Urban Outcast Music #54 - Working for the Devil by Joy Kills Sorrow. Jumping ahead of the narrative to announce that this post is written on the first day of my sabbatical or maybe retirement, not sure what the right branding is yet. I started out in the biodiesel world working for a little company who got swallowed by a modest fish back in 2015 and this summer that modest fish was engulfed by one of the spawn of Standard Oil. At this early stage I'm not sure if the free time will let me finally catch up to the modern day or just facilitate enough adventures that I fall even further behind...
June 14th, 2022 - 9.5ish miles & 2,200' gain: As a primer for our upcoming family trip to Rainier, I headed to just outside the national park boundary to meet up with a coworker and his wife. He is isolated from scenery in Iowa but as a fellow Colorado School of Mines grad, we share a hankering for hitting the trails.
Our route would wind up from the White River and onto the heights that were providing such beautiful waterfall views from the highway.
Before we made it more than a couple miles, we ran into a trail runner who I had talked to at the trailhead. His wirehaired griffon was of particular interest to me as we had them growing up and the family was going to to head to Wisconsin shortly to play with a pack of griffon puppies. The trouble was that this trail running griffon had bolted after a deer and never came back. We exchanged numbers, promised to keep an eye out and continued our climb.
While snacking at the first lookout and lamenting that the clouds were not likely to part and gift us with one of those epic Rainier views, the griffon came slinking down the trail from the uphill side. She was so spooked that she acted feral and even a sandwich bribe couldn't prevent her from spinning around and running away again. After texting him, the poor guy came running up and passed us on the trail so we felt her odds would be pretty good.
Yet as we worked our way to a second viewpoint, there she was on the trail in front of us again... No idea how they missed each other but a happy reunion was still in the cards as we accidentally herded her into her owner's path.
The rest of the hike felt pretty boring and we never saw more than Rainier's shoulders but I gave Oak lots of extra love for never giving me that awful gut punch of losing him.
