant Rock and Mueller Park. I love this part of the trail, but it's often when I'm most exhausted, so I'm not always enjoying it as much in the moment

It is less pretty in the middle of the day, but it's more convenient in the middle of the day

See, I like to do these hard thirteen- or fourteen-mile runs so that nine or ten miles seems relatively easy. I don't worry so much about my pace or my nutrition or things like that, because I just do this for fun. Does that make me less athletic, that I'm so casual about it, or does it make me more athletic, because I can run so far so casually?

And today I taught Sunday School on the end of Isaiah. Hot take: the book of Isaiah is overrated. A man uses poems to tell people they're wicked but they'll be delivered, and then centuries later, people say, "Oh, this sounds like Jesus." The end.
 
***

I also like to do hard runs so I can consume more for pumpkinundation roundup.

After swimming on Monday, I went and had Blacksmith Salted Caramel Apple Ice Cream. It's been almost a week, so I don't remember much about it, except it was great. 9/10.

And I seem to remember the Blacksmith Pumpkin Butter Ice Cream being not quite as good, but still good. 8/10.

Then I went to Sprouts and had a sample of Katz Pumpkin Glazed Donut Bites, which were what you'd expect. 7/10.

I bought Chocolove Milk Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Bites, which are excellent. They have a nice pumpkin flavor, and they're made with actual pumpkin. 9/10.

Skinny Dipped Pumpkin Spice Almonds are less decadent than many candy-coated almonds, which I appreciate. But I've found almonds to be bitter. The pumpkin spice coating is fine. 7/10.

Kopper's Harvest Pumpkin Malt Balls have a thicker coating than on Whoppers. They're fine. 7/10.

Snack Factory Apple Spice White Creme Pretzel Crisps have a mildly weird apple flavor. but luckily pretzels and white creme are a winning combo. 7/10.

The Snack Factory Pumpkin Spice White Creme Pretzel Crisps also have a weird flavor. Neither of these flavors is as good as the berry flavor they had for the Fourth of July. 7/10.

I enjoyed the Sprouts Mini Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Soda Bread after heating it in the microwave for ten to fifteen seconds. I'm used to soda bread around St. Patrick's Day, so I liked having this chocolatey fall version. But I didn't think the pumpkin flavor was overly strong. 8/10.

My award-winning chili was this Tex-Mex Chili from The Pumpkin Cookbook. I omitted the mushrooms from the recipe, but otherwise I closely followed it pretty closely. Cutting up the pumpkin was probably the hardest part. This was one of the best chilis I've ever had, but it still tasted classic. 9/10.

After the cemetery tour, I got an Avenue Bakery on Fourth Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin Top. It was what you'd expect, and you'd never know it was gluten free. (Of course, I don't care about that.) I liked the cream cheese frosting. 8/10.

A recent food trend is putting protein in everything. Khloud Pumpkin Spice Protein Popcorn is fine; I'd rather have nonprotein popcorn, but it's still passable. 6/10.

My cousin sent home a Little Debbie Pumpkin Spice Roll. These are fine; I think I liked it better this time than I have in years past because I tempered my expectations. 7/10.

My mom brought home a Kirkland Signature Pumpkin Bar Cake. I mostly found it bland. 6/10.

It wasn't as good as the Other Side Donuts Hocus Pocus Pumpkin Donut, which had a cream cheese frosting, which was quite decadent, but I enjoyed it. 8/10.

I especially liked the Other Side Donuts Spiced Cider Nutella Donut, which they offer year-round. I thought it would have straight Nutella, but it was a fluffy Nutella-flavored filling. And the donut itself was delightful. 9/10.

Since I am picky about cheese, I was glad I enjoyed Good & Gather Honey Pumpkin Goat Cheese Ravioli. But because it needed some kind of wet sauce, I put on marinara, which clashed a bit with the sweeter ravioli. A different sauce would have been better. 8/10.

I wasn't so impressed with the Culver's Pumpkin S'mores Concrete Mixer. The pumpkin spice part was great, and the chocolate was good, but the marshmallows were the dried kind they put in cereal or hot chocolate packets. The texture was all off for frozen custard. The custard would be an 8 or a 9, but the marshmallows bring it down to 7/10.

