Month: May 2020

#GVRAT 1000K Birthday Weekend Mileage

It was a good birthday weekend.  Discovered some desiccated Psilocybe cubensis packed away in a box of books and decided this would be a good time to indulge.

First, though, the Birthday Run was shorter than a lot of them due to the pubs being closed (typically would start with breakfast and beer at a Wetherspoons then try to find pubs opening at 10 and 11 along a reasonably attainable path, grab lunch at another, and continue the run for another 10 miles hitting pubs every 5-6 miles along the way.  This time, it was just a canal jaunt with a martini waiting at the garden table on my return.

This brought my GVRAT mileage to 234.7 and, virtually, I finally crossed I-65 (which runs from Mobile, Alabama to Gary, Indiana), sort of a symbolic milestone (this was what I always considered the halfway point driving or hitchhiking between Atlanta and St Louis back in The Olden Days).  My position appears to be within disposable lighter throwing distance of a Dollar General Store:

The next morning, I steeped the mushrooms with some lemon and brown sugar making us two mild cups of psychedelic tea.  I had mine then slipped off for a mid-distance run exploring many streets I have never seen before between here, Dudley, Tividale, and Oldbury.  An ambulance went by and the lights were inspiring and beautiful and THAT told me it was time to wrap up the run.

By weight, these should have been a little more active but they are now close to two years old (since they were first dried down) and — despite all that — they were not half bad.  No destruction of the ego, to be sure; but, calm and copacetic sitting around the garden for the last few hours enjoying the spectacular weather and the depth of patterns in the trees and clouds.

When travel becomes a possibility again, I shall get some more of this stuff.

This brought the GVRAT mileage up to 245.1, leaving me (virtually) between two stone walls and heading downhill.  I am not reading this as any sort of metaphor at this writing.

The 7th Tower

Haven’t seen bonkers graffiti like this since we left London.

But, for about ¼ mile on yesterday’s run, these stencils promoting some World Trade Center conspiracy theories were on every wall.

There’s even a YouTube channel devoted to this (but I can’t find it easily enough to hold my interest).

I am, by the way, sympathetic to the ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories.  But, not that it was an inside job … just the sort of lazy incompetence that Republican administrations are so proficient at (Trump is not a special case).

The last one in this stretch of canal, unrelated but certainly by the same stencil maker, is a lot easier to take seriously.

 

Birthday Run 2020: Wolverhampton to Bradley Avenue on canals

I awoke Saturday morning to dry mouth and a slight ringing in my ears and the knowledge that I’ve let another year pass without writing the Great Ex-American Novel.

After some breakfast, I caught the tram to Wolverhampton with the intent to run off the hangover and to fill in some more of the Canal Furniture map.  The tedious and copious results are segregated from the other events of the weekend, here.

From the tram, I joined the canal to the east at Horseley Fields Bridge.  Just after, I climbed down off the footbridge across from Minerva Wharf for a better angle then struggled to pull myself back up on the path:

There is little to comment on, so most of this will just be a listing of and links to the features recorded.  For instance, the Walsall Bridge:

An industrial flyover:

A fairly long footbridge…at the bend, the fan-like monument to Beers of the World seen at the header to this post sits:

Those are adjacent to Bilston Road Bridge:

Then, Cable Street Bridge.  That white lump in the lower right is a homeless (Ii assume) guy sleeping:

Dixon Street Bridge:

The Rough Hill Railway Bridge and an overgrown gauging station:

 

Beneath the rail bridge, the pristine bottom of the canal reveals itself:

Ettingshall Road crosses the perplexingly named Catchems Corner Bridge:

And, I can’t find a Jibbet’s Lane anywhere near the Jibbet’s Lane Bridge:

Unlike the Millfields Road Bridge:

There were a couple of ex-bridges around, starting with this abutment across from a school:

This rail bridge is half disused …

… which is the half I found interesting:

No idea why this is the Ten Score Bridge:

Here’s another abutment:

And the Black Country Route flyover:

