DO Preserve Human Spirit.
What exactly does the Spirit look like these days?
What it doesn’t look like is endless productivity. Or content.
Instead, it looks healthy. It moves with a familiar cadence. The unsustainable rush of the river has slowed to a more manageable pace. It looks like calm and measured progress.
Mostly.
Quad Rock is at top of mind. Balancing the volume required for proper training with family life is difficult. I try to run in the off hours where possible but I recognize that in so doing I’m also tired during the on hours. It’s not the races that are a burden on others - it’s the training.
This past weekend was the preview run. 25 miles on a red flag day with gusts up to 110mph in the county. I’m guessing I experienced upwards of 60mph at times on course. It was an adventure.
I don’t listen to music or podcasts while running. Mostly because I have weird ears and headphones fall out. But I don’t mind. On long runs like that, I mostly exist in a void. I was alone for most of the day and do not recall ever having felt bored or lonely or scared. At times I was ready to be done. But in the end I was. And then I went home.
Skulltooth is on my mind but not at the top. I have to work to not work on it as much as I would like. It shares the same mental space and energy as my day job and the day job pays better.
There is an inventory now. It’s basic - but that’s kind of the point. I shelved the sensory system for now - it was a rabbit hole and I really want to avoid those. The goal is to get something basic stood up and working. From there I can expand into whatever crazy systems I want.
Next up are health potions and a very basic effects system. If you’re curious what’s on the road map - here it is. No guarantees, 100% guaranteed.
Not much happening in the world of comics or zines at the moment.
Roguelikes traditionally have a morgue file that contains information about your last game. What killed you, the things you carried, your score. I have aspirations of generating morgue files as printable zines. Just need to get the game far enough along to add them. It’s getting closer.
My wife and I are running the local half marathon together on Sunday. Next week I fly to Chicago for a few days for work. In a month she’s going on a trip to visit an old friend who’s leaving the country soon. Possible forever.
This week I ran with people much much faster than me that I had no business running with. We talked about being old and dinosaurs and stone underwear.
I got to spend some time with good friends I don’t see in person that often. We celebrated a surprise interview my son managed to get. I worked on a puzzle with my daughter. JoanButt melted. And Squid was excited when it was time to change the sheets.
I learned wool isn’t the best material for running socks.
I played Dwarf Fortress for the first time with graphics.
Sometimes, Spirit, in whatever form it takes, isn’t particularly interesting. It just is.
indefinitely / (ɪnˈdɛfɪnɪtlɪ) / adverb. without any limit of time or number.
Check enemy pathing AI. Are they moved or given a move to component?
🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷
The screen door broke in the wind. It’s fixed now.
Spirit.
👻
Sometimes progress, in whatever form it takes, just isn’t that interesting.
I cleaned my desk on Monday.
Skulltooth got a basic inventory system. The sensory ui was clearly a rabbit hole. It’s back on the shelf. We’ll just have to wait a while longer to learn what owlbears actually smell like.
I sprained my ankle on Tuesday of last week. It was a minor injury and healed quickly. On Saturday I ran 25 miles. It was very windy. A preview run for a race I’m attempting in exactly one month. I’ll have to go twice that distance on the day.
Between family, work, race prep, and Skulltooth, there just isn’t a lot of other time or energy these days.
This cadence feels familiar.
Progress is slow and steady and boring. Nothing wrong with that.
Skulltooth is chugging along. Inventory was added this week. Extremely basic items. Technically speaking, a ui. I could go into the gnarly bits but I don’t think it’s that interesting to the casual observer.
Quad Rock is in a bit over a month. I’m in peak weeks. Last Saturday I ran the first half of the course. 25 miles and 5500 feet of climbing. This week I’m hitting the trails hard again trying to cram in as much vert and miles as I can before a work trip to Chicago.
Last week I wrote about being in an extremely fertile creative space around the new year. Ideas were coming in too fast to identify in the moment. That was never going to be sustainable. The river has slowed. No longer narrow and roaring rapids but instead wide and lazy.
Perhaps this is the cadence of life in my 40s.
I drew some weapons for Skulltooth. My ankle slowly healed from a minor sprain. I have been planning gifts for my wife’s birthday and mother’s day. My son dropped a course he didn’t need for graduation in order to focus more intentionally on those he does. He had an interview for a wildland firefighter job this summer.
I ran the Quad Rock course on Saturday. We started at the Timber trailhead and worked our way down Lodgepole road. At Arthur’s trailhead we took a turn toward the valley and made our way up Nomad and to Sawmill. From Sawmill you make your way until you get to loggers. The course would keep you on loggers all the way to Towers but I took a wrong turn and an accidental short cut connecting with Carey Springs instead. I didn’t realize it at the time but this cut about a mile and few hundred feet of elevation off the official course.
When I did make it to Towers I found myself back in the mix with some of the really fast folks. I shouldn’t be running with the fast folks. And yet there I was - playing yo-yo with the second place female finisher of the Blue Sky Marathon last year. Shortly after I passed 6th place all time female on the Black Squirrel half marathon course. I have no business running with these women. They are much, much faster than I am. I guess this is why people cut courses intentionally?
Eventually I made it to Spring Creek. Downhill. What I’m actually good at. No shortcuts needed. I passed some folks and eventually fell in with a group of guys who are without a doubt much, much faster than I am. It’s not often I can hang with a two time Leadville 100 champion - but I guess he was on a casual Saturday morning run. It was nice to chat for a bit. Once the trail turned upwards again - I quickly fell off the pack.
I met up with the group once more at Horsetooth parking lot. Said hello and got on with it. I knew they would eventually pass me. Might as well get a head start. I had decided to take a spur and summit Horsetooth in order to make up some of the distance and elevation I had skipped earlier. Might see them up there. Not sure what they had planned for the day.
About halfway up the 2.5 mile climb the group finally caught up to me. I had been power hiking. Trying to keep the effort low but steady. At 11-ish miles in, we weren’t quite halfway. No need to blow up yet.
We said our hello’s. Another former Texan commented on how it was the Texan’s in shorts and t-shirts. He and I were both woefully underdressed for 40 degree weather and sub-freezing windchills. I haven’t mentioned the wind yet. It was very windy. All day. Things started pretty mild. But the wind picked up as the day progressed. Eventually closing the freeway north of town towards Wyoming. Gusts reached 110mph. Thankfully I would estimate at most I only experienced about half of that out on the course. But gale force winds are still pretty gnarly so there you go.
I met up with the fast group one more time at the summit. They were making there way back down - way laid by a hat lost to the aforementioned wind. I don’t think they ever found it. Warned it was whipping up on the summit and that I should hold onto my hat, I left it under a rock before scrambling to the top for tooth #32 on the year.
It was time to head down - avoiding the sneak so as to make up for lost miles from earlier in the day. On to Wathan and the connect to Westridge. Evetually I would find myself back on towers about a quarter mile above the Spring Creek turn. Back down to the four-way intersection - Towers, Spring Creek, and Mill Creek. Down down down Mill Creek. A good 3 miles. All down. Mostly.
Finally, around mile 17 or so, Arthur’s trailhead. And then it was on to the Howard switchbacks.
I read through all of this, including the crossed out parts. I want to know, what is the best material for running socks? BTW, I only run if I'm being chased, but I think the running sock info could be useful in my pedestrian-paced life.