Nutty & Fruity Pumpkin Chocolate Covered Apple Bites are weird and off-putting. They're dried apples with "pumpkin spice confectionery coating." 4/10.

Goetze Pumpkin Pie Caramel Creams have a rather artificial flavor. 6/10.

I do like Goetze Caramel Apple Caramel Creams, which are like Cow Tales in disc form. 8/10.

I had this Mosh Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Nutrition Bar on my long run. While I was stopped to eat it, another runner stopped and ate his snack near me but didn't say anything. I exchanged some friendly comments, but it was kind of weird. Anyway, I think this bar was pretty good; it had satisfying crisps and a nice flavor. But I would have enjoyed it more if I weren't dehydrated and exhausted. 7/10.

The Ryse Little Debbie Pumpkin Spice Rolls Protein Shake is better than it should be for something with thirty grams of protein and very little sugar. It's definitely better than the Body Tech protein powder I have in a Peeps flavor. But it's still not the most enjoyable thing to drink. 4/10.

Another Coming-Out Post

Happy National Coming Out Day! I wanted to continue my tradition of posting every year on October 11 (see 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025). I don't have a lot to say this time, because I've already said many of the things I want to say. I had a few other things I was going to say in this post, but I removed them because they might not age well.

Not much has changed in the last year. Perhaps the biggest thing is that I let my temple recommend expire at the beginning of the year. I just don't feel comfortable answering the "sustain" question right now. But I don't really like going to the temple anyway. There's a quote from President Nelson that says, "If you don’t yet love to attend the temple, go more often—not less." From 2011 to 2020, I went to the temple every month, only missing a few times. During those nine years, I did not come to love the temple; if anything, I liked it less. I attended the temple because I was supposed to love it, not because I actually did—and I think many Latter-day Saints secretly feel the same way. (I also acknowledge that it is a truly meaningful experience for many people, and I'm happy for them. And I have had positive temple experiences, though I can't necessarily say they're more positive than what I could experience elsewhere.)

With all that said, there are times when I wonder if I'm slightly more orthodox than I have been for the past four years. General conference last week was less triggering for me than it has been in a while. And recently I had a dream that I was asked to go on another mission, and I said I would go as long as I didn't have to go tracting.

I dated women for a decade, and I have often wondered if I might have gotten married if I had been more social and outgoing. But I'm glad I didn't! Ironically, I think I'm actually a better catch for women now that I no longer date them. I'm generally more confident. I devote more time to fitness, so I think I'm better looking. (I weigh twenty to twenty-five pounds more than I did four years ago at this time, and I like to think it's mostly muscle mass.) I wear clothes that I like, not worrying that my clothes will "out" me or that I'm not cool enough to wear them. Actually, I think that's an advantage queer people have. There are arbitrary cultural norms that straight, cisgender people feel they have to adhere to. Like, if a straight, cis man likes pink, he might feel he has to suppress that because it's not the gender norm. But queer people already go against the norm, so we can do what we want.

September 2022

October 2026

Despite my positivity, there are still difficulties in this LDS/LGBTQ+ space, some of them expected, some of them surprising. I still have plenty of existential questions about my present and my future, and there's always a tension in participating in a religion when I reject its teachings on queer issues. 

I guess this post was so mundane and short that it hardly seems worth bothering, but here we are.

Slow news week, but admire the postcards

My weekly update is a day early this week because I have something else scheduled for tomorrow. I'm just writing in late morning / early afternoon, hoping there will be a safe window to go on a run when there won't be lightning.

Honestly, it was a slow news week. I don't have many exciting things to say.

On Monday, I ran on the Wild Rose Trail, and I had heard that they had installed new signs over the previous weekend. I was eager to see the new signs, because I keep encountering cyclists on the foot-only Chukar Loop, and some of them don't believe me when I tell them it's a foot path. But the signage was so poor that I can understand their confusion. 

As promised, there were new signs. But I was extremely annoyed that there were no new signs at the single most confusing spot, and another confusing spot didn't have a new one. I guess some new signs are better than none, but it's still such a missed opportunity. 