Turning off onto the Deepfields Branch in rapid succession there is the Deepfields Junction Bridge:

The Deepfields Railway Bridge:

And, the Deepfields Bridge:

After a long stretch, the Highfields Bridge:

Then a long footbridge over a weir adjacent to another overgrown gauging station:

The 1994 Banks Bridge carries Dudley Street:

The Glasshouse Bridge carrying Bankfield Road:

And, the Pot House Bridge where Salop Street changes into Loxdale Road:

The canal continues to a Canal Trust site a little farther down but this it the last structure of note before the pub at the end of the line:

Zwierzynieckie — Neighbourhood Beer Tour #31

One thing the COVID Lockdown did was to get me back on track for my 2020 goal of a weekly foreign bevvy from one or another of the local Polish/Romanian/Carribean/Asian shops.  In fact, I am now a few weeks ahead.

Today, it was another Polish lager, Zwierzynieckie.  Not bad, and it made the accounting tedium less tedious.

In the background, the bottle is some Russian vodka I was talked into by the shop’s proprietor.  “You drink Russian wodka, yes?  Then, you no more drink thees shit,” he said while waving a hand past the standard fare on the shelves behind him.  We’ll see.  Soon.

 

#GVRAT 1000K Daily Update 2020-05-29

This morning was rather busy with respect to working-from-home and the afternoon looks to be hectic, as well.  I just took a short lunch break to do a wee run around West Bromwich and environs but, when I finish this post and a sandwich it is back to paperwork.

My mileage for the Great Virtual Run Across Tennesse now stands at 225.6 miles in a mountainous and very non-town-like area called Aymett Town.  My virtual position, seen above, appears to be emerging from the hills into an extended plain.

For my actual run, I loaded about 45 minutes worth of National Public Radio news stories from yesterday’s episodes of Morning Edition and All Things Considered.  Things seem pretty copacetic as the weekend looms.  It is sunny and warm, here, and coppers haven’t murdered a brown guy in absolutely ages (nor is there any sign of rioting in the neighbourhood).  It ain’t perfect, but it ain’t America.

2020 Commute 36 of 52 (From): Rotton Park New Build and #GVRAT past Pulaski

My left knee is still giving me grief, but it is soft tissue related and entirely my fault for poor stretching habits.  It FEELS structural but is is entirely due to tightness up my side, along my hip, and across my ass and lower back.  I am such a dumb ass.

So, the run home was gentle and slow although much has improved since yesterday’s mat session.  I stayed on the mostly unpaved side of the canal and got a look at the new houses going up in the wasteland that is known as Rotton Park.  The site has been in prep so long that I hardly noticed when these sprang up like a fungus a week or so ago.  So far, so ghastly.

For the GVRAT update, today’s crawl and the couple miles with Jackie later on bring me to 220.5 out of about 620 total.  I’m roughly at the red pushpin on US-31 above which is just past Pulaski, Tennessee:

 

#GVRAT 1000K mileage AND Neighbourhood Beer Tour #29 (Roztocze Czartowe Jasne Pelne)

Jackie needed some compost for gardening ventures and we are going to need a wheelbarrow for a lot of the upcoming refurb jobs so I did the morning run over to Oldbury and bought both, assembled the wheelbarrow in the car park, and ran back pushing the 120 liter block of compressed planting mix on my new trolley.  The beer, an ice-cold Roztocze Czartowe Jasne Pelne, was my reward.

We both had online work in the morning but she has a half day Wednesday so for lunch I joined her on a (for me, second of the day) jog.  At the end, this brought my Virtual Race Across Tennessee mileage to 208.7.  My virtual location is shown on the map but there is no StreetView at this location (the nearest one is shown here):

As of today, 56 runners have finished the full crossing of Tennessee leaving something around 19,000 of us behind.  I plotted a histogram of the remainers’ progress through today’s report in 10 mile bins (my group in red).  For starting on the fourth day of the race, I’m relatively happy with staying on the high side of the lump: