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revisitingstoneybrook · 4 years

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#15 Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn: Chapter 14

No spoilers for who wins the pageant but the foreshadowing is so obvious you can probably figure it out. And there’s bruised egos all around in the BSC.

The pageant officially starts! The host says this is the first annual (and probably the only, since we never hear of this pageant again) Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant and it's sponsored by Dewdrop Hair Care, “hair products for today's youth!” Kristy makes a stupid joke, wondering about next week's youth. Say what you will about Abby being a Kristy clone, at least her jokes aren't as dumb as that one.

The judges are introduced: the owner of Bellair's, the head of the Stoneybrook Dancing School (thankfully not Mme Noelle or else we'd be subjected to zee french ak-zent), Mrs. Peabody (I assume from the charm school Karen goes to at one point. Continuity!) and some doctor, according to Dawn. I wonder what it feels like to be a doctor and have “judging kiddie beauty pageants” as your side hustle. The host says he'd like to “send heartfelt good wishes to each and every little miss who is backstage right now” and Kristy says “Gag me!” Actually keeping with the times and using some 80s slang, good on you, Ann Martin.

“Marching music” is blasted through the auditorium and the girls trek across the stage for the opening procession. Sadly, no opening musical number:

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You know Karen would have shoved her way to the front with some lyrics she wrote herself like she did in her class Thanksgiving play.

Claire starts killing her odds of winning right away by tacking onto the end of her introduction, “Oh hi Mommy! Hi Daddy! Hi Mallory!” before she gets moved away and misses shaking Mrs. Peabody's hand. Oops. Maybe it's a good thing they cut her off or else the pageant would have taken much longer for her to name her whole family. And I'm surprised Mallory's there and isn't staging a protest with Jessi outside, complete with a bonfire of lipstick, hair curlers, and false eyelashes.

Margo does well, no one notices because she's overshadowed by the professional-ness of Sabrina Bouvier the Younger. I'm surprised she didn't say, “I'm Sabrina Bouvier, I'm seven years old and when I grow up, I want to be a sweetie pie! *bats eyelash implants*” Dawn tries to reassure herself that grace and charm really won't help in a beauty pageant. Maybe Sabrina isn't that talented, maybe her intelligence is hovering in the same area as Claudia's.

Now it's the part we've all been waiting for...the talent. The first contestant sings the national anthem while dressed in a red, white and blue sequined leotard. Claudia and Dawn share a laugh at how crappy she sounds and Claudia makes a mental note to ask the girl where she got the leotard from and whether they carry it in teen sizes. The second contestant sings a song she wrote called “I Love My Dog” but nothing is said about her because the true talent is taking the stage as she leaves. Myriah Perkins, in a pink leotard and tutu and black tap shoes, carrying a big lollipop, brings the house down with her rendition of “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” with a dance routine I'm guessing she choreographed herself. I'm surprised she isn't blindfolded and flawlessly juggling three hoops of fire too. She's met with tons of applause, and even cheering and whistling.

How do you follow that up? With Claire Pike! She says she doesn't want to do it but goes out anyway. For a moment she just stands there, doing nothing. Dawn eggs her on from offstage and Claire sings her Popeye song, does the hornpipe (and looks bored doing it), then sings again with the hand gestures. The audience, much to Dawn's relief, loves it. Claire hams it up even more and the audience laughs and gives her lots of applause. And, in a more shocking move, Kristy gives Dawn a thumbs-up for bringing Claire the Comedienne into the fray.

Claire's followed by a mediocre pianist and a failed baton twirler. Karen's up next and she goes onstage wearing her yellow flower girl dress. Dawn wonders if she's going to sing a love song. Oh no, Dawn. Instead of belting out “You Light Up My Life” or “Endless Love,” she sings the wonderful romantic ballad “The Wheels on the Bus.” FIFTEEN VERSES OF IT. Omitted from the text are the people in the audience screaming in agony as she makes up more verses on the spot, including “The people on the bus are tired and hot.” After the judges start looking at their watches, Karen takes a hint and finishes up. Surprisingly, Kristy doesn't act confident and smug and she and Dawn just shrug at each other.

A ballerina performs, Dawn remarks she's good (hold that thought, we'll return to it later) and then Sabrina the Younger comes onstage in a long black gown and white evening gloves with her hair piled up on her head. So like this?

It sounds like she’s going for a different look, because the song she sings is “Moon River.” Dawn says she's never heard of it but you'd think since the whole BSC is obsessed with old movies and Mary Anne loves Roman Holiday, which stars Audrey Hepburn, they'd know it’s the song from Breakfast at Tiffany's!

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Needless to say, Sabrina butchers it, but she smiles a lot and the judges like her. Next, Margo takes the stage with her banana. The triplets snicker at her when she peels the banana with her feet but she ignores them and recites the poem without any mistakes and gets lots of applause. Phew. And Dawn gets another thumbs-up from Kristy. Again, what alternate universe are we in if Kristy is acting nice to Dawn?

And, just as expected, Claudia's plan of having her own pageant contestant blows up in her face when Charlotte freaks out, completely forgets the passage she's going to read, and runs offstage in tears. Charlotte's crying so hard backstage Claudia goes and gets the Johanssens to take her home and she stays at the pageant to see what happens, looking crushed. Charlotte never should have been a contestant in the first place, Claudia, you suck for humiliating her for your own personal gain!

The beauty parade is next, and it's every girl for herself. Dawn hears Margo tell Claire to break a leg, and Claire tells Margo, “I hope you fall off the stage!” Mee-yow!

Question time! Dawn tells Mary Anne she's worried and Mary Anne says she is too. I mean, she really has no reason to be, since she's coaching Myriah Perkins. Anyway, the first question a little girl gets is “What do you like best about Stoneybrook?” She says the ice cream store and everyone laughs in an “awww cute!” way.

The next girl doesn't fare well either and then we get to Myriah Perkins. She's asked what she would change about the world. Channeling John Lennon, Myriah says (and I have to quote it in its entirety): “It would be wars. I would stop them. I would say to the people who were making the wars, 'Now you stop that. You settle this problem yourselves like grown-ups. Our children want peace.' That's what I'd change.” The crowd applauds as the little peace activist exits the stage and Claire comes on.