At least this will be a little helpful

When I went running on Thursday, I saw a black cat around the corner from my house, so I slowed down and approached the cat so I could pet it. And it obliged! Aren't cats the most wonderful little creatures?

And I was happy that it was a black cat, because I had just been admiring all the vintage Hallowe'en postcards our friend Laura gave me this summer. Black cats were very much a Halloween trope at the time, along with witches, pumpkins, bats, owls, and ghosts. (Spiders and skeletons came later, and vampires and mummies especially came later.)

1909

1909

1908

1923. For some reason I like the 1900s and 1910s images better than the 1920s.

1908

1911

1914

1910

During general conference last week, I made my own Halloween illustration in order to encourage creativity and use my brain, even though I'm not an artist.

And yesterday I finally installed Windows 11 on my personal laptop. I had installed it back in 2022, but I hated it, mostly because it always hid labels, which made it extremely frustrating to work with multiple windows or documents open. So I uninstalled it. But I have Windows 11 on my work laptop, so I knew Windows 11 had improved—most importantly, it allows for labels. And so far Windows 11 is working great on my laptop. (My laptop is kind of a work laptop, since I use it for my BYU contract job.) 

***

Though it was a slow news week, I have a lot for pumpkinundation roundup!

I made my first visit to Pinkbox Doughnuts and had the Pinkbox Doughnuts Apple of My Eye Doughnut. It has an apple filling and is coated with peanuts, like some caramel apples are. I don't know if the red frosting is flavored, because the peanuts overpowered it. This was a very enjoyable doughnut, but I could have done without the paper stick they used as decoration. 8/10.

This summer I had a red, white, and blue shake from Wayback Burgers and enjoyed it, but I was disappointed with the Wayback Burgers Pumpkin Churro Shake. I think it was just flavored with Torani (or similar) syrup. It didn't taste like pumpkin at all. 4/10.

I can't say the Good & Gather Pumpkin Spice Instant Oatmeal tasted much like anything. I've had various pumpkin oatmeals over the years, and I can never remember which ones are worthwhile. This one isn't. 5/10.

Great Value Twist & Shout Double Filled Pumpkin Roll Sandwich Cookies have a cream cheese flavor reminiscent of the filling of a pumpkin roll. I can't say they really taste like the pumpkin cake. They're fine. 6/10.

I got this Dawn Pumpkin Spice Powerwash Dish Spray last year. Honestly, it kind of stresses me out, because I'm not really sure how to use it. I can't find the seasonal scents on their own, only with the spray nozzle, and it seems wasteful to buy so many nozzles. I can't say it really smells like pumpkin spice. 6/10.

Witch's Brew Nik-L-Nip is beyond the scope of pumpkinundation roundup, but I included it because I think it's so weird. This is a dumb candy—a tiny swig of sweet liquid, and then wax you chew on!?? What kind of candy is that!? And why do they bother making a seasonal version of such strange candy? 4/10.

There are some protein bars that are good (Built, Barebells, FitCrunch), and there are some that are not so good. The David Pumpkin Spice Flavored Bar is a not-so-good kind, though I've had worse. It just tastes really weird. 4/10.

Ne-Mo's makes little cakes that are sold at convenience stores, and I was excited to try the Ne-Mo's Pumpkin Spice Cake. It's pretty mediocre though. (In fairness, I didn't eat it before the sell-by sticker, but it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.) 5/10.

At work they brought in iHop Pumpkin Spice Pancakes. They seemed overcooked to me. They were nothing special. 6/10.

I have had the Great Value Candy Corn Flavored Syrup in the fridge for years, because we don't go through that much syrup. Candy corn is a vague flavor. 5/10.

Jumbo-Filled Caramel Apple Dum-Dums are apple lollipops with caramel inside. There's more hard candy than caramel, unlike a Tootsie Pop. They're pretty good, but I don't love the way hard candies make my mouth feel. 7/10.

Werther's Original Pumpkin Spice Soft Caramels are OK. 6/10.

I like the Werther's Original Caramel Apple Soft Caramels better. 7/10.

The King Krumb Candy Corn Cookie does taste like candy corn in the frosting. But they're not as good as a fresh cookie. 6/10.