Pining for the Fjords

When last I blogged , Chris and I as well as our other Breaking Rag teammates (along with Bryan's parents Joe and Janie) arrived at the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation safe and sound, set up our campsite, and turned in for the night. Probably due to my lack of sleep on Wednesday night, even though we were camping in a tent, I slept well on Thursday, waking up around 5:30 on Friday morning and convincing my bladder to let me stay in my warm sleeping bag for a little bit longer.  Eventually,  however, the needs of nature won out, and I emerged into the slumbering campground.  A few folks were starting to stir, but things were still quiet overall. The moon sinking behind the mountains, as the sun starts to light our side of the world. I'm always prepared to be the first person awake, so after visiting the port o loo (sidebar time - in our Ragnar talk the week before the event, one person was really interested in who was handling the port o loo's.  For the record,

When last I blogged , I covered the many different aspects that go into planning a successful Ragnar trail adventure for our team. With all of that out of the way and another successful relay in the books, it's time to recap the actual event.  Here we go! The first time we did Ragnar McDowell, we had the lovely Sara Murphy as part of our team; in addition to being a delightful person overall, she was also a valuable source of Ragnar trail knowledge, as she'd done the race the year prior.  One of the best hints she gave us was to have someone plan to come to the event on Thursday night, the evening before it officially began, to set up camp and grab a good location for the rest of the team.  We found that to be true in our years at McDowell, and given our early start time for Ragnar Los Coyotes (9:15am), the entire team joined us for Thursday night camping before the race began. In Long Beach, Chris and I spent the morning packing up the back seat of the pickup truck with ou