Claire's asked what she hopes for most of all. She says, “Santa Claus. I hope he's real,” in a terrified tone. The audience laughs in the same way they did for the first girl and Dawn groans as if she's just been asked to babysit for Jenny Prezzioso. Mary Anne reassures her and says Claire probably got nervous. Karen's next and she gets the infamous “If your house was on fire, what 3 things would you rescue?” question. Kristy makes a point to say out loud that she prepared her for this.

But guess what, Kristy? You aren't the Queen of Babysitting because Karen manages to kiss the crown goodbye too. She says she'd rescue Moosie her stuffed cat (so I guess the Little House is the one burning down...nice. Save the MANSION), Tickly her blanket, and “as many toys as I could carry.” She asks if she could rescue a fourth thing and says it would either be Andrew, or her pen that writes in three colors. Lovely that she thinks of toys before she thinks of her brother. And I guess she's letting Lisa and Seth burn. I'm surprised she didn't say something like, “My parents are divorced and I live in two houses. Can I rescue six things since I'm Karen Two-Two?”

Unfortunately, Sabrina the Younger uses up the “global peace” answer before Margo can get to it. Or maybe it's a blessing in disguise, since she didn't know what it is. Either way, Margo's asked what she would most wish to happen in the year 2010 and she freezes. I guess she was nervous but terrified too because 2010? This book was written in 1988. And even then, in BSC land, that's ages away! She'd be 29 by the time the BSC got to 2010! And Claudia would probably still be wearing neon green hair scrunchies and bright purple leggings at age 35. Margo obviously doesn't want to recycle the global peace answer and her mind goes blank, so she's ushered off the stage after 30 seconds of dead air.

Dawn freaks out backstage and openly admits she wanted one of her girls to win so she could show what a good babysitter she is! We're back to this shit again?! The others admit to this too and in one of the most ironic statements ever written in a BSC book, Kristy says, “Maybe we learned something, though. Even the best babysitter can't change a kid.” Now how many times can we all name before and after this where the BSC attempted to change a “problem child” or help out a kid with a problem because their horrible parents didn't know about it? So they all agree with Kristy, don't apologize for being bitches to each other and crowd around Mary Anne because they're confident Myriah has this in the bag.

The girls all line up onstage for the announcement of the winners, which is so obvious right now, even Claudia can predict it. Third place goes to Lisa Shermer, the ballerina from earlier. She wins $50 and fades into BSC obscurity. Second place is Myriah! She shrieks with delight because she just won a shopping spree at Toy City (which I would gladly take over the grand prize). Dawn even admitted she'd like it because she could buy Kid-Kit supplies. First thought ALWAYS to the BSC, just like a good cult club member. Well, Myriah's thrilled but Mary Anne screams in agony and wails, “Why isn't she the grand winner?!?!?” and we cut away from offstage before we can all drown in the deluge of Mary Anne's tears.

First prize, no surprise here, goes to Amber Dempsey Sabrina the Younger. Time for the song! “L the losers in her wake, I the income she will make...”

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She wins $100, gets a little tiara and bouquet of roses, her mom's weeping, Dawn calls the whole thing disgusting. Little does Sabrina the Younger know that's a magical tiara that will age her 6 years so by the time book #60 rolls around, she'll be 13!

#babysitters club #little miss stoneybrook...and dawn #dawn schafer #bsc #snark

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lamiahypnosia · 4 years

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The Outer Worlds Review

When the Outer Worlds was announced I was kind of on my back foot about it. Private Division made a huge deal about how they were the one who made the original Fallout and Fallout New Vegas- you know, that Fallout game that you actually like that wasn’t made by the devil Bethesda.

And as the kids say ‘weird flex but okay’. Every time a new game releases, especially a new intellectual property, people always whisper about how money was being passed around to get good reviews. I don’t know about all that. But I do know this.

The Outer Worlds is not Fallout: New Vegas 2. So sorry.

I posted a meme recently that made the joke that the Outer Worlds was Borderlands New Vegas but that wouldn’t strictly be true . I haven’t actually played Borderlands extensively but yeah a space Western is very much like other space Westerns- there’s an old saying ’ there’s nothing new under the sun.’ People make frequent comparisons to things because they feel familiar. ‘If you like Fallout you’ll like this’ But I’m going to stop comparing it to anything else. Is this the start of a new IP that can stand shoulder to shoulder with other great titles? Let’s find out.

Story The story of The Outer Worlds should be very familiar to any sci fi nerds worth their salt. Earth is uninhabitable because of war and humanity shoots to the stars, so you and a few thousand lucky people get placed on two ships -Groundbreaker and Hope- to fast forward ten years via new technology called skip drive until you get to your new home of Halcyon. Only the Groundbreaker made it and the Hope was lost, adrift until a scientist named Dr. Phineas V. Welles decides to see if anyone on the Hope is still kicking. Without much more explanation other than wanting to wake up the rest of the colonists you’re rudely awakened, dropped onto the planet Terra 2 and told to find a smuggler.

Halcyon is a colony run by corporations- people live for their company, are owned by their company and under certain circumstances dying is a crime. Advertisements race by on robots and are pasted or projected onto every wall all controlled by the mysterious Board. But there’s something rotten under the corporate jargon and mandatory happiness and it might be up to you and Phineas to save the colony- that is, if you, the Unplanned Variable, see fit to do so. All the sci fi tropes are here- a smartass computer AI as your pilot and navigator, alien monsters, corporate greed, weird technology and mad science. The Outer Worlds is a game you can play with your brain turned off as a wacky sci-fi adventure or you can uncover the secrets of Halcyon and the Board and use them to become a hero or simply come out on top with your pockets full or a mixture of it all. Pick your poison. It’s still not a game that takes itself very seriously, at ALL even when a nerve shattering revelation ramps the stakes through the roof. Are you savior or scourge? It’s entirely up to you. Sidequests

There’s plenty to do on every level of immersion on The Outer Worlds. The game doesn’t really reward you for checking every nook and cranny apart from finding random bodies which becomes horrific in hindsight once you reach the endgame and learn what they probably actually died from. But as far as material things you get loot. Poke around a bit can net you some unique weapons such as a hammer that does all the status effect damage, a shrink ray and a cannon that fires slime that suspends its victims up in the air and drops them like a bad habit.

