I was wearing pants. It was colder in the morning, something in the single digits Celsius, and so I had a couple of layers ready to strip at the temperatures rose. We were headed off to a sunrise coach trip to see the colors of Uluru change as dawn. A few other people were dressed in running gear and mentioned they were going to run around the rock afterwards. I had planned on walking it but Mom wasn’t feeling up to a 10KM distance. It dawned on me if I changed into running shorts I could hoof it around the thing and hopefully she’d only have to sit around waiting for me for an hour or so. So I ditched my pants.
I was leery as we boarded the coach in the brisk, windy dark. But I was confident it’d be fine once we started moving. I figured Mom and I could just selfie shots of us at the sunrise and thus avoid photos of me in shorts. I’m self-conscious enough about how I look during runs and in general so I try and hide as much as I can behind pants and long sleeves. There aren’t a lot of full body shots on this blog and there’s a reason beyond I tend to travel solo or am shy about asking folks to take photos of me and my crew. Sometimes I err on the side of, “Can I take a photo for you?” hoping the other person will reciprocate… but sometimes they don’t and I’m stuck without anyone to snap me and my Mom or me and my brother or me and Jeff Goldblum (that only happened once… and I did get somebody to take that one).
But I digress – here’s Uluru at Sunrise:
Afterwards, our coach driver Aaron dropped us off at the Mala CarPark, the starting point for the soon-to-be-closed climb to the top of Ayers Rock (the locals ask you not to climb this sacred site… and once I found that out, I vowed never to climb it). It’s also though a good starting point for the base walk around Uluru and I was looking forward to that. Mom staked out a spot on a bench… which I later found out was apparently smack dab in a wind tunnel effect so she was too cold to take her hands out of her pockets to read her Kindle. She passed the time people watching and taking in the surroundings… which is great, but I feel a little guilty about leaving her for the 75 minutes it took me to go round the rock.
My foot continued to bother me during the runs and I’m slower than I’d like anyway. But in my small defense, I also got lost a few times. You’d think it’d be easy – follow around the rock in a clockwise fashion. Easy right? It’s a big circle. You’d have to be a real idiot to get lost.
Have you met me? I’m the Executive Vice President of Idiots… and that’s only because the idiot organization isn’t smart enough to have anything higher than that title. Like I always say, you can’t spell idiot without me…. Er, um… without I.
Quick shout out to John Baird from Christchurch who I met in Burma last year. John’s been a virtual RKR supporter ever since. It was a real treat to find out he was coming to this race. And he brought his son Sam from Melbourne as a support crew. I figure he and Mom can have a drink or two while they wait for us at the finish line tomorrow.
And here’s Mark and his partner from Antarctica and Madagascar! It’s a small world… and a joy to run into people while running.
The Re-Run-Unions continued in the afternoon when I came across Diane and Bill and Graham and Rebecca who had previously met Mom and me in Reykjavik. What a crazy thing to type.
When the world seems crappy and depressing, I need to remember the great people I’ve met along the way… and who I’m lucky to meet again.
As I’m wont to do with sightseeing, I sometimes wind up taking so many photos that you can create a 3-D model of the place. I was joking with my family the other day about things that really met or exceeded the hype. Steve and I both said Mount Rushmore blew us away and when my Mom asked us about Devil’s Tower, I explained that while it was neat to see as an inspiration for mashed potatoes art, I was much more impressed with Gutzon Borglum and Co’s work because humans made it; god made Devil’s Tower and thus, meh.
Conversely, I remain pretty blown away by Uluru/Ayers Rock (the name depends on your preference for indigenous versus imperialistic nomenclature… hashtag: Team Uluru). I was struck as I went running that some of the places were familiar from my study aboard ditching classes to see the Outback. Twenty-two years later I remembered the Darth Vader face, the Trojan Warrior head, and the surfing curl. These obviously are imperialistic individual nomenclature that are exclusive to me but, well, that’s what they look like to me:
Mom was a fan of the thumb and infinity gauntlet by the climb and so we documented that as well.
I’m glad Mom and I are getting a second chance at the Outback Marathon; it’s nice to share this memory again with her.
Tonight: A Mandatory Safety Briefing – which I’ve been told is simply, “Don’t Get Lost.” As we’ve established above, that feels more like an Alanis Morissette-ian irony than anything else.
Telling me not to get lost is like telling Bugs Bunny to take a right at Albuquerque… or telling a scorpion not to sting the frog helping him across the river. It’s just not in our nature.
But always leaving ‘em laughing so here’s the best joke from our coach captain Aaron – “We have to be on the lookout for the most dangerous creature out here in the bush… a Brit in a rental car.”
ZING! Take that, you lousy limey bastards!
Tomorrow: A Marathon To Run… Hopefully.