There’s not many ‘collect ten bear butts’ type quests thank the Law but damn near everything is optional and the sheer amount of solutions for quests will have you planning your next play through.

The best side quests are the companion quests which are so good I’m not going to spoil them but they all span the length of the game since they require reaching places that the player will only be able to travel to during certain parts of the story. Presentation The dialogue is excellent as per Obsidian standards.The voice acting is great, fairly natural sounding but when the actors have to perform instead of just reading they almost always do a bang up job. Screams of pain after getting sprayed with venom during combat, the cries of alarm if you or another companion is wounded or the out of breath declarations at the end of combat however are a nice touch. The music is provided by Justin E. Bell, the low key background music with bold brass and mysterious woodwinds, or soft piano and strings but the occasional steel guitar sneaks in to give the smaller towns that run down feel. The various jingles of all the omnipresent corporations will get stuck in your head, however. Among my favorite tracks are Hope, Forever, Phineas Escapes, and the title theme simply titled Hope. The gorgeous moving theme is also a leitmotif throughout the game from the level up sound to the cheery ragtime version. I can’t gush enough about how beautiful the score is.

Visually the game is stunning, from the stifling cold marble walls of Byzantium where the men in power dwell in their ivory towers to the long stretches of frontier on alien worlds populated by bizarre creatures and filled with strange and sometimes deadly plants, sulfur pools and giant mushrooms The Outer Worlds really is a feast for the eyes, polished, clean and bright. The darker areas might drive you bonkers but thankfully nothing you really need is going to be in the super dark anyway. If only the character models were as good but with an AA game budget, what are you gonna do? You could have cutscenes with finger puppets as long as they still keep their great dialogue. Seriously, I don’t remember laughing out loud at a game’s dialog or with such frequency probably since Dragon Age:Origin. Derivative humor is fun every now and then- I ran across a weapon, a hammer for sale called Maxwell where the flavor text mentioned ‘you think it should be silver’ in reference to the Beatles’ tune Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, or a dialog selection where you can tell the quest giver ‘Aliens’ to which she relies ‘I’m saying it was aliens’ so some music nerds and internet meme lords are thrown a bone but most of the humor is good old fashioned timing and even a few visual gags such as in the opening where Phineas has trouble opening the door. While rated M it’s pretty tame- I’d feel okay playing this in front of my Mormon in-laws because apart from the frequent swearing the humor is mostly clean. From my very first play through I counted five dirty jokes which you could easily miss and when you loot human bodies they stay clothed. The companions -your crew on the Unreliable- are spread out through the game and are met under circumstances ranging from a suggestion to hire them through Phineas or simply strays picked up for kicks and giggles. There are six companions in total- Parvati Holcomb, a sweet gal from the starting town who knows her way around an engine, Vicar Maximilian DeSoto, a priest of the Order of Scientific Inquiry, Dr. Ellie Fenhill, a surgeon turned pirate (who is featured in the trailers!) Felix Millstone, a rebel without a cause or a clue who romanticizes all your adventures, Nyoka Ramnarim-Wentworth III, a hard drinking hunter and wilderness guide, and SAM, a sanitation and maintenance robot who spouts only company slogans. The companions can be customized to suit your playstyle from their unique perks to armor, weapons and fighting preference but most players end up with a favorite team though there are perks you can take if you’re the kind who likes to fly solo. While the companions all have their own clear cut reasons for joining your crew, treat them right and they become close to the player character and each other. Aww. They all have something to say in just about every situation and like in many modern RPGs will bicker and banter with the player character and each other. Listening to the characters play off one another is ten kinds of fun. My biggest gripe is how there’s no new one on one dialog with them at certain points in the game apart from new banter or a comment about goings on before going right into the same dang old dropbox of questions. Oh well. Some players get their hackles up about there not being romance but I don’t feel a lack. If you want extensive babblings with your minions go play a Bioware game. What’s wrong with a good old fashioned tale of true companions?

Final thoughts

I admit after going through the first three hours or so of the game I was going to slap a ‘standard sci fi’ label on The Outer Worlds and hang it up for a while. Thank the Law I didn’t.

The main quest coming in at a lukewarm thirty hours, The Outer Worlds is crying out for DLC and the way things go we’ll probably get more than one. Overall it’s fun- it’s a fun ride with crazy weapons, colorful characters, plenty of laughs and it just might tug at your heartstrings.

When you take away the wishing, complaining and comparisons The Outer Worlds is a breath of fresh air amid the reforgings and refunds. I joke a lot about how I’m drinking the tears of New Vegas stans for getting heckin’ bamboozled but good on them for having standards. I’ve been hiding my extreme disappointment in Fallout 76 for a long time- full disclosure, it legit makes me sad and angry between Bethesda and Blizzard caring more about money than making fans happy and the table scraps we get in place of enjoyable content.

I haven’t been happy with a new release since World of Warcraft: Legion. That’s been four agonizing years in a wasteland of mediocrity that I’ve slogged through in the vain hope of something renewing my faith in the industry. Maybe The Outer Worlds is just standard sci fi goofs but it does stand out among all the moody gritty art pieces most modern games have become. I’m not sure what the future holds but I’ll be cautiously hopeful, adrift in lower orbit waiting for the next adventure.

#the outer worlds #review #amateur review #actually blogging on my blog what sorcery is this #Don't worry there are no spoilers #spoiler free #tow #tow stuff #no spoilers

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poweredbydietcoke · 7 years

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Gobi March 2017 Race Report

TL;DR this is going to be really, really long as I attempt to cover months of race prep, gear selection, travel to western China, gear replacement, the race, the people, and the lessons...so be warned. The summary is this: three of us (Mark Gilbert, Angela Zäh, and I) trained (not enough), traveled to the Gobi Desert in far western China (losing only one bag of gear in the process), and ran ~250km and 4000m of vertical in conditions varied from cold pouring rain to brutal sun and heat up to 48*C (119*F), carrying all of our supplies (except water and tents) on our backs for the 6 days. And we enjoyed it!

The event was reasonably well-run (the race organizers were in a little over their heads, I think, but also faced a ton of challenges planning a race of this scale in China, especially with the local government; the medical team was clearly A+ and seemed to bleed over into actually managing large parts of the race, which was incredibly helpful) and the 107 competitors who started were awesome and totally fun. Probably the best part of the entire event was getting to hang out in the mountains & deserts for a week with these people and become friends. It's always amazing to me how well people work together when they're faced with a big challenge, and the amount of sharing (of advice, gear, food, you name it) to make sure everyone made it was fantastic.

Origin Story

This whole idea (for us) started late on New Year's Eve of 2015, when Mark and his sister-in-law Sue were looking for a challenging event for the year (recall that the past N years, Mark and I along with various other friends have always picked something silly to do without really training enough ... Mallorca 70.3, IM Australia, etc). Sue's challenge was the Gobi March or another Ironman in Capetown (I think). Mark texted me and offered the options, and I said we'd just done an Ironman, let's do something else, so we agreed to do Gobi (neither of us had imbibed at all by this point, of course). With all that was going on at work and only a few months to train for the 2016 event, we ended up doing a 50k together in Wyoming to train (and I did my first 100mi in Arizona), and signing up for Gobi 2017. Vlad Fedorov of course agreed to join us, and he dragged poor Angela into the mix before abandoning her, as he was forced to stay back in SF to handle a couple things (in his defense, Angela ran the 400m hurdles and the 800m in college, so she clearly enjoyed pain already).

Training

Being such dedicated athletes with loads of free time, we promptly wrote out and followed extensive training plans to the T ... largely consisting of weekly red-eyes to New York (our equivalent of sleeping in an altitude chamber -- it literally is), walking 1x1s during the day, and trying lots of different hydration options (white wine, red wine, rum & coke, whiskey). By the time the race was only a few months away, we were convinced we were in peak shape, but our better halves ganged up on us and forced us to another level of training we didn't even know existed. I started running with a 20lb weight vest to simulate the pack I'd be wearing (which looks like an odd cross between a bulletproof vest, and a suicide-bomber vest ... got some very strange looks running in that + my tights on the Embarcadero in San Francisco), Mark started carrying his pack with extra weight once we finally acquired packs...and we even tried a few of the freeze-dried meals we planned to eat on the course (those turned out great). In the end I'd say our training was actually more than adequate for our goal (to finish), although not nearly enough if we'd wanted to be competitive.

Race Format

This type of race (particularly the 4 Deserts series) have an interesting format. You start in a campsite on a Saturday night, and start racing Sunday morning. The first four days are roughly a marathon each (technically it increases every day from ~35km to ~45km, but it's close), and then the fifth day is called the Long March (~80km, or 50 miles), which you have a total of 30 hours to complete (bleeding into the sixth day, which is a rest day for people who finish quickly), and the seventh day is a "victory lap" that makes up the last of the 250km (usually ~10km). Of course all of this planning goes up in smoke given the weather and the government, but more on that later.

Gear

The race organizers required every competitor to carry a fixed list of mandatory gear -- you could choose the exact item, but it had to fulfill certain requirements (a sleeping bag rated to 32*F or below, a waterproof jacket, etc), and then you could choose to carry extra gear on top of that (more food, a sleeping pad for comfort, etc)...but everything you choose to carry is on your back and added weight, and the more weight you carry, the more calories you burn, and therefore the more food you need to carry, meaning the more weight you carry again, and so on (we called this the "rocket fuel problem"). In the end the lightest pack I saw was about 7.5kg, and the heaviest were upwards of 15kg (hint, your pack weight was directly and strongly correlated to your finishing position -- the lower the weight, the lower your time). Mine ended up weighing in at 9.6kg without water, Mark's was about 10.4kg, and I think Angela's was high 8s.

If you're interested in the gear or are planning to do this race (or something like it), read this post in detail...if you don't care, skip it, because it will get boring fast. :) Food

As mentioned above, they required you to carry a minimum of 14,000 calories a day, or 2,000 calories per theoretical day you were on the course. Really, though, you're going to want more than that (at my height and weight, roughly 6' and 200lbs, I probably burn 2,500 calories a day *without* running), but the good news is, you're not really running 7 days. Saturday night and Sunday morning you're in camp 1, so you don't need to count that weight -- it's never in your pack for a run. Friday is a rest day, so you don't need that many calories; and Saturday is an easy 10km to the finish line (and it doesn't count for official results, so most people walk/jog it together rather than racing), so worst case you could do that with no food and just plan on eating a lot at the finish line. Of course cutting this too close could cause you problems if/when plans change. :)

I settled on roughly 19,000 calories for the week, broken down like this:

(Yes, everyone has pretty complex spreadsheets to manage this, including calorie distribution per day, weight-per-gram trade offs, when to eat, etc). I ended up planning on about 800 calories for breakfast each day (we were usually up by 6am for an 8am race start, so plenty of time to get warm food in), about 1200 calories on the course / right after, and another 800 calories for dinner, with more calories on the day before/of the Long March, a lot less for rest day, and 400 calories for breakfast on the last day.

Aside from United losing 6800 calories of that (which Mark & I were able to replace in Shanghai with mostly ramen and oatmeal ... happily all of my bars/gels/powders were in my carry on, as those would have been much harder to replace), I think I did pretty well on food. 800 calories turns out to be about the most I could get down for breakfast, but not too much at all...some people brought 1200 calorie breakfasts but were getting really sick of them by the end and couldn't finish them. The Mountain Home breakfast skillet was the best, and savory was much better than sweet (eg porridge-type stuff) where possible. 800-1000 calories for dinner was great, with the hits being local ramen, Mountain Home beef stroganoff (always a favorite of mine, so much so that when I first started eating freeze-dried meals backpacking 25 years ago, I was convinced I would enjoy it at home in normal circumstances...not so much!), and Mountain Home chili mac with beef (so good!). I also brought a Recoverite to add to my water bottle for every day right after I finished, which seemed to work incredibly well (maybe I just recovered easily/well, but I felt great starting each day). I also brought a desert (dark chocolate cheesecake from Backpacker's Pantry) as a surprise to share with my tent-mates on the rest day, which was nice but in the end not worth it (a couple of us split it and it was fine but not as delicious as we thought it would be given our hunger).

During the day was a little harder -- every day I took two bars (a Tram Bar from Jackson Hole, and an almond-butter-filled Clif Bar), one Perpeteum, one Heed, and an almond butter packet, and a couple Gu gels for emergency energy. The Clif Bars were great and easy to get down with the almond butter center, but only 250 calories. The Tram Bar at 370 cals was great energy but a little harder to get down, especially when thirsty, and a little too much to take at once but hard to hold onto for two hours since I didn't have a great place on my vest to stash it. In hindsight I might take more Clif and less Tram next time, same number of calories. The only Perpetuem I could find before I left was Orange Vanilla, which was mediocre at best. It has the advantage of 270 cals and 220mg sodium, so it helps with electrolytes as well (a good thing), but it tastes like garbage...so by the end of the Long March I couldn't choke it down without gagging and risking vomiting (which would make things much worse because you lose all your hydration + calories + electrolytes and start over).

Next time I'd find a better flavor (strawberry? Both my Recoverite and Heed were strawberry and great) and train with it more to make sure I could get down 3-4 packets on a long day (1 was easy, and 2 was doable, which was my training max). The Heed was a nice change, but with only 100 cal and 70mg sodium I might drop it next time for just more Perpetuem if I can stomach it. And the almond butter was unnecessary on most days (a lot of it went to Mark who had brought more meals and fewer daytime snacks), but worked well when I wanted it / used it. The gels were a lifesaver (most of them went to Mark), I'd have brought a few more next time for quick fixes especially when I bonked on the Long March (happily Angela force-fed me a Stroupwaffle since I was out of my own gels)...they turn out to be not that dense (weight-per-calorie) so not great for the bulk of your calories, but good for speed-of-absorption.

To replace electrolytes (salt++) in the heat, I was relying primarily on Perpetuem supplemented by Endurolyte salt pills (80mg per two)...these worked fine but were annoying (I was scarfing them 4 at a time during the hot days), and next time I'll switch to Nuun or Gu Hydration...they dissolve in water with 320mg per tablet, and although they make me burp occasionally (because of the carbonation they introduce, I assume) if I can find a flavor I like they are much easier. Lots of the faster guys were using Tailwind for nutrition, which was like a denser Perpetuem combining more calories with more sodium, so I plan to try that going forward.

Finally, Mark & I both brought 12x Starbucks Via instant coffee for the mornings (we each only had one per morning, leaving us lots of extras to give someone else and make them happy -- for a few grams per packet, this is so worth it). Mark specified "Italian or French, dark roast only, with powdered milk" so he lived the high life, while I just drank whatever I'd found (a medium roast Colombian) and did just fine. :) We also each threw in a few cubes of chicken bullion, which has a lot of salt but not many calories, for cold nights when we were hungry ... totally worth it, both for ourselves and to share (put these in a separate bag as they turn out to be super oily). Angela brought a small bottle of olive oil to add to food for flavor + calories (it's super calorically dense), which was an amazing idea (mine was once again United'd so I had to borrow). Mark brought a small container of salt which was also helpful.

Getting There

The race itself started in Hami, a "small" town of half a million in the rural western Chinese province of Xinjiang...this a lesser-known version of Tibet, with lots of "interesting" political situations (Mark said that when he lived in Shanghai, the internet in this province was "turned off" for two solid years). To get there, we all met up first in Shanghai (Angela & I went direct, Mark went through LA, Seoul, fourteen other places, and then to Shanghai) and spent a night at Le Royal Meridien. Thinking it would be hard to screw up a bag on a direct flight, I checked my knife, hiking poles, bottles of olive oil for us, and stupidly also put some of my food, sleeping pad, and camp clothes/shoes in there because I had space. Of course it stayed in San Francisco for an extra few days and by the time it made it to Shanghai, I was in the middle of the Gobi. Oh well -- Mark made a trip to Decathalon to get some stuff he needed anyway, Angela borrowed a mat and poles from Luke for me, and I found a grocery to stock up on ramen etc.

We then hopped on Juneyao Airlines for the flight to Urumqi (or Wulumqi, depending on how you transliterate), the capital of Xinjiang province, and all carried on / managed to make it with all our gear, and crashed at the Sheraton for a night (clearly the most happening place in this rural metropolis of 3-4M people). The next day we took the high-speed (3.5 hour) train to Hami, which included another two security screenings (everywhere has outside magnetometers + X-ray to get into the building, then the normal travel checkpoint, as well as a few passport checks to control movement of people), where people finished their sewing...leaving the train station we got detained for a while by the police who were surprised to see a bunch of gweilos in this area (to say it's an occupied province is to put it lightly, the tensions between the Han Chinese and the native Uighurs appears to be quite high), but we'd made friends with some of the other (native Chinese) competitors on the train who spoke both perfect English, Mandarin, and some of the local dialects, and they very helpfully sorted it out for us before getting us all in taxis to the hotel...thanks guys!

(photo credit Angela)

Saturday at the hotel was occupied with race briefings, gear checks, medical checks, running out to get anything you were missing in the market (Mark and I went out to buy cheap pocket knives ... it seems you’re not supposed to have knives in this province, though, as there are magnometers and X-rays at the entrance of every single shop/building ... amusingly if you walk through with your bag on your shoulder and keep going, people rarely say anything ... but in the end the helpful shopkeeper wrote us a note saying we needed the knives to cut fruit in case anyone stopped us. When in China...)

Saturday afternoon we boarded busses for the three hour drive to the start and found ourselves in a beautiful yurt campground at the base of some large mountains. We were supposed to change camps every night as we progressed along the original Silk Road, over the mountains, and out into the desert, but the government had other plans, "for our own safety." So instead for the first four days we'd pack up everything, leave the camp (which was sometimes guarded by very bored-looking local police in whatever dark clothing they could cobble together, with every group of 4-5 guys issued one shield, one baton, one vest that said SWAT, and one belt that said SWAT ... not kidding ... and they always faced inward, not outward), run a while, and then return to the same camp.

(photo credit unknown)

Anyways, we'd pack up, go run 40km, and then come right back to the same camp. At least it was, aside from the pit toilets, quite a nice place to be! Saturday night at camp we got our first chance to meet our tent-mates for the week. Beside Mark, Angela and I, we had Ben & Richard, both British ex-pats living in Hong Kong, and serious runners -- Ben would finish the race 5th, and Richard 9th. Then Aussie Mark, who also lived in HK with Ben & Richard, Michael (an American who lived in Singapore with Chevron and was just moving back to SF with Google), and Donald, a retired Scottish policeman from Edinburgh who ran everywhere in amazing Tartan shorts, and whose lovely wife was volunteering to help out with the race. We'd have a chance to spend a lot of time together, on and off the course, over the week, and we couldn't have asked for a better group -- I would happily do another week or more of racing with every single person in that tent, which is saying something given the pain and smells we endured!

We also got to start hanging out with the race's wonderful medical team, six doctors (all seemingly Stanford emergency- or trauma-affiliated, and all with wilderness/backcountry backgrounds) who would precede and follow us everywhere and help with everything from the smallest blister to people passing out on the course, always with a smile and a word of encouragement. Doc Julie led the team, along with her husband Doc Adam -- both of them live in Salt Lake City and work with a friend of mine from undergrad, Nick Kanaan (turns out that Nick had volunteered for Gobi a few years ago and all the docs knew him, which was funny). Adam had previously raced in a 4 Deserts race (the Sahara, I think) and Julie had worked a bunch of them. Avi was the other old-timer, I think this was his 8th race, and it turns out that he lived about 2 blocks from me in San Francisco; Patrick, Michael Shaheen, and Alexis (all from Stanford, some now at San Diego I think) rounded out the team on the younger side...and all were fantastic.

After our first freeze-dried meal on Saturday night (note to self, next time bring good fresh food for that first meal!) and an early bedtime, we were up at 5:30am Sunday to start getting ready. Breakfast, a race briefing at 7:30am, and onto the busses at 8:00am to head to the start line (we would start elsewhere and run back to camp on day 1, given our newly confined schedule). It was only supposed to be 35km and 600m of climbing, and given the changed plans, promised to be even shorter and less climbing that planned...so it seemed easy. Wrong attitude.

It all started out pretty easy and downhill, and we ran the first while to get ahead of the pack. The first few legs were fast and fun, and on pretty good terrain, until we hit the last aid station at the base of the Barkhol sand dune. It was a strange but gorgeous collection of dunes in the middle of the plains, the tallest one being probably 300-400m tall, and we were going up one ridge, along the top, and down the other end. But it's ok, only 12km to go and a little sand. The first approach was easy, but quickly got very steep very fast, and all of us went anaerobic just trying to make forward progress (each step slid back a good percentage of the distance you covered), wearing us out before we made the first ridge line. Our low gaiters with Velcro turned out to be no match for sand that was mid-calf, so our shoes were quickly filled, and the temps were climbing past 35*C, but we made it up and trekked along the ridge lines, up and down along the dune. Breathtaking views

(photo credit Angela)

We found the end and tumbled down, having a lot of fun on the descent until we hit the base and realized we had a lot more sand to wade through, and camp was a lot farther away than we thought! I stopped to empty my shoes and tape a toe that had started to rub in the sand (happily it would actually improve and heal entirely during the week!), and we kept pushing on. An hour or two later we were seemingly no closer to the camp, and I started to regret my decision not to keep any Endurolytes in the front of my pack...by 5km to go I was starting to get kind of out of it, but Mark stuck next to me, forced me to take some more (I kept thinking we were close enough just to tough it out), and made it home only losing a few minutes of time. That left us the rest of the day to hang out in camp and get to know people, which was consistently fun.

Day 2 started early again

with a 7:30am briefing and 8:00am departure straight from camp...4km down a gravel road before we turned up into the forest and started climbing the mountains, ultimately up to 2900m. We were supposed to continue straight through the pass and down the other side, but plans change, and we were running out-and-back...all good, at least it was pretty! We cruised out to the base of the climb pretty fast and then just dug into the switchbacks, trying not to be offended when mountain goats passed us...but we made good time together to the middle checkpoint at the pass, almost 20km and 1200m in under four hours with pretty full packs. We passed the race leaders on their way back as we were starting the final climb, stopped to refill at the top, and a torrential downpour started.

Waterproof jackets on and start hammering down...Angela started to chill so she went ahead to keep moving fast and stay warm, and I hung back a bit with Mark, and we just cruised down and back. All in all a nice day, and the rain wasn't too bad. Back in camp we took over the fires to dry everything (clothes, shoes, backpacks) and passed out early. I think this was the night that both Mark and Angela decided / were convinced that carrying deodorant was a waste of weight, and so got rid of it (the rest of us never even tried). Of course from then on we complained about Angela's lack of deodorant...

Day 3 was a bus to the start, and a bus home. Yuck. But the terrain was maybe the most consistently beautiful we had all week, a river valley up and down about 1000m, so life was good. We started in a slightly gray morning and climbed up and up and up through this valley, cresting the top a few hours in. Angela cruised ahead again to stay warm, and Mark and I started the descent...it started to warm up but Mark had hammered on the way up and seemingly didn't cool down enough on the way down, as he started to overheat. By 7km to go he was hating life and couldn't stop shivering (despite it being 27*C outside and wearing lots of layers), so we stopped by one of the roving 4x4 support vehicles, got his feet up, and got Doc Adam on the radio...he was there pretty quickly and immediately said "heat exhaustion", got him de-layered and in the shade, a cold Pepsi for a quick sugar hit, and we were back on our way down within the hour. We were pushing it closer to the cutoff times than we wanted, but made it easily and on the last bus back to camp, where the whole tent helped sort out gear, get it dry, get food ready, and generally speed up recovery.

Day 4 was another out-and-back from camp, which was nice to avoid busses and see other people on the course, despite not being as much new scenery. 1.5km on a gravel road down to the forest, 6km through the forest out into the plains, up the foothills through a lot of pasture to some lower hills, and then down a beautiful valley on the other side to the 22.5km mark, turn around and do it again. It would be about 45km with another 1200m of climbing, which suited us given SF-based hill training, and the temperatures would stay down well under 40*C for another day, which was nice. Given the cold day and our pace, Angela hammered ahead to stay warm (if you get cold it's really, really hard to get warm again) and Mark and I just took it easy on the way out...Angela would end up finishing as second woman that day, I think, and emerge as a dark-horse contender for the overall race if she wanted it).

We climbed to the first checkpoint in 2.5 hours, just under the cutoff, and then did the second leg in 3 hours out to CP2, where Adam was waiting for us to check in. The previous day's exhaustion had also hammered Mark's feet (when you get tired your form goes, and blisters start/take hold), so the climb out was torture for him, in addition to the exhaustion and not a lot of time to recover...feeling as if he was just going to repeat day 3, he sadly (but very intelligently) decided to call it at CP2 and ride back with the 4x4s. I loaded up on water and advice from Adam and left CP2 in 104th place for the return journey, 22.5km and lots of climbing to get back, and only 2.5 hours to make the cutoff for CP3. I was feeling great, though, and passed almost 30 people on the way to CP3 in 1:45 flat...I barely broke stride going through to refill my bottles and keep pushing home. I passed another 25 people on the last leg to finish 49th on the day, in a little under 3:30 for the return trip. It was a huge bummer to lose Mark but a really smart decision not to risk it, and the trip back turned out to be a lot of fun even solo. Stopped by at the end to hang out with the docs and say thanks, and ended up lucking into some sprayable painkiller for the small shin splints that had developed on my legs. Better living through chemicals!

Day 5 turned into a rest day with our new plans, so we slept in until 8 or 9am, had a leisurely breakfast, and we all tried to stay out of the sun and rest. Our yurt basically spent the day inside reading, laughing (my sister would send me a really bad running joke every day, which I would happily relay to a large chorus of groans), and napping, as we got ready for a midnight bus departure to the start line of the Long March. Most memorable quote of the race:

Donald: "does anyone have any extra salt I can put in my lunch?" Richard: "you could wring out one of my socks in there, I'm sure it has plenty of salt."

And Laura's jokes:

What's Forest Gump's password? 1forest1

What do you get if you run in front of a car? Tired What do you get it you run behind a car? Exhausted

It might be hard to picture from here, but we were having a blast. :) We had a leisurely lunch and went back to sleep, an early dinner and back to sleep, and then woke up around midnight to make more food (we were all furiously trying to recalculate our food plans to have enough calories on a pre-long-march rest day and still have enough food for the long march, and there was a lot of trading / sharing of food) and get on the busses. Our government protectors decided we couldn't leave yet, so we sat around until 1:30am or so and finally pulled out in a giant convoy of flashing lights for the slow drive to the start...finally arriving sometime around 5:30am. Quick pit stop, top off water bottles, and it was time to go. Angela & I decided to stick together for the long march, with a strategy of running as much as we could early in the morning before it got hot to put in some distance, and then just a forced march during the peak heat until it cooled off or we finished.

We pulled away early, scarily close to the leaders, and ran a lot through the first two checkpoints and 26km before it started to get hot and we backed off a bit. By the third checkpoint at 37km it was getting hot, and the next 6km through a dry, still wadi were an absolute slog (at least for me)...at some point I managed to pee and it was a dark brown-yellow, which is never a good sign, and I'd already consumed over 7L of water in 6 hours. We made it to CP4 by 12:45pm, where we were forced to stop for 3 hours (the race implemented a mandatory 3 hour rest for everyone given the heat)...which was amazing. 29 people made it to CP5 for the stop, 20 people at CP4 (we were numbers 4 and 5 to make it there), and the rest stayed back at CP3. Flat on our backs in the shade (which at this point was 45*C ... rumor had it that a thermometer in the sun read 56*C, but the highest confirmed temp I heard was 48*C), with an amazing volunteer (Katya) walking around the tent with a spray bottle in each hand for three hours, misting water on us, and trying to get in more water, electrolytes, and calories. Talked to Adam about my water consumption and tried to up it even more (by the end of the day I consumed almost 20L) and then it was time to get back to it. As each person got ready to leave, Adam would quietly go over and say "drink some of your water...ok now give me the bottle", and come back a minute later with a few ice cubes in the top. Cool water never tasted so good (most of the water on the course by this point was 40-45C at least).

Back on the trail and we were feeling pretty refreshed after a break and lots of water, so we pushed through to CP5 at a decent pace given the temperature (through all of this Angela appears basically unaffected to me and barely drinking water, although she promises it was hard). At some point in here we stopped to perform some more shoe surgery on her heel to free up the Achilles, which was a nice 2min break in the one piece of shade we saw.

Making it to CP5 I decided it was the opportune time to use Laura's latest joke, which I'd received on the satcom during the rest stop...we walked into the tent and I told the lead volunteer that I'd started hallucinating on the course. She looked concerned and called for the doctor, Avi, as I told her I'd seen a talking pig (Angela is rolling her eyes), and he told me that I needed to help him because "he was bacon out here." It took her about ten seconds to process just how bad of a joke it was and that I wasn't in fact hallucinating (which made it even funnier), just enough time for Avi to arrive and pronounce that I did in fact need treatment if I was telling jokes that were that bad...and quickly launch into his own series of bad jokes (all of which he blamed on Nick). We had a blast telling dumb jokes for 10 minutes in the shade while we nursed our surprise Pepsis from the medical team (they brought enough for every single competitor to get one at CP5!)...the best one: "What do you call someone who tells bad jokes but isn't a dad? A faux pas"

(photo credit unknown)

Before it was time to head back onto the course. The Pepsi carried us through the next 10km to CP6, where Donald's wife was waiting (we'd seen him at CP4 during the rest stop and he was doing ok, if hot, which she was happy to hear), a quick (to me, maybe 10-15min in real terms?) shade and water break and back on the trail to CP7. We saw Dirk, one of the race leaders, at CP6, where he'd unfortunately been forced to drop out due to heat exhaustion...he'd spent an hour sitting in a 4x4 with the AC running and still couldn't stop hyperventilating, so he decided to call it, and was just starting to recover by the time we arrived. :(

I tried to get my last Perpetuem down on this leg and just couldn't, so by the time we were a few km from CP7 I started to run out of gas, hard. Electrolytes and water were ok, but I just hadn't had enough to eat for the day (or at least not enough simple sugars that didn't require too much blood to digest, since it was mostly busy carrying oxygen to my legs)...I tried to push through it again to get to CP7 (because the first thing a bonk does is make you dumb), but happily Angela forced me to eat, first one of her sugar-filled waffles and then one of my Clif bars, so that by the time we crawled into CP7 I had some calories in my stomach to start digesting.

CP7 was a war zone, with at least 6 people splayed out all over the floor passed out and trying to recover from heat, electrolytes, calorie deficits, etc. I got another bar in and laid on my back for 20min to get some calories to digest before we picked up and moved again, just as the sun started to set. We had 11km along a road to go to the finish, and we just forced-marched it under headlamps. We'd long ago given up talking much, instead favoring simple "thumbs up" for "you good? I'm good", hands flat and wiggling for "I'm so-so", and happily never getting to thumbs-down, but we kept moving, I managed to get my Heed down, Angela's Achilles stayed ok, her knee didn't get much worse, and we crossed the finish line just before midnight on Friday. Ben and Richard had crossed the line together just before sunset, Michael was probably an hour ahead of us at 23rd, and we finished 26th and 27th for the day. Mark was already there having helped out at camp and the aid stations during the day, and they'd all claimed a big tent for us near the finish line. After a few minutes of catching up and joking, getting weighed and prodded for medical tests, and chugging our almost-cool finish line Pepsis and waters, we were all fast asleep by 12:30am.

Unfortunately that didn't last long, as we were rudely awakened by a huge sandstorm that started to collapse our tent around 3:15am. We traded off holding the tent in place while everyone hurriedly packed their kit, and then hung out in the tent for a bit debating what to do while the wind whipped around outside and quickly destroyed about half the camp. We decided with all the metals poles flying around we were probably safer away from the tent, so everyone loaded up and we made a run for the leeward side of a big rock formation nearby, where the winds were lower and there were fewer flying projectiles. We made our little post-apocalyptic refugee camp there and were gradually joined by more and more people from collapsed tents...at least it was cool (ish) outside!

We all had our buffs wrapped around our faces

And dozed in and out between brief sleep and chatting all night, curled up on some shared sleeping pads. The last finisher finally crossed about 9:45am (happily under a huge cloud of dust, the sun stayed slightly hidden and the temperatures stayed lower, probably under 40*C), we all got up to run the final "victory lap" (which was really just so the race organizers could get marketing photos, so it was cut down to probably under 1km) and cross the official finish line together to get soda, beer, and bowls of real food (rice, veggies, and a little unspecified meat).

(Donald at the finish line, photo credit Donald’s wife Elaine?)

30 minutes later we were all ready to get on the busses and head back to Hami, which was a solid 2+ hour drive.

And that was it. We got back to the hotel, drank beer in the hallways while we waited for our rooms to be ready, enjoyed very long showers, drank more beer while we waiting for dinner, had a great big banquet (of course our yurt all sat together...it was strange to us that most tents didn't), drank more beer in the lobby, and passed out.

(Photo credit Angela)

The travel home was less eventful, although fun to do a lot of it with these groups of people we'd gotten to know so well. The trains to Urumqi were easy, although the security checks caught some more stuff (people just cared less), we just kept walking and didn't stop. :) The airport at Urumqi was clearly on high alert, as they ran each of our carry-ons at least 4 times, and to their credit (as annoying as it was, because it was pointless), they found almost everything that we weren't supposed to have (those sewing scissors and hiking poles were clearly a threat) and ended up with a large haul of stuff for themselves. Back in Shanghai after a few-hour delay we had a day to rest, get massages, and eat, and now on the plane back to SF.

Lessons Learned

I mentioned a bunch inline above, but fundamentally this was an exercise in logistics and training more than anything else ... no individual race day was that challenging by itself (granted I finished in the mid-40s place-wise and not top-10, where I'm sure the running itself was much more challenging), and if you had a lightweight pack, managed your nutrition well, and took care of your feet every day, you seemed to have a pretty good chance of finishing well (modulo heat & exhaustion issues like Mark faced--I think he might have been sick at the same time, because he was eating and drinking well all day). Then it's just a matter of persistence, but even less of that is required here than in eg. a straight 100-miler.

I did find this race format far more enjoyable than a one-day 100-miler, I think largely because of the camaraderie on the trail and in camp. It would be cliche and dramatically exaggerated to say I made best-friends-for-life in this race, but I certainly made another 5 friends who I look forward to visiting around the world as our paths collide.

In the end I could have carried a little less food, as I think I only lost about 10 pounds over the course of the race (I wouldn't skimp on on-course food, but less weight for dinner and run a higher calorie deficit at night would have worked). This would have been less weight, and let me run less conservatively on the first few days, probably saving a lot of time. Only one toenail (so far) fell victim to the trails, and a few annoying blisters on the last day, but remarkably few given the terrain and mileage and they're already largely healed. And the hotel in Hami collected a large pile of donated/trashed gear...my beloved shoes (complete with an extra lining of velcro for the gaiters) were pushing 600 miles and didn't make the return trip, along with the gaiters themselves (wouldn't use that style again, and they were trashed), my socks (biohazard), running top (likewise), and camp clothes and shoes I'd purchased cheaply in Urumqi along with the crappy folding knife from Hami. And, of course, Luke's poles he so generously loaned me, confiscated by the crack airport security team (happily, only on the return trip!)...Luke, I still owe you a beer (or many) for those poles